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Oprah Winfrey, one of the world’s richest women valued at over 2.9 billion dollars, was refused 3 times the opportunity to examine and purchase a 37 thousand dollar Tom Ford handbag. This happened at a posh upscale boutique in Switzerland.
The resulting news and social media backlash for the boutique involved and Switzerland itself (the country’s tourism office also apologized to her) was rapid and explosive, with negative commentary from news organizations, Facebook, Twitter, media publications and the like chiming in. Don’t be surprised by this! Anything that touches on deeply personal values (racism, gender equality, lifestyle, health, etc.) will quickly mushroom into an immense social media unconscious event. It will either become a social media dream or in this particular case…the ultimate social media brand reputation management nightmare.
This wake up call provides a powerful opportunity for businesses regarding their reputation management process. Not every business has a plan in place and for those who don’t know where to start, consider these 3 compelling reputation management tips....
The bombings at the Boston marathon were a tragic reminder that terrorism can strike anywhere at any time. Business Continuity professionals should be thinking about the effects of a terrorist attack and incorporate those scenarios into their plans.
So, you set out to create a website, accessible to the public, aimed at helping your employees budget. You have hopes of helping them out, but let’s be real here, you’re also looking to grab you some good PR in the process. Once you get started, however, you realize that there is no way a typical employee at your organization makes enough to live on, even with a second job, and leaving out minor expenses like food, water, and clothing…because those are luxury items, right?
Most of us would scrap the project on the spot, but not McDonald’s! The company, which has already run into a few stumbling blocks while getting acquainted with how the modern web works, must not have thought it was a problem because they went live. As could be expected, the company took a beating in the media, largely as result of the buzz generated following video, from the activists at Low Pay is Not Okay:
Just about every plan we put together these days includes aspects of social media crisis management. Presenting a variety of platforms and utilities that are perfect for communications, reputation management, monitoring stakeholder sentiment and a host of other specialized uses.
Add to that the fact that your audience is all but guaranteed to be both talking about and searching for information on your crisis via social media, and the question of whether to use social for your next crisis management campaign becomes a no-brainer.
...Social media disasters occur for a number of reasons, the first being that your company probably messed up. It may not have been intentional, but something, somewhere down the line, went wrong enough for someone to complain and it was enough for others to vocalize that complaint en masse. One mistake is all it takes for social media to turn against your brand.
No one is perfect and you can't expect to please everyone all the time, so the best trick is to be prepared for how to handle things if your company finds itself under attack in the social realm. Here are three examples of companies who were attacked by social media and how they handled, or should have handled the situation. Learn from their mistakes or successes so you can stay on social media's good side....
As I watch this crisis unfold, only 150 miles away from my home in Montreal, there are two things in particular that stand out: the crisis leadership and communications fail of the Chicago-based company that owns the train, Rail World Inc., and the executive Chairman that everyone looked to for leadership, but was no where to be found, Edward Burkhardt.
Rail World Inc.’s crisis communications failThe biggest communications fails are those (crisis communications) that do not exist, and those that come across as insincere and half-assed in a crisis situation.I wish I could report to you that Rail World Inc. had at least utilized social media as a communications tool for communicating with stakeholders, the media and concerned residents of the Lac-Mégantic community, but unfortunately I can’t. The company has zero corporate social presence and I suppose it never occurred to them to create, at the very least, a Twitter account to keep stakeholders updated throughout the crisis....
As with so many other news events, there was plenty of speculation and misinformation flowing on Twitter about the crash of an airplane at San Francisco airport — but for better or worse, that is just the way the news works now.Another breaking news event — in this case, the crash of Asiana Airlines flight 214, which broke apart while landing at San Francisco airport on Saturday morning — sparks more criticism (primarily on Twitter, of course) about how Twitter is a haven for errors and unfounded speculation, and how people seem compelled to retweet things during these events even if they have no knowledge of whether they are true or not.
To some, including regular readers of GigaOM, this won’t come as any surprise. Welcome to the way the news works now.
We saw similar criticisms and debates about the value of Twitter as a news medium during the Boston bombings, Hurricane Sandy, the shootings at Sandy Hook elementary school, and pretty much every other major news event that has happened over the past several years. At some point during the action, someone will complain about how many mistakes there are circulating on Twitter, and others will argue that we should all just refrain from tweeting or retweeting anything — or perhaps just wait until later and buy a newspaper....
Fans had made a to-be-published book by Paula Deen a top seller on Amazon, but the publisher, Random House, joined the list of business partners that have cut ties to the embattled chef....
