1. THE RISE OF
THE SOCIAL
MEDIA DRIVEN
ISSUE
A brief casebook and
how to avoid disaster
2. Sunday 14th April 1912 at 11.40pm RMS Titanic hits an iceberg.
Sunday 21st April 1912 White Star Line‟s managing director, J. Bruce Ismay, finally issues a
statement, by which time he has become the „villain‟ of the Titanic disaster, despite being cleared of
any wrongdoing by the official enquiry.
100 years later, in today‟s hyper-connected global community, waiting an hour, let alone a week, to
respond can be too long and social media can vastly multiply the volume of criticism as well as
feeding traditional media coverage.
To add to the challenge, social media is creating public issues out of incidents that would previously
have been kept between organisation and individual. One negative blog post or customer tweet can
quickly snowball and dispersed customers with common complaints (or indeed any complaints) can
join forces online in real time.
Plus, social media loves nothing more than reporting on a social media driven issue – particularly if
a company gets the initial response wrong - which can seriously amplify and extend the
reputational damage.
So what are today’s social media icebergs and how should organisations
respond to them to avoid disaster? We’ve taken a look at some recent examples
and what we can learn from them.
4. VIRGIN AMERICA’S COMMUNICATIONS BREAKDOWN
Date of incident: October 2011
In the same month as BlackBerry‟s painful outage, Virgin
America experienced its own service breakdown after
switching to a new customer reservations system.
Frustrated Virgin customers couldn‟t get on to the VA
website, whilst emails and phone calls went unanswered –
not surprisingly Twitter complaints were rife as were
complaints on the company‟s Facebook page.
Unfortunately as social media channels began to buzz with
unhappy customers, the VP of corporate communications
at Virgin America claimed that customers and staff were
happy with the change and they were experiencing minimal
problems with the "smooth transition," and a company
spokesman denied any problems with the booking system.
Meanwhile, customer-facing staff seemed to be clueless
about the complaints they were getting about missing
confirmations, double-charged flights and cancellations that
couldn‟t be made.
Luckily the social media team swung into action and
customers were soon receiving regular updates via
Facebook, Twitter and the website – they sent 12,000+
Direct Messages via Twitter in the following weeks to try
and help unhappy customers.
5. VIRGIN AMERICA’S COMMUNICATIONS BREAKDOWN
Could the iceberg have been avoided? Probably not –
Virgin was expecting some issues with the switchover to
the new reservations system and had tried to prepare by
notifying flyers that their website would be experiencing an
outage. It could have better connected it‟s public response
with the customer experience being communicated via
social media and made sure staff were properly briefed.
Disaster rating: 5/10
The problems the new reservations system created lasted
for weeks in the public eye thanks to continual venting on
social media, and the initial disconnect between what the
company was saying and what customers were saying
made the airline look atypically out of touch, but they
quickly took to the web to respond with empathy to
customers who had been affected and didn‟t stop doing so
until problems were resolved and apologised in the human
way people expected of the brand.
6. 1-800-FLOWERS FAILS TO ROMANCE CUSTOMERS
Date of incident: February 2012
For much of last Valentine‟s Day, 1-800-Flowers‟ Twitter
feed @1800Flowers was a stream of angry posts from men
and women whose flowers had arrived dead, damaged or
most often not at all and it was a similar story on their
Facebook.
Many of those complaining on Twitter complained that they
received no response from the company through traditional
customer service avenues, forcing them to complain
through social media channels. Unbelievably the company
had found itself in the same position last 2011.
They‟d obviously done little to address the service issues in
the intervening 12 months but at least this time they used
social media outreach to respond directly to unhappy
customers and try to resolve their issues (although its hard
to make good a missed Valentine‟s Day gift).
They didn‟t use their blog or website to do the same - the
company was still trying to flog flowers on its website with
the promise, “Stuck in the Valentines doghouse? Get out
with a WOW.” and the “smile guarantee”.
7. 1-800-FLOWERS FAILS TO ROMANCE CUSTOMERS
Could the iceberg have been avoided?
Only by improving its delivery service and quality control.
Although if it had made sure it‟s traditional customer
service channels were running smoothly on the day there
would probably have been many less angry people voicing
their anger publicly. At least the company staffers were
apologetic and responsive on Twitter and Facebook.
Disaster rating: 4/10
It‟s pretty poor show for a florist to fail to deliver to so many
customers on the biggest day of the floral calendar but the
social media storm was relatively brief, and only one story
about it shows up on the first page of Google search
results for the company three months later. The company
can‟t afford to keep fluffing the big occasions though or the
social complaints might start to stick and it‟s “smile
guarantee” will become worthless.
