CrisisWhat this means for social and why

it’s all going to be ok

Debunking a few myths/Golden rules/The Lynx Challenge/What do you need to prepare?/

Naughty journalists…

Trade publications love a crisis; and often create a storm in a teacup. While corporate reputation is important, taking a measured view is key

Social media crisis are no different to any other marketing crisis; they’re just much, much quicker and a lot more visible

Most ‘social media’ crises are nothing more than bad customer service

Debunking a few myths/

Number one

Accept and acknowledge

Golden rules/

Your first response should always be “yes, we realise something has happened” even if you have ZERO answers.

This will stem the tide of “hey company, did you know?” messages.

Number two

Accept and acknowledgeDon’t stick your head in the sand

Golden rules/

89% consumers began doing business with a competitor following apoor customer experience.

50% of consumers give a brand only one week to respond to a questionbefore they stop doing business with them.

Source: RightNow Customer Experience Impact study Oct 2012

Number three

Accept and acknowledgeDon’t stick your head in the sandRemember what you already know

Golden rules/

During the two-day network outage, new Twitter followers increased from an average of 155 to 13,500 per day.

O2 quickly became a hot topic, with a 4,836 percent uplift in people talking, @replying and re-tweeting.

status.o2.co.uk

news.o2.co.uk

o2.co.uk

community.o2.co.uk

twitter.com/o2

facebook.com/o2uk

DirectPersonalisati

onRising above

it

HumourBeing

humble

Number four

Accept and acknowledgeDon’t stick your head in the sandRemember what you already knowBe authentic

Golden rules/

FedEx recorded an apology video with Matthew Thornton, senior VP of FedEx's US operations.

In it he said that: “As the leader of our pickup and delivery operations across America, I want you to know that I was upset, embarrassed, and very sorry for our customer’s poor experience. This goes directly against everything we have always taught our people and expect of them. It was just very disappointing.”

Number five

Accept and acknowledgeDon’t stick your head in the sandRemember what you already knowBe authenticMirror the correct channel of communication

Golden rules/

Number six

Accept and acknowledgeDon’t stick your head in the sandRemember what you already knowBe authenticMirror the correct channel of communicationGet the message out there

Golden rules/

“Unfortunately, no official statement appeared on the JetBlue web site within 24 hours of the crisis. Most of the news stories noted a representative for the Bradley International Airport was not available for comment. Hence, the airport was silent immediately after the crisis.”- PR Strategy & Application

1. JetBlue keeps passengers onboard at JFK airport in new York City for up to 14 hours on Valentine’s Day, 2007

3. Saturday, October 29, 2011. JetBlue Flight 504 departed Fort Lauderdale, FL for Newark, NJ. An unusual October snow storm moved into the northeast causing flight problems for Newark and other nearby airports.

2.

4. March 2012: JetBlue Flight 191 lands in Amarillo, Texas, where it was diverted after the captain began yelling about ‘bombs on board’.

Number six

Accept and acknowledgeDon’t stick your head in the sandRemember what you already knowBe authenticMirror the correct channel of communicationDON’T PANIC!

Golden rules/

The problemThe Lynx Challenge/

Context

In February 2012 the ‘Lynx Challenge’ became a trending topic on Twitter.

Young guys were actively participating and putting the videos on social spaces.

Participants were posting on our FB page.

Solvent abuse is incredibly dangerous so we needed to shut the conversations down and fast!

The Lynx Challenge/

The solutionInitial response was to delete the videos from Facebook. We actively monitored Twitter to see what the general consensus was. Luckily most were negative and anti the activity.

Contacted YouTube and asked for the videos to be removed for Health and Safety reasons.

If the chatter didn’t die down we thought that a good response would be to purchase a promoted tweet, containing either a shortened form of the Unilever response, or a link to the full response.

This would get the message in front of people who are searching and finding this on Twitter, they would see our tweet first before they see the videos and other tweets.

It will also show that Lynx is responsive and understands the platform. Ideally the shortened version of the tweet would be in Lynx’s TOV.

The Lynx Challenge/

The activity peaked at around 5am GMT which implies most of the conversation during the peak happened outside of the UK. This is reinforced by the number of mentions from Australia and USA. Most of the 2,183 mentions occurred on Twitter, likely driven by the trending topic. This is supported by the fact that the activity dropped off in the morning after the trend ended.

What do I need to do?

Invest in social listening; and outline rules for who’s going to watch thisDecide what constitutes a crisis:– If you don’t know any more than the public– When a distinctly different line of negative conversation happens– If something has a material affect on a company

Create an escalation chartPrepare an FAQ Prepare to give people an outlet on an owned space (requires senior education)Know when to take it offline, sometimes you’ll never win (remember rule of three)

How to prepare/

If you can’t get a video of your CEO online from anywhere in the world in four hours, you need to

plan more