These two businesses handle bad online reviews very differently

(This post originally appeared on The Washington Post)

Online review services like Yelp, Foursquare, Google and Trip Advisor are critical for many businesses all over the world. Most of my clients who are active on these services take great care to keep their listings updated and to respond to reviews, particularly the inevitable negative ones (it is the Internet, you know).  Most experts will tell you that the right approach is to respond professionally to negative reviews and promise to take corrective action if necessary.

Or you could try a different approach.

For example, BrewDog, a Manchester, England craft brewpub founded in 2007 doesn’t just respond to negative online reviews … it embraces them. How?  By putting some of the “best” ones on their staffs’ T-shirts, according to this report in the Manchester Evening News.

I’d include a few but let’s just say they’re pretty much all not-safe-for-work. However, management doesn’t seem to care. In fact, the pub actually seems to enjoy the negativity. New T-shirts with bad reviews are regularly issued by the company’s Scottish headquarters as mandated uniforms for staff.

BrewDog enjoys using controversy as a marketing tool. The company once responded to an industry watchdog group critical over its sales practices as “a gloomy gaggle of killjoy jobsworths, funded by naval-gazing international drinks giants.” Heady stuff. But at least no one got injured.

Which unfortunately was not the case for one patron of a barbecue restaurant in the city of Changsha, China. Unhappy with the quality of the food she had delivered to her, she apparently left a negative online review. The next day a group of armed men allegedly visited her location and physically attacked her husband (he’s in stable condition), reported Shanghaiist.

I give a negative review to both approaches.