With the purchase of Bear Stearns by JP Morgan Chase for a fraction of it’s worth a year ago – my mind started working in the quirky way it does.
What if Bear Stearns had a blog? I mean a real, honest to goodness blog? And not a blog by an executive about movies.. that doesn’t count (and as far as I’m concerned, a non-story). A blog that let you ask questions, gave honest answers when possible; a two-way communication to say “wow, the way the entire mortgage industry does business has changed and we’re packaging this stuff up in a big ‘ol bundle.”
Publicly traded companies tend to, at times, eschew social and community media… when of all companies, they should be doing it the most because they have the most people with a stake in the business. From tens of thousands of employees to thousands (if not more) of shareholders, what better way to show transparency?
After all, one of the rules of PR is to control the story… and keep putting information out, otherwise rumour and speculation become rampant. A void is filled, regardless of what you do in the situation.
This works in the other way, too… if consumers would of been more educated instead of just grabbing the lowest rate at the time and/or buying too much house (evidenced by too high of a payment – the focus obviously moved away from the monthly financial reality of what can I actually afford?). Social media could of helped that to a degree, too.
Not to say that this credit catastrophe would of been avoided through transparency… but maybe caught earlier and the damage less.
