News Blog

US carmaker Chrysler has dropped its social media agency after a staff member used the F word in a tweet on the company’s official Twitter account.

On Chrysler’s blog the company defended its decision to drop the agency, New Media Strategies, denying it was being over-sensitive. The employee concerned, whose defence was that they thought they were logged into a private twitter account, had already been fired for the misdemeanour.

The full story can be seen on the Ad Age magazine’s website.

The moral of the tale is you can’t be too careful when you are allowed to act as a company spokesman at any level – being cavalier with a client’s reputation is one of the biggest no-nos in our business. It doesn’t matter whether the guilty person was young and untrained or an old hand. But this is something we are seeing now more and more, when you send something out on Twitter or any other social media channel you are effectively offering it to the world.

Media Counsellors is partnering with Geneva-based CLC Consulting, specialists in reputational and crisis management in Europe and internationally. In addition to both companies’ expertise in the field of media and crisis training, Media Counsellors will now support CLC Consulting in providing clients with a Digital Crisis Training Practice, as well as a “Brand Ambassador Programme“. CLC Consulting will bring its public affairs expertise to the party, in particular with Stakeholder and Regulatory Engagement training.

CLC Consulting was founded by Christophe Lecureuil, who has 20 years of experience in communications and public affairs, holding senior communications and public affairs positions in global consumer brands (McDonald’s, Yum! Brands), worked for a development NGO (The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition), as well as for top-tier consultancies where his clients included BSkyB, Coca-Cola, Hewlett-Packard, McDonald’s, Marks & Spencer and Wal-Mart among others.

Christophe, who started his career as an expert in International Relations at the European Parliament and hold Masters in Political Science and International Relations. received the Holmes Report Gold Sabre Public Relations Award in 2007 for KFC’s Global Brand Re-launch and the Corporate Social Responsibility Award in 2008 for World Hunger Relief Week in support of the UN World Food Programme. He sits on the Advisory Boards of EcoWorks International and of the African Press Organization.

Media Counsellors Head of Media, David Wheal, said he was delighted to announce the new partnership and looked forward to working with CLC. “Our skills in both traditional media and digital media training as well as our Brand Ambassador programme will very much complement the public affairs skills of CLC” he added.

Crisis PR is changing – it’s no longer about management, now prevention is the only safe way to maintain corporate reputation. Why? The world has changed so much and there are so many threats to reputation that it could be argued that it can no longer be rescued, once in the firing line. 

It’s not about waiting for a problem to happen and trying to bolt the stable door afterwards – organisations have to take a cold hard look at their vulnerabilities now. 

The balance of power is shifting from the media to the ‘citizen journalist’ – bloggers , critics, activists, disenchanted employees – and this poses a clear and present danger to any organisation that thinks they can just call their PR agency when trouble hits the fan. 

• Witness BP, who engaged some of the best and brightest minds in the PR world , but who lost the battle for hearts and minds when its Chief Executive was grilled by US senators and put up a poor showing.
• Witness Nestle, whose spectacular own goals on its own Facebook page arguably did more damage than Greenpeace’s palm oil protest that started the whole argument. 
• Witness Dominos Pizza, humiliated and share price battered just because a couple of disaffected employees posted a gruesome video of food play on the web when the company wasn’t looking.

 The Genie is well and truly out of the bottle, and as ordinary people become empowered by the magic of digital communications and social media, organisations no longer need to fear just the powerful media organisations. 

Now insects can threaten mighty empires, and recent headlines are full of organisations who thought their corporate reputation was something to worry about later, when times are a little less hard. 

How to control reputation from now on? 

You will need to work at it constantly, with no more thin excuses about lack of budget and maybe the ”worst will never happen”. Your licence to operate may depend on how seriously you take these issues, starting today.

 You will need management who understand the world has changed. Our media mentoring training will help develop their essential management toolkit – and they must understand they can no longer run away from training and development, a constant process. 

Is there any organisation that is not now monitoring what is being said about them online? It’s now positively dangerous to ignore it – those that do it gain great benefit and are able to engage if necessary, or simply watch if no action is deemed necessary. Ignorance of what is going on is no longer any excuse.

“Crisis PR” is no longer something that can be done effectively after the emergency. So get a grip now, and don’t vacillate. 

The soldier who recently allegedly leaked the Afghan War files, activists who attacked Nestle, and the employees who damaged Dominos, are all part of a section of the public who believe they can do as they like or be as mischievous as they want and say it’s in the public interest – can you honestly say you don’t have employees like that, enemies outside, or hostile competitors? 

Employee development is crucial. At the lowest level, to make sure they don’t give you corporate reputation problems, you will want them to know how far they can go and what they can say about the company to the outside world. 

Taking a grown-up attitude and treating them like adults by allowing the use of social media in the workplace can help turn your employees into ambassadors for your brand. And by using social media training as part of your employee engagement you can help this process . Sending them a memo or pinning a note to the staffroom wall won’t do it.

If these views are relevant to you or your organisation and you would like to hear more then please contact Geoff Paddock at geoff.paddock@newmediacounsellors.com. We offer sessions to help individuals and teams make sense of social media, share best practice and help determine how it can best be used in external and internal communications.

The following article by Newmedia Counsellors was commissioned by the Institute of Directors for their online magazine Director.co.uk.

The sheer power and immediacy of the social Web can seem daunting to the uninitiated. Negative sentiment may be inevitable, but learning to use the right tools at the right times can help organisations minimise the damage.

These days a corporate crisis might not necessarily be confined to product contamination or an environmental disaster. On the social Web, many more subtle forces can conspire to damage reputation and the crisis can spring from almost any source, including pressure groups, your customers and even your staff.

