Categories: Articles

Lesson Of The Week: This Is Being Recorded

"Four months after a Burger King employee lost his job for taking a bubble bath in a restaurant sink, three scantily clad teens were fired when they turned a basin at their northern California KFC into their personal hot tub." – Daily News – Kentucky Fried Chicken trio photographed turning sink into hot tub – December 11th, 2008.

We all did stupid things when we were teenagers. They were only stupid in hindsight though, and they seemed like a pretty good idea at the time. It’s hard to imagine that a place where food is being prepped and cleaned is the best place to turn into a hot tub party, but again, it probably seemed like good, clean fun at the time. Even posting the pictures on MySpace seemed like the smart thing to do.

While the Daily News calls these teens "dimwits", it’s just another fine example of people either realizing (or not) that anything and everything that you do can (and is) being recorded and filmed. Not only that, all of this content (and this goes for emails, mobile phone photos, conversation over Skype, etc…) is easily publishable to the Web… instantly. These social channels really collide and become an even more powerful force when you mix in teenagers who are seeking attention.

The comments on the MySpace page didn’t help there scenario…

"The photos included captions such as ‘haha KFC showers!’ and ‘haha we turned on the jets,’ and were filed under a gallery called ‘KFC moments,’ according to the Record Searchlight newspaper in Redding,Calif."

It is moments like this when the new world meets the old world.

Enough online pundits are waging in on the dangers of young people using these publishing tools and the ramifications it is having on their lives (and on into the future). There’s another component that few have talked about: the effects on the brand. Employees are living their lives online and out in the very public. Their daily lives are being documented and published by themselves and their peers. It’s normal for them to share everything.

If they’re not thinking about their own best interest and how some of this content will look in five-ten years, we need to be really comfortable with the idea that their employers’ brand and reputation is not even a part of the equation.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.