As you might have heard, Barbie came under a very public attack recently when Greenpeace accused her of causing the deforestation of the Indonesian rainforest. Guess they’re right; blondes really DO have more fun. Let’s go back to June 7th, when Mattel woke up to a full blown attack lead by Greenpeace, with their primary weapon of choice being social media. Activists repelled down the sides of Mattel’s 15-story headquarters revealing a massive banner displaying an image of Ken and the words “Barbie, It’s over – I Don’t Date Girls That Are Into Deforestation”. Funny, right? Well, a lot of people thought so too when Greenpeace posted these images all over Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites.
After being faced with the massive amount of attention the activist group was able to generate, Mattel did what many would do; retreat. ZERO Facebook posts from June 7th - June 15th. They turned off their comment feeds and went into seclusion. But this is actually just the opposite of what they should’ve done.
The result? Greenpeace’s campaign went viral, FAST. Facing pressure from customers, retailers, and other key stakeholders, Mattel folded just three days after the public lashing. They agreed to launch a formal Sustainable Procurement program and immediately discontinued business with their packaging suppliers in Indonesia.
So what can Barbie teach us? Activist groups can be a PR nightmare! No…well yes, but we can’t blame the activists for trying to save the world. What we CAN do is develop a proactive social media crisis management strategy. Barbie has nearly 2.3 million followers on Facebook. She has a brand presence that any Marketeer would be proud of. Clearly, social media has advantages for companies who can truly grasp its importance, yet it also carries serious risks for organizations that are not proactively monitoring and participating in the conversation. Axel Schultze, Founder of the Social Media Academy, says “If you’re not a part of the discussion, then you’re losing influence”, and Mattel demonstrated just that. They left the conversation when it mattered most, and Greenpeace won.
A few lessons we can all learn from Barbie:
- Social Media is a Weapon: Social Media is a weapon that one can use or have used against them. It’s increasingly becoming the weapon of choice for activists; and therefore, companies need to proactively participate in the dialogue and proactively mitigate risk.
- The Speed of Response is Critical: Companies can no longer afford to hide when crisis strikes. They must be proactively involved in the conversation, responding to allegations and negative media attention on the social web.
- Proactive Risk Mitigation: Having a social media crisis strategy in place is critical. Don’t let a media backlash catch you off guard, be prepared to proactively respond.
Have you or someone you know been affected by a Social Media crisis? If so, how did you/they survive it?
Disclaimer: the opinions expressed in this blog do not represent the opinions of my employer or their affiliates.
Great post Tevia - Indeed speed is important. And as I used to say speed is more important than perfection.
ReplyDeleteYes, I had a similar story. We were ready to go public in 2000 and we had one of the first investor forums where investor discussed our performance publicly. Our IPO bank (Robertson Stevenson) was worried about it and just a few days after they raised their concern disaster stroke. One anonymous shareholder raise their concerns about our business practice and questioned our growth rate data.
It only took an hour until I was alerted and I was ready to respond when another shareholder called me and asked me to wait one hour. I did and saw how he and a few other share holder responded. They basically tried to take over the defense role. I responded an hour later but the "attack" was basically shut down by those other shareholders. I only demonstrated immediate response - even so I had nothing additional to say.
What did I learn:
1) It is extremely important to have a "fire brigade" of friends with a vocal and clear comment.
2) It is extremely important to respond within a few hours - not days or weeks.
3) It is very helpful to have a plan in place in case disaster strikes. (which I didn't have back than - I was just lucky)
Axel
http://xeesm.com/AxelS
If a crisis escalates, don’t let the community manager be the only one to lead the discussion. Get the CEO or sustainability VP online immediately, taking responsibility and directing the response. Domino CEO Patrick Doyle and also JetBlue CEO David Neeleman posted a videotaped apology on YouTube - which had a great positive impact.
ReplyDeleteMarita
http://xeesm.com/MaritaR
I recently experienced a similar crisis. One of my clients had a competition for a new car launch - they had 6 of the cars wrapped and then challenged the art students of various schools to paint the cars according to different themes. In order to save money we decided to post photos on the progress on each of the teams' cars in various albums on the client's Facebook Page. Fans could then like the photos, and each like counted as a vote. The cars were parked in malls throughout the city and we also had voting forms at each of the stations.