The book deal was one of the last remaining lucrative business relationships for the embattled celebrity chef. Its cancellation came on a day when Sears, Kmart and J. C. Penney announced that they would stop selling products, including cookbooks, branded with her name. Since last week, the Food Network, Smithfield Foods, Walmart, Target, Caesars Entertainment, QVC and the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk have decided to suspend or sever ties with Ms. Deen after her admission in a legal deposition that she had used racist language in the past and allowed racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-Semitic jokes in one of her restaurants. Ms. Deen was deposed on video as part of a discrimination lawsuit filed last year by a former employee....(New York Times)
Last month, a man named Ken Hoinsky added his project to the [Kickstarter] website. He’s a writer who wanted to publish a book on the art of seduction called Above The Game: A Guide to Getting Awesome with Women. He quickly raised more than $16,000.
But some of the advice Hoinsky has dispensed in the past is controversial. Some critics even called his book a “rape manual.”... Many horrified people contacted Kickstarter and asked them to remove his listing. They didn’t. As the outrage understandably intensified, so too did the company’s crisis.
But when Kickstarter finally responded, they did it perfectly. You’ll find Kickstarter’s full apology below, deconstructed to analyze why each part worked so well. It’s a terrific template for a crisis response.
The arrest of the animal hospital’s former employee for bestiality horrified the public, but Peak Communicators disassociated the clinic from the accused—and pushed a positive story instead.
We never seem to run dry examples of easily preventable crises. Last week, an article on Home and Garden TV’s website discussing Fourth of July table settings suggested that an American flag be used as a “bright and festive table runner.” Whoops…
As you probably guessed, flocks of military vets and their families, along citizens from just about every walk of life, descended on HGTV’s social media sites to rip the network a new one for its misuse of the flag.
To HGTV’s credit, it quickly deleted the article and posted an apology, but to its detriment the apology was a weak one....
After confirming his company had been the victim of a massive cyberattack, Heartland Payment Systems General Counsel Charles Kallenbach was hyperventilating....
...But going public with a breach is a delicate matter. According to a 2013 study by the Ponemon Institute, a data privacy research institute, overly quick notifications following a breach are one of the biggest cost-multipliers. In the U.S., a premature notification added as much as $37 per record to the overall cost of the breach, the study found. When a breach involves hundreds of thousands of records, that adds up.
The tremendous scrutiny associated with data breach notifications makes getting the message right critical, said Leigh Nakanishi, senior privacy and security strategist at Edelman.
“We’re seeing many more companies being transparent when they have a breach,” Nakanishi said. “Transparency is good, but it has to be done carefully.”...
JC Penney was under some social heat after some Reddit users (yup, here’s Reddit again – told you it was one to keep an eye out for!) remarked that the company’s new teapot bares a slight resemblance to Adolf Hitler. Yes, this is obviously an innocent mistake and a matter of personal perception – and is most certainly not a crisis. However, as we’ve seen time and time again, when not responded to appropriately, social media issues can escalate into social media crises. How did JC Penney respond to the Hitler accusations? JC Penney was wise to not take the situation too seriously, though they knew that it still needed to be responded to. Their strategy was to develop a response tweet and use it to respond to everyone mentioning the teapot in relation to Adolf Hitler.
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Allow me a moment of nostalgia for the classic liveblog. “Liveblogging” was this thing we used to do before the rise of Twitter and Storify, much like good old-fashioned blogging itself. You’d have a host and a bunch of guests all watching the same Web page together, and for an hour or so, they’d make magic.
I should confess: every now and then, I get a hankering for some of that old magic. I pour some good wine, dust off a CoverItLive console, and invite some friends over.* And every time I do, I’m reminded why genuine liveblogging — real-time, browser-based liveblogging — is still one of my favorite instruments in the modern journalism toolkit. I highly recommend it to you, for reasons I outline below. And I’ll also give you some pointers on how to do it....
You may very well ask how–after the initial broadcast of fake names of Asiana pilots by KTVU after the San Francisco crash and the subsequent revelation that they were confirmed to KTVU by the summer intern for the National Transportation Safety board–things could possibly get worse for KTVU. Well, now KTVU has triggered what is now commonly referred to as the “Streisand effect” in its attempt to scrub all of the videos of their on-air blunder from YouTube. The stealth move has worked like a charm, except for all the reports about it, which basically makes them just about as stealthy as Inspector Clouseau....
Here are 5 benefits of using a mobile app for your internal crisis communications - and which industries and types of organizations would best benefit.
