Nicholas Ledner

January 20, 2012

Crisis Situation in Social Media: Disgruntled Employee Take Over

What You’re Dealing With

Here is the scenario: The social media director for a global film brand has a following of more

than 10 million fans throughout different social platforms. He’s been doing the job well for 2 years and

has received high praise from senior management and thus far, has not had to deal with any internally

compromising positions. However, for the first time, he has one employee who unfortunately, he has to

let go. He’s (the employee to be let go of) been citing personal problems (with his girlfriend) but has

been coming late to work, being disorderly in the office, and has also been caught more than once

drinking on the job. It’s time to let him go. The director hired him because he was a talented graphic

designer, but can now clearly see his heart was not into the mission that the brand represents. He was

doing it because he wanted a job and now is becoming a liability. He also is a mixture between

egotistical and paranoid, so when the director let him go, the employee believes it to be a personal

affront to his character and an egregious error on the part of the entire office. He leaves in a rush while

mumbling under his tongue, “You haven’t seen the last of me.” The director thinks a about this scene

and empathize with the employee whom everyone has got to know fairly well over the past 6 months

since he had him aboard. Regardless he doesn’t lose too much sleep over it, as he’s already got another

graphic designer who can help in the interim until you find another. Plus he can’t imagine any person

jeopardizing their career prospects by sabotaging the work of a company previously worked for.

The next day, it happens, on every social media channel that the brand operates, a photo has

been reported (via screen shots) which has a large gold trophy and text that says, “To the worst social

media fans a brand could have. Thanks for nothing.” Under the text it has in parenthesis, “You never

understood our goals nor backed us when we needed it. For that, F*CK OFF.” This photo has apparently

already been spotted on every one of their social media channels thus far- Instagram, Facebook, Twitter,

LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. The director has also received almost 100 emails from colleagues throughout

the day asking what in the world is going on. Within an hour of being notified in the early morning, the

photos have all been deleted by his team of 10-all based in New York- but the damage has been done.

There have already been multiple screen shots being passed around popular social media blogs and the

social media world is abuzz with conversations on why your brand would ever say something in this vein.

Were they leaving social media to make a statement? Was this a PR stunt gone wrong? Hacked

accounts- and if so, how could the team be so irresponsible with such sensitive information? No one was

100 % sure.

And by the time the director could wrap his head around the situation, already reports were

coming in from the team that they were steadily losing fans with a percentage drop rate of 10 % in the

past few hours alone- that’s millions of fans, worked hard to bring in, now gone at the drop of a hat.

What’s more the CEO of the company has been calling all morning. He’s got to work quickly on what to

do next.

Time For Action and Mapping Out Plan

The recommendations and plans of action are as followed: the director has got to think on two

different wavelengths- internally and externally. Internally, he’s got to think about: how the CEO is

feeling right now and what they want to hear or see out of the social media front of the company. He’s

also got to be considering the existing employees and leveraging their own support throughout this

crisis. Externally, he’s got to ensure to the fans that these messages were complete slander and not

representative of your brand by any means-they were created be someone outside of the team. Quick

moves must be made and it’s almost time to make them.

First and foremost, he’s got to change all passwords on the accounts; they have been

compromised beyond belief. If this isn’t possible, then he’ll need to put in a request with the social

media channels to freeze the accounts until everything is corrected. However, and luckily for the brand,

the disgruntled employee -whom the director now knows committed this grievous offense because he

told one of the employees in a jesting manner- did not know what the passwords were and only had

administrative privileges. Immediately his name is taken off from all accounts. The director quickly

explains to the CEO that he’ll hear nothing more about additional ridiculous posts and the employee,

err, ex-employee as of yesterday has been taken off the account. The CEO is somewhat reassured but

demands that the director speak to them again when there is a more solid and laid out plan for what will

be communicated externally and how the director plans to ensure something like this does not happen

again.

Final Thoughts Before Going External

The message that the director shares externally must represent not only an apologetic tone, but

it must also showcase who the page is run by with a good explanation for how something like this could

happen in the first place. The team decides that the appropriate action is two pronged for the external

approach: first and foremost they’ll create an apology piece of content which the team will circulate

throughout the channels for their fans to see. Second, they’ll create a site which showcases the

different people who work for the brand and allow for the fans to learn more about who they are

interacting with daily. The director quickly liaises with the marketing team to find out if they’ve got any

promotional deals coming out, after all whatever the approach to appease the fan base is, the director

must ensure two things: provide value to the fans and give them a reason to share whatever message

the brand is going to create. It turns out that the marketing team doesn’t, so it’s up to the social media

section alone. The director has got to create something within the team that the fans are going to want.

