Polis on Facebook
Carried out professionally, the job role encompasses board support, community relations, human resources and, essentially, reputation management. Anyone posting on social media, must understand their comments are like Press Releases by them to the entire world!!
Aussie utility monitor company Energy Watch has just sacked its CEO – and lost several leading sponsorship ties as well – after its indecently youthful CEO Ben Polis – dropped the company in a whopper PR disaster re his social media editorials and utterances. They seem to betray a person of either troubled or questionable character.
Following Polis’ posting of bigoted, racist, sexist and sundry other offensive comments on social media – and the backlash from media commentators – the company had to let the self-outed ADD/ADHD sufferer go. His PR comebacks have so far been lame – along the “I can’t be racist, my cleaner is Asian and I once dated a half-Aboriginal woman.” Ugh. Gritty Polis helped form the Energy Watch company, which kinda explains why he got to be a media-attractive CEO. But doing the job of the CEO means more than typing the title on a businesscard and doing the speakers’ circuit. You need luck and grace on your recovery back from this one, Ben. (Ta to The Age for tip and Herald Sun for graphic).
Do these guys believe their own spin?
According to their News Release, which incidentally says he “stood down” (the link on their home page said he was “stood down”), the company was established “to create a community champion – an organisation that was built for the benefit of Australian Mums and Dads”.
Seriously. I feel all warm and fuzzy inside…or maybe it’s just my stomach churning.
The release goes on to say: “My focus now is to rebuild that dream and make Energy Watch the community champion it was always intended to be,” said Mr Zombor.
Dream on guys.