ReplyDeleteAll went well and we grew the community with 1500 people in a week's time. Everyone was having fun until we had to announce the winner. We stipulated in the rules that the public's vote would count for 60% (this would consist of the FB votes as well as the paper votes), and the judges would have a 40% vote.
Unfortunately the school that had the most votes was disqualified the day before the winner was announced. We didn't want to inform the community why we've decided to disqualify the school (it would put them in a bad light) and therefore only announced the winner on the Facebook Wall, thinking we were covered by "the judges decision is final..." Unfortunately for us 1500 school children and fans became very demanding, and for days they bugged us for the final number of votes each team got. We tried to sidestep the matter but things got really sour and one 'fan' in particular started to threaten us with the press.
It's been a month now - we still haven't disclosed the final numbers and the community's enthusiasm has cooled down considerably. Some have left the page, and we got a very poor response on other competitions after that.
The client has taken a huge punch on behalf of the school that was disqualified, but they still don't want to give the real reason to the community as to why the favourites didn't win.
We've learned a lot of valuable lessons through the whole exercise:
- You've got to act fast
- A silent tongue isn't necessarily a wise tongue
- You can't hide anything online without becoming the bad guy in the end
- Once you've lost their trust (in the online world) it is much harder to regain that trust than in the 'real' world.
- You actions have a much wider impact circle when you're dealing with people online, than offline.
great post Tevia. Also worth mentioning here was that a brand like Barbie and Mattel should have some advocates out there as well (one would think) and the fact that activists got some free shots at Mattel for this and not much "Advocate opposition" rose also put Mattel in a bad spot. I know, who would stand up for a group that is just trying to save the earth? But nonetheless, perhaps a better community buildout may have allowed for some Mattel supporters to step up and counter the bashing from the activists.
ReplyDeleteInteresting point you make. I have been working with clients for decades on their communication solutions. Every one brings up the DR subject; disaster recovery. And loads of brain power is injected into this as well as money. Off site, hidden bunkers of technology etc. The point is here the same, but without the tech part. Or maybe a bit. Plan well and BE READY for this. It may never happen. And if so, be happy.
ReplyDeleteI think the Nestle's fiasco on FB last year clearly identifies what not to do as a community manager and how quickly a motivated fan group can take over a page.
ReplyDeleteGreat use of a case study for proving a point about having a social media policy, having an escalation plan for "when" something goes wrong because it will, and a cause using social media to make a point. Had Mattel had a social media stakeholders group or cross functional group in place, they could have done a better job of speaking up not going silent.
Thanks Tevia as you gave me another great story to add to my next presentation.
Wendy
xeesm.com/wendysoucie
@ShellyK Thank you for sharing this story which is very instructive. I'm wondering why you don't tell people you are not going to discuss why the school was disqualified because you don't feel it would be fair to the school. You're right, silence does not necessarily equate to wisdom. Somehting surely needs to be said so that you don't seem to have something bad to cover up.
ReplyDeleteTevia
ReplyDeleteThis is a great story. I keep telling people they need to be part of the online social community, participating, contributing, *before* trouble strikes. As Axel's comment illustrates, it is so much better to have the community testify to your righteousness than for you to have to do it all yourself. But the community is not going to do that if you have just arrived to deal with the crisis (no matter how smart your "crisis management" strategy is)!
Excellent post Tevia. I went through a similar situation, albeit not in the same league as Mattel’s.
ReplyDeleteIn 2009 I was working for an international services company publicly listed in the UK. Our Auckland, New Zealand company call centre went on strike. The union head was very Internet-savvy and protests were being organized via Twitter, Facebook and blogs. Unfortunately these protests were not just in New Zealand, but also targeted our clients’ offices in Melbourne, Australia and London.
As a company that was traditionally social-media conservative, our first reaction was to ignore the hubbub online and only answer official media outlets. It cost us dearly for the first few days. What started as a perception of a company that was not fair to its call centre employees because a company that was imperialist (remember that New Zealand was colonized by England), anti-LGBT and anti-environmental.
The press, not just in New Zealand but also in other countries, was picking up the story mainly through Google searches. It was obvious that to deal with this crisis, we could not avoid the social media conversation but get into it with a clear message and strategy.
I headed up global marketing at that time and these were the measures we put in place.