Intranets are a great tool for large organizations that have offices all around the country and the world, but what about when you have workers on the ground? Workers on the ground don’t necessarily have a computer in front of them at all times, but what they definitely do have is a mobile phone. Creating an app designed specifically for your internal (crisis) communications will allow you to:- Access and reach each and every member of your team, no matter where they are at any given time – and all at once...
...Edward Burkhardt, CEO of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railways waited 5 days before visiting the crash site andmaking a statement to the media. His statement lacks a significant, quotable apology to those affected, while focusing too much on the technical aspects of dealing with insurance, finances and monetary issues. He even begins his statement by defending whether he is a compassionate person.
True, the CEO does not always need to be the spokesperson in every crisis. However, a crisis this big demands an appearance and statement within 24 hours of the onset of the crisis.
True, I believe a CEO should spend more time managing the crisis and running the company than trying to be a spokesperson, but a crisis this big demands at least a few hours to talk with the media and the families who have lost loved ones. News reports indicate that at the time of the news briefing, the CEO had not reached out to families....
Wall Street Journal ran a blog yesterday talking about how bad Asiana’s PR is in the wake of the pilot-induced crash in San Francisco. They made the point that the CEO rebuffed communication experts in the US who wanted to help if the crash aftermath and stuck with its South Korean team. An Asiana representative said, “It’s not the proper time to manage the company’s image.”
That’s quite a remarkable statement. If the hours, minutes, days and weeks following a horrible crash, caused by an inexperienced pilot, is not the proper time to manage a company’s image, when is? The old adage about a crisis representing both risk and opportunity is very true, I believe. Trust can be built despite horrible circumstances, so it does matter greatly....
...Montreal Maine and Atlantic Railway has drawn the ire of local residents and even the premier for what has been described as a slow, largely unilingual, and even tone-deaf response to the tragedy.Ed Burkhardt, the president and CEO of the railway's parent company, Rail World, Inc., arrived on the scene Wednesday, nearly five days after the derailment incinerated the town centre.
He commented to a TVA television reporter beforehand that "I hope that I don't get shot at. I won't have a bullet proof vest on."Quebec Premier Pauline Marois said she understood Burkhardt didn't speak French, but felt he could have arrived on the scene earlier."It's a completely deplorable attitude from the company," Marois said in Quebec City....
After one of its planes crash landed into San Francisco, Asiana Airlines issued a press release that didn't even acknowledge the victims.
Happy, Friday. This week's Friday PR Picks and social media missives are loaded with crisis management, content marketing and communication insight.
We're featuring 9 valuable crisis management, 10 public relations posts and 14 must-read social media articles. Perfect for the long weekend.
Food Network, Walmart, Caesars Entertainment…one by one, the many companies represented by Paula Deen are backing out on deals they’ve forged with the celebrity chef. The latest business to wash its hands of Paula Deen? Pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk.
The bad news continues for fallen idol Paula Deen, who, following allegations of racism, has been losing valuable deals left and right. Whether or not company leaders feel that Paula is actually a racist, they clearly do not wish to be associated with all the bad PR following this case.
So far, during an overwhelming flood disaster, Calgary emergency personnel and police have performed incredibly well.
Twitter? Absolutely not!
As flooding surprised the city last Thursday, Calgary Police put its crisis management plan into action. Part of the plan included using its official Twitter account @CalgaryPolice. Providing updates, critical crisis information and engaging with residents wherever possible.
That is, until Twitter shut down the account for exceeding the daily 1,000-post limit....
If you’ve been using social media strategies to create loyal followers, you’ll have a decisive advantage when a crisis hits. Companies that have an advanced social media strategies in place will mitigate a negative event quicker and with less financial loss. Here, we are going to take a look at three areas that will help you manage a crisis with social media: tools, tactics, and tips....
Twitter plays an essential role within your crisis management. The use of a crisis hashtag is one of the most important parts of your crisis communications. One of my favorite crisis bloggers, Kim Stephens, recently published an interesting summary of two reports by Project Hazards Emergency Response and Online Informal Communication (HEROIC), on their research around the use of Twitter by officials in the Boston Marathon Bombings. There are many aspects of these reports that are very interesting, but the thing that struck me the most was the inconsistency of hashtag use, across the board, during the week of events that followed the Marathon Bombings....
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Business owners should always be considering what their actions will do for their reputation!
We help companies develop the plan and then procide the system to run it smoothly. Check us out at http://www.reviewwatchman.com