Depp v Heard’s Trial by Public Opinion & The Dilemma of CEO Reputations with Charis Marr, Felina Tan and Jason Kapadia - Episode 21

Whether you’re focused on Depp vs Heard or Elon’s social media escapades, the effect of public reputation cannot be overstated.

The decision to make trials public opens up the dilemma of how social media could warp purple’s perceptions. So what are we to take away from one of the most highly televised legal battles in recent memory?

We touch on this in Disconnected E21, along with Uber’s diversification efforts, Twitter’s gamified privacy policy, CEO reputations & the effects on share prices, and more with our special guest Charis Marr.

This episode of Disconnected covers:

Twitter’s gamification and simplification of its privacy policy
Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s commitment to involving the court of public opinion
Uber’s huge raft of new products, and whether people will actually need them
Disputes over the number of Twitter bots interrupting Elon Musk’s takeover
How a CEO’s reputation can be an unmatched brand tool or a huge liability

Episode Highlights:

“The reputation of the CEO and that of the brand can essentially be really closely tied together, with outspoken CEOs having both a positive or negative impact on a brand's reputation. Fundamentally a CEO can be one of the most underrated marketing tools, but also they can be a reputational liability.” - 3:10 - Charis Marr

“When you see the car parked in someone's driveway, you're like, ‘Oh, my God, Tesla’. There’s a regal feeling attached to it. But when you think about the brand storytelling; I'm not sure I can even describe Tesla’s values, key themes or topics they're associated with, other than Elon. It's high time they do something about this.” - 8:10 - Felina Tan

“if you see the replies to Elon’s tweets as he tweets them, you'll see mainly the first whole bunch of tweets that come up that are also liked, are always these crypto scams and other garbage. You can kind of see that this 5% rate of bot accounts that Twitter are talking about, it's probably likely untrue. ” - 18:15 - Jason Kapadia

“Who cuts a $40bn deal before looking under the hood? It doesn't make a lot of sense, but maybe Twitter should just take Elon’s approach and tweet him like, ‘Why didn't you think about this before?’” - 24:40 - Felina Tan

“I think it's nice that Twitter is trying to make their privacy policy more easy to understand and more transparent. I applaud them for trying it, I'd like to see other companies try to do it. ” - 29:40 - Jag Sharma

“There is a tension between the fact that we have an environmental backdrop of reduction, and yet Uber is encouraging more travel and more single use deliveries. So they really need to dial up their Electric Vehicle usage to be able to have relevant context moving forward.” - 36:10 - Charis Marr

“If you look at their stock prices, they have just been absolutely hammered from their highs as well. So these types of announcements really are trying to generate more interest in I think in the stock price as well.” - 39:20 - Jason Kapadia

“Is the trial by social media so bad? If you've been following the trial very closely, a guilty result for Johnny may not necessarily mean a reputation loss for him. I say this because of the facts and the evidence that I've seen through the coverage, that’s shown that maybe he's the victim in this case.” - 44:00 - Felina Tan

“Juries don't have exposure to the social narrative, if you like, and that's right. They need to do it purely based on facts. I think the downside of the social chatter around it is we get snippets, so we don't necessarily see the whole trial.” - 46:55 - Charis Marr

Links & references:

Jason Kapadia:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonkapadia/

https://www.instagram.com/jasonkapadia/

Felina Tan:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/felinagabrielletan/

Charis Marr:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/charismarr/

Marr-keting:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/marr-keting/

Jag Sharma:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jagsharma