The nature of crisis management has changed fundamentally with the emergence of digital communications. What was known in crisis management as the Golden Hour—those vital moments when you knew you had a problem and had a breathing space to consider a fightback strategy—has long gone. Organisations now have to re-evaluate their crisis planning and training to prepare for the immediacy of social media.

Small bands of crusading journalists have been replaced by many millions of so-called citizen journalists who use blogs, microblogs and sharing platforms such as YouTube and Facebook to spread negative sentiment. But it’s possible to fight back. Social media is a conversation. Here’s how to join in.

1. Be proactive. Don’t wait for your agenda to be hijacked. Build your brand’s presence online, while you have the chance. Make sure your management team and as many of your workforce as possible understand and have guidance on social media. Establish a defined social media policy for your staff, and make sure they are trained in its use.

2. Monitor what is being said about you online. Identify key opinion leaders relevant to your business, and track the ways they communicate online. There are numerous free tools available, which can find instances of key words and report back when they are found. Tweetdeck can do this for Twitter. Specialist agencies use more sophisticated monitoring tools such as Alterian’s SM2, which allows for complex analysis and reporting.

3. Don’t silo your teams. Make sure your HR and legal teams know what you are doing—agree your crisis plan with all of them. Traditional company politics are the enemy of crisis communications. Nestle’s recent digital crisis involved a perversion of the company’s Kit Kat trademark, something no doubt of grave concern to its lawyers.

4. Train your people. Simulate as accurately as you can and behave as you would in real life. Think in advance about possible scenarios that could damage your reputation. This, added to the results of monitoring, should give you a real handle on possible trouble spots. Food companies in particular should keep an eye on Facebook: fan pages, normally only the province of keen recipe lovers, have been used by activists to mount an attack.

5. React quickly and decisively. Let common sense guide you—this may be a new arena but it does not mean old rules go out of the window. Companies like Dell, criticised for poor customer service, have turned negative coverage around by becoming more open to conversations with unhappy customers.

6. Be as open and transparent as possible. Resist any temptation to hide the truth and don’t invent positive coverage. Some big brands have become discredited on the social Web by having staff or friendly third parties plant comments in chatrooms and blogs in a bid to turn opinion, or by trying to hide hostile comments on social media sites.

7. Choose your battlegrounds carefully. YouTube and Facebook can work in your favour but if misjudged can hit you badly. Dominos Pizza, on the back foot after two US employees filmed themselves playing nauseating tricks with food, mounted a hasty, poorly executed YouTube apology from the CEO. Others, such as British Airways and BP, have used the medium to better effect.

8. Don’t allow interns or inexperienced people to control your social communications just because you think they can work the technology better than you. Habitat had to apologise for some over-eager twitter marketing after a low-level employee highjacked unrelated Twitter conversations to try and sell Habitat products.

9. Don’t hesitate to apologise if your organisation has done wrong. Recognition of liability accompanied by appropriate reparations will usually disarm your critics.

10. Learn from your mistakes. Don’t let the circumstances that started the crisis arise again. Ensure the learning is spread throughout your organisation.

This article is published on the Institute of Directors online magazine www.director.co.uk. If these views are relevant to your organisation and you would like to hear more then please contact Geoff Paddock at geoff.paddock@newmediacounsellors.com

Many companies  leave their social media presence in the hands of junior, inexperienced but social media-savvy staff.  And when problems start, this strategy can damage corporate reputations, warns Digital consultancy NewMedia Counsellors.

Director David Wheal says the only way to deal with an online crisis is to plan well ahead and have a skilled team on board with experience of handling crises, coupled with an extensive knowledge of social media.

“Most companies’ social media presence is handled by people who may know a lot about websites, Facebook, Twitter etc, but have little or no experience of past crises, corporate affairs or public relations.  Many digital agencies merely focus on ‘selling’ a brand on the internet and not ’telling’ about a brand.

“Viral campaigns and digital press releases are not enough when serious crisis management is called for.  Wise counsel is required, and that can only come from experienced crisis managers.” Mr. Wheal explained.

“One problem is that many senior executive and communications managers simply don’t understand social media.  It is the ‘elephant in the room’ in many corporate affairs departments.  In today’s harsh economic climate, many companies view a relationship with social media as a ‘nice to have’ not essential“, he added.

Veteran crisis expert Martin Langford, who has worked on a roll-call of major corporate crises, including Tylenol and the Perrier recall, echoes this view.   

 “The nature of crisis management has changed fundamentally with the emergence of digital communications.  This is where crises in the future will often start and then incubate. Companies and organisations   have to re-evaluate their crisis planning and training to prepare for the immediate response now demanded by social media.”  He says.

Major names in the international food industry have seen dramas turn into crises thanks to slow or inept responses on social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter, while others faced with real-world crisis who have tried to use social media to put their message across have often come unstuck.

“We know organisations can be much better prepared and should be building their reputations online before problems start. The problems are well-known but for some reason – perhaps the recession – companies seem reluctant to do what they know they need to do.” said Mr. Wheal.                                                             

“They should be monitoring intelligently online to see what people are saying about them, training their staff as to how to respond and as a first step they need buy-in from senior management. Often it is the reluctance of senior management to fully understand the impact of social media, leaving it to often inexperienced members of staff that leads to online issues rapidly developing into crises.”

“Companies starting in social media because they think it is coolor will lead to an increase in sales need to think through what can happen and make sure their contingency plans are tested and tested again.” he added.

Many of those with an established presence on a social media channel use it purely for marketing and do not realise it can be hi-jacked by activists or consumers with a grudge.

Traditional corporate ‘disasters’ at least gave those affected a short breathing space to plan their response to the media. But the immediacy of social networking means the “golden hour” – time to contemplate strategy – has gone.