9. FEDEX’S FLYING DELIVERY
Date of incident: December 2011
If a picture is worth 1,000 words then a video could be
worth 10,000 when it comes to social media issues. When
YouTube user 'goobie55' caught a FedEx employee on
CCTV breaking his new computer monitor by throwing the
delivery over his gate – even though he was at home at the
time – he posted the footage to YouTube. In just six
months the clip has racked up over 8m views and attracted
25,000 comments – many telling their own negative FedEx
experiences. It quickly went viral in social media channels
and the story featured in traditional media across the world.
FedEx made a YouTube apology of its own, entitled
"Absolutely, Positively Unacceptable" –"Along with many of As the leader of our pickup and
you, I've seen the video of our courier," says Matthew delivery operations across
Thornton, senior vice president of the company's US America, I want you to know that I
operations, "I am upset and embarrassed for our was upset, embarrassed, and very
customer's poor experience. This goes directly against all sorry for our customer’s poor
experience. This goes directly
FedEx values." against everything we have
always taught our people and
expect of them. It was just very
disappointing.
10. FEDEX’S FLYING DELIVERY
Could the iceberg have been avoided? Possibly – if
employees were more carefully vetted or had there been
no CCTV at the house. FedEx has pledged to use the
video in future staff training programmes and I should think
all delivery men now check for a security camera on arrival.
In terms of how they handled the incident once it was in the
public domain its hard to fault Fedex.
Disaster rating: 3/10
The video was genuinely shocking to watch and eight
million people already have but the company was swift and
appropriate with its response – sharing our shock and
apologising unreservedly via the channel where the story
started and all other available channels. FedEx didn‟t try to
hide from the issue and explained that the courier was
being dealt with using appropriate discipline
procedures, gaining positive comments from many on their
handling of the incident. "FedEx has clearly stepped up to
the plate and handled this issue promptly and
professionally," said one comment on their website. Many
others took the opportunity to talk about how pleased they
were with the FedEx service they had received over the
years.
11. LA FITNESS LOCKS IN CUSTOMERS
Date of incident: January 2012
The troubles of gym brand LA Fitness started when a
pregnant women (a customer for six years) whose
husband had been made redundant was told by the
company that she would not be allowed to break her two
year contract and had to pay £780, money they simply
could not afford. The story actually broke first in the
Guardian whose consumer champions managed to secure
£420 off the bill for them – but it was Twitter that in the end
made LA Fitness back down. The Guardian article was
published online on 20 January and the journalist who
wrote about it tweeted it as well – things stayed pretty quiet
for a few days until the Guardian‟s deputy editor Kath Viner
tweeted about the story and a regular Twitter storm began.
LA Fitness chose to release a Twitter statement saying „we
do not comment on individual cases‟ which added fuel to
the fire and then deleted the tweet, which made them look
even worse. Meanwhile the Twitter outrage had become a
campaign calling on all LA Fitness members to cancel their
contracts in protest. LA Fitness finally gave in, issuing a
weak apology and withdrawing all charges and contractual
obligations.
12. LA FITNESS LOCKS IN CUSTOMERS
Could the iceberg have been avoided? Yes – at
numerous points of contact with the customer and
subsequently the Guardian. Then when the Twitter storm
erupted LA Fitness could have backed down rather than
tweeting and then untweeting a „no statement‟. At least it
had the sense to avoid a full-scale crisis by changing
course a couple of hours later when they apologised for the
regrettable “communication breakdown”.
Disaster rating: 6/10
LA Fitness was legally in the right in this case but
unfortunately by failing to take account of the extenuating
circumstances of one particularly sympathetic
customer, they managed to draw attention to just how
restrictive and risky their customer contracts are and come
out looking uncaring, inflexible, arrogant and poor at social
media to boot. „No comment‟ simply doesn‟t work on
Twitter and deleting your own tweets looks incompetent
and like you‟ve got something to hide.
14. CHAPSTICK OFFENDS AND IS OFFENDED
Date of incident: October 2011
Chapstick‟s social media shaming began with the release
of a suggestive new print ad for the product with the words
“Where Do Lost Chapsticks Go?” accompanied by a
picture of a young woman‟s bending over the sofa allegedly
searching for her Chapstick and in smaller text “Be heard
at Facebook.com/Chapstick”. A blogger who saw the ad
was offended by it and commented as invited on the
Facebook page but Chapstick deleted her comment so she
wrote a post about it, which spawned an alternate
Facebook page „Butt seriously, chapstick‟ and a petition to
withdraw the ad. Meanwhile, deleting the Facebook
comment had started a firestorm of negative comments on
the original Facebook page with Chapstick deleting these
as fast as it could. The more comments it deleted, the
more Fans wrote back, asking why comments were
obviously being deleted by the brand. By this time the story
was trending on Twitter and attracting traditional media
attention from the likes of Forbes and the Wall Street
Journal. It took almost a week for Chapstick to
acknowledge the situation and issue a classic non-apology
(“we apologize that fans have felt like their posts are being
deleted” that put the blame on the customers and further
fuelled the media backlash.