1. Write a statement that clarified the issue, what the company’s official response was and how we were dealing with developments. This statement was posted on a dedicated page on our corporate site, with a prominent link above the fold on the homepage. The page was updated as key developments took place. We also bought keywords that mentioned that helped drive traffic to the page so our position could also be heard.
2. Ensure that all time zones were covered. With the advent of the Internet, local news is now global news. A marketing leader for each time zone was appointed – one in Asia, the UK and the US – who was trusted by executive leadership to provide appropriate strategy and handle sudden enquiries. Among the time zone leader’s responsibilities was updating the marketing staff in her area on developments so they were equipped to respond within minutes. She also had to hand over at the end of the day to the next time zone leader to ensure continuity. The time zone leaders and I had a conference call everyday.
3. Install a mandate: Answer within minutes, not within hours. Every minute you delay in responding makes the damage snowball. Because of our time zone infrastructure we were able to monitor mentions 24/7, post our statement within minutes and direct people to our dedicated page.
4. Make sure internal communications keep pace with external efforts. We had other call centres, from Iowa to South Africa to Bulgaria, that were watching the incident closely. Two things could result from this: A fire could be fueled, or we had the opportunity to show our employees that we were a company that does the right thing by its staff. We chose the latter by involving our employees, advising them of developments internally so they didn’t have to hear about them externally.
I’m happy to say that the company weathered this crisis, with lessons that could be applied to similar crises in future. Even better, it underscored the importance of marketing in the company. Ironically the union taught us about the value of using online tools to spread the word, thereby improving our own communications efforts.
Apologies for the typo in the third paragraph. 'Because' in the last sentence should be 'became'.
ReplyDeleteGreat post. Sometimes companies forget that social media is just marketing communication and needs to have a plan. Both a strategic plan and a crisis plan. Then again, a lot of companies are hiring 22 year-olds to run their social media because "they have a Facebook page and know the Tweeter." The basic lessons are still the most important.
ReplyDeleteGreat post Tevia!
ReplyDeleteThis topic, your suggestions and other people´s experiences are really interesting right now since we in Sweden, just hours before Midsummer, got the news that one of the largest insurance companies denied to insure a 5 year old because she was "obese" (25kg, she looked like a healthy kid on the pictures). The news got people so angry and the word spread like fire. The company went out pretty fast in media and told everyone that they went by the company rules and guidelines and that the 5 year old did not match the profile. Now 2 days after the news and even more “hate” posts on the social web, the head director of the company left his Midsummer celebrations and went back to the headquarters to make a statement in the media that the company did a BIG mistake. They also wrote a post on their Facebook page and linked a post from Twitter to their homepage.
It will be interesting to see how much this case will hurt the brand; many people stated that they wanted to change insurance company. At the same time, the company should be really happy that this news came out during Midsummer, when the internet traffic in Sweden is at its lowest. It was bad but it could have been worse.
How interesting you've accumulated a # of stories from multiple markets around the world that carry the same lesson to learn. Head in the sand will not work and while you may sustain your company through one or two hiccups & social attacks -- executives best learn from market sentiment and see the rules have changed while they weren't looking. Yep -- who moved the cheese? :-) & the customer is always right has never before been so prevalent.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great post and unfortunately something my company is quite used to as well. We learnt very recently that the speed of response is critical. In my case, my company decided to react way to late and I am still stopped at conferences asking me why, we acted the way we did. In this particular case, it was a executive decision. What is also good about social media is that crisis are time limited and damages can be undone.
ReplyDeleteThanks everyone for the invaluable feedback. Its a topic that not many companies want to discuss, so I really appreciate your candor. It's now very apparent to me that MANY companies (of all shapes and sizes) have experienced or will experience a social media crisis at some point in time, and its important to be prepared and agree on an approach before the crisis occurs. We are in the early stages of developing/implementing our SM strategy, and this will be an important piece of the strategy for us. The question isn't IF, you will have a social media crisis, it's WHEN? Thanks again!
ReplyDeleteI am extremely pleased with Mr Pedro Loan service and your suggestions have helped me get a very good home loan deal. I would be pleased to recommend your services to my friends here looking for a loan.”
ReplyDeleteDon't go anywhere else if you are looking for a loan. Mr Pedro is the best. I highly recommend his services. The best I have ever had the pleasure to work with was his low rate loan. ”
This is Mr Pedro Contact just in case anyone here is looking for a loan.
Whatsapp: +18632310632. & Email: pedroloanss@gmail.com