By now the situation is past monitoring and analytics- he’s seen this story talked about everywhere, but

luckily the fan base isn’t dropping to the degree it once was. It has slowed to almost a trickle now. The

analytics report are backing this up.

External Process Follow Up

It’s time for the director to come up with what the specifics of the external plan are. The

content has to embody the embarrassment the brand feels for the situation in general, the sadness they

have for the fans having to deal with this heinous situation, and again it’s got to be sharable to get the

message out of what the team’s comeback was. There are two pieces of content the team will work on

as per their response. Working alongside the programmer, graphic designer, & research colleague, the

team create an apology video spliced with all of the best “I’m sorry moments” from some of the greatest

films of the past 20th century. Within the copy of the post, the brand explains to the fan base that

“We’re sorry for what happened. An ex-employee made a big mistake. That wasn’t right and it’s our

fault it got out. To apologize, we wanted to say we’re sorry with this video which we created, containing

some of the best apologies in the history of film.” The director knows that the video will work well since

an evaluation of the community has shown the content they discuss most is film. He begins the project

which contains film scenes such as Say Anything (John Cusack apologizing), Notting Hill (Hugh Grant),

Godfather 3(Pacino), etc. - recognizable & popular actors and films that the community can relate to.

The turnaround time for this project has to be less than 24 hours and the entire team is working hard to

ensure this deadline is hit. Once the video is completed, it will be launched on all channels (and those

that are only photos will be still shots with blurbs written in) complemented with an ad buy that will

ensure the entire community highlighted will see it. During this time, the director has also been

overseeing the other half of the team who have been putting together the employee spotlight of those

that are handling the social media accounts & other notable colleagues working in interesting aspects of

the brand’s business. The social media photographer has taken all of the necessary photos and the

social media editor has completed the questionnaire for all employees participating, trying to showcase

their personal sides, thus giving the fans a chance to get to know who these people are, representing

the brand that they care so much about. The social media community manager than handles the

uploading and within a day’s time, the site is ready to launch live. Accompanied with the film, this site

will also be promoted via ads, thus giving the entire community a face to perceive who this apology

video is coming from in the first place. What’s more, the site will now be integrated into the weekly

activities of the team, with the director incorporating this task into the job descriptions of the three

already working on this nascent project with the promise of a part time employee to be brought on if

needed and an intern to start immediately (there was already someone the director had in mind who

was planning to start soon regardless).

Internal Process Follow Up

2 days after launching his retaliatory products, social media analytics reports should be created

to share with management showcasing both quantitative (numbers) and qualitative (sentiment) that is

coming back related to the products you created the gauged public response to what you’ve work on.

Ideally by this time, the director will be able to identify a steady halt in the dropping of fans from the

page, a good indication that things are going back on track, so to speak. The director also has double

the amount of people monitoring all channels to respond to any feedback from this incident with a

frequently asked question check list compiled in advance so the social media team has a bevy of

answers of normally hard to tackle questions related to this incident that have been carefully crafted in

the meeting room in advance. It has been a week now and the existing team has all learned a lot,

become closer due to the exploration of ideas that has been permitted during this time, and generally

the feeling of preparedness for any future event that might be deemed critical via social media is at an

all-time high.

Executive Summary

The social media director knows exactly where he messed up. There was no protocol in place

for handing any scenario of removing employees as administrators of high level external channels.

There was also no mention of this topic in the social media guidelines which he created a year ago. He

also had no one monitoring the channel after everyone left the office. Therefore, the director takes

three main steps. First, he sets into motion a protocol via a Google Doc that states clearly, once an

employee is no longer employed, they are immediately to be taken off the social media accounts being

run by a community manager. If that employee is the community manager, than the 2nd in command of

the account needs to facilitate this process. Once finished, the manager must let the director know

ASAP of what and when this handover of sorts took place. Second, the director will revise the social

media guidelines with the help of the social media editor on the team, to ensure there is a sentence, at

least, discussing that once an employee is no longer a part of the team, their roles as administrators are

to be immediately frozen. Third, the director recommends two things: that his team takes turn

monitoring the social media channels in the after-hours interim time period (nights and weekends, but

with 10 employees this should not be a problem) & that they incorporate a new responsibility of the

online manager of the Europe, to monitor more closely the social media channels based out of the New

York office during the East Coast time frame of 12pm to 6am, as this catastrophe could have been

minimized if the post was not circulating widely for hours upon hours when the social media team was

sleeping. Lastly, the director will create a case study focusing on the steps the team took to prevent the

full social media collapse and then share internally with senior management followed by all other

colleagues within the organization via Yammer and then finally, when it’s deemed appropriate, with

external partners and outside audiences interested or working in the field of social media.