15. CHAPSTICK OFFENDS AND IS OFFENDED
Could the iceberg have been avoided? Well, it could
have not put out the controversial ad, not directly asked for
Facebook comments on it, or at the very least not have
deleted them when it didn‟t like the content.
Disaster rating: 7/10
It could have been over fairly fast but more people were
offended by Chapstick deleting comments and trying to
control the conversation they had invited, than by the ad
itself (many supported the ad) and that‟s certainly what got
Chapstick bad attention in social and traditional
media, resulting in long term collateral damage to the
brand. Maybe the brand publicity made it worthwhile but
whilst courting controversy with a cheeky ad might make
good business sense – antagonising consumers and
deliberately shutting down their voices is always poor
business.
16. MCDONALDS INVITES CRITICS TO SHARE STORIES
Date of incident: January 2012
As part of its Promoted tweet ad campaign, McDonalds
used a #McDStories hashtag and it didn‟t take long for
brand critics to hijack the hashtag and start tweeting stories
about animal cruelty, poor quality food, upset stomachs
and unemployment. This was obviously not the kind of
virality McDonalds was looking for and within two hours it
pulled #McDStories campaign, saying that the effort “did
not go as planned.” However it couldn‟t stop stories being
told using the hashtag (as they still are today) and by this
time the Twitterverse was buzzing with the story of the epic
hashtag fail, and it didn‟t take long for traditional media
across the world to run the story – each time repeating a
selection of the criticisms levied at the fast food giant using
the hashtag they had provided. To make things
worse, McDonalds immediately followed up its Twitter fail
with a new promoted hashtag asking “What #littlethings
bring you joy?” which brought a new wave of criticism:
“Finally realizing that McDonald‟s food is quite disgusting”;
“getting my children started early on morbid obesity –
bringing
them to McDonald‟s”. and soon trended with
#samemistaketwice.
#McFail! McDonalds' Twitter promotion
backfires as users hijack #McDstories
hashtag to share fast food horror stories
17. MCDONALDS INVITES CRITICS TO SHARE STORIES
Could the iceberg have been avoided? Yes! By not
starting such a vague Twitter hashtag with clear potential
for negative story-telling. Controversial corporate brands
like McDonalds need to focus on specific non-contentious
social media activity to engage consumers around popular
subjects whilst monitoring the social media space for
unusual criticism that requires a response.
Disaster rating: 7/10
A disaster on two fronts. Firstly the campaign undid lots of
McDonalds good work over the past few years in helping to
lay to rest stories of animal cruelty and bad quality
products, and it became a magnet for activists who were
able to reach a whole new audience. Secondly, no
company wants to be famous for a social media #epicfail
which McDonalds certainly is following its hashtag hash-up.
18. What can we learn?
That customer issues can go viral fast and become global news
That your employees are your brand – customer-focused behaviour is critical
That silence can be deadly and trying to silence your critics even worse
That stating one thing when social media clearly tells a different story can backfire
That it is risky to start vague conversations that are open to hijacking
That being honest and saying sorry in a human way can make a lot of difference
That all your staff need to be in the loop and to give out consistent information
That your stakeholders can help make things better if you empower them
That social media provides many opportunities for you to show that you care
19. 1. Prepare now! 6. Exercise
Don’t wait for a absolute
crisis to hit transparency
2. Have water tight 7. Don’t feed
governance & policies the trolls
3. Be poised to move at 8. Never delete
lighting speed negative comments
4. Implement 9. Be prepared
round-the-clock to apologise
monitoring in public
5. Listen, engage 10. Activate influencers
& take action and advocates
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
20. HOW TO AVOID SOCIAL MEDIA ISSUES
Grayling offers complete 360 social media strategy and
reputation management and is available 24/7 to help you
safely navigate new seas or provide immediate
assistance should you hit an iceberg.
We believe in an ‘inside-out’ approach, from the very
heart of your organisation all the way out to your
consumers, and will help you capitalise on the huge
opportunities that social media presents as well as
navigating those choppy waters.
Give us a ring on 020 7025 7500
or email on victor.benady@grayling.com
