The weighty issue of social media crisis management: where PR fits

Boosted by anywhere, anytime gizmos like iphones (and the eagerly awaited ipad), these applications turn traditional media paradigms on their head, eliminating reporters as gatekeepers and blasting away the restraints that come with appointment programming.

No more is a story limited to a certain number of column centimeters or a soundbite constrained to a matter of seconds, nor is it neatly tucked away in the evening news bulletin.
No longer does a disgruntled customer have to convince a media outlet involved that theirs is a tale compelling enough to attract viewers or readers - they can put it to the acid test themselves, and if the story does grow legs, the social media interest endorses its newsworthiness for MSM (mainstream media for those still getting to grips with things).
And no more can we reassure ourselves that today's bad press is tomorrow's fish and chip wrapping. News cycles are infinitely longer and deeper than ever before, with the social bit of social media keeping stories alive for as long as somebody is interested in looking.

Actor/director Kevin Smith's vitriolic tweet-fest with Southwest Airlines over its 'people of size' policy is a great example of the sorts of issues social media can cause for organisations - and just how far out of hand these things can get.
Smith turned to Twitter after Southwest offloaded him for violating its 'people of size' policy (in real person's speak, he was too fat so they kicked him off the plane).
His barrage of tweets made mainstream media within minutes - with coverage in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and other major outlets.
Within hours 'Kevin Smith Twitter' was the 23rd most searched for Google term.

"So, @SouthwestAir, go f*** yourself," read one tweet. "I broke no regulation, offered no 'safety risk' (what, was I gonna roll on a fellow passenger?)."

When Smith boarded his next flight, he posted a picture of himself in the seat with the words "Hey, @Southwest, look how fat I am on your plane! Quick, throw me off!"
And on landing: "Hey, @SouthwestAir, I've landed in Burbank. Don't worry, wall of the plane was opened and I was airlifted out while Richard Simmons supervised."

Southwest responded in kind, tweeting its apologies, and offering vouchers as an olive branch.
Not enough for Smith, who responded "F*** your apologetic $100 voucher, @SouthwestAir"

Smith's 'audience' is large enough to make him a media outlet in his own right.
One point six million people follow his Twitter feed (ironically, just a million follow Southwest).

So how did the airline respond?

Well, they fought social media with social media, using Twitter and blogs to get their side of the story out:

@ThatKevinSmith Hey Kevin! I’m so sorry for your experience tonight! Hopefully we can make things right, please follow so we may DM!

Hey folks – trust me, I saw the tweets from @ThatKevinSmith I’ll get all the details and handle accordingly! Thanks for your concerns!

I read every single tweet that comes into this account, and take every tweet seriously. We’ll handle @thatkevinsmith issue asap

I’ve read the tweets all night from @ThatKevinSmith – He’ll be getting a call at home from our Customer Relations VP tonight.

@ThatKevinSmith Ok, I’ll be sure to check it out. Hopefully you received our voicemail earlier this evening.

@ThatKevinSmith Again, I’m very sorry for the experience you had tonight. Please let me know if there is anything else I can do.

@ThatKevinSmith We called you on the number you had on file in your reservation. If you prefer a different number, please DM me. Thanks!

Our apology to @ThatKevinSmith and more details regarding the events from last night – http://cot.ag/96KHC7 #Southwest

Finally, they resorted to a long-ish blog post http://www.swamedia.com/ to tell their side of the story.

TOOLBOX

So what's to be done if you find yourself in Southwest's shoes?

Understand how social media works and where it fits
You can't know what's being said about you if you're not in the game. Senior managers may dismiss Twitter as a tween/twenty-something plaything and see it as irrelevant in a corporate setting, but increasingly, it's gaining mainstream traction, not just with consumers, but media too.

Practice good crisis management: monitor what is being said about your organisation and products
Social media moves fast. Really fast. You need early warning of any potential reputation crisis and you need to be able to mount an instant response. Sign up for Google Alerts or services like Social Mention, or Tweet Beep to stay on top of who is talking about you and where.

Understand how social media differs from traditional media
The sort of corporate speak and formality that pervades in old-school media statements looks stilted and out of place in a tweet or on a blog post. Plus it's hard to get all that bumpf into just 140 words.

Don't just read about it, do it
The best way to understand social media is to get into the thick of it and study it from the inside out. Start a blog, launch a Twitter feed, learn about how this beast works, what feeds it and what sedates it when things get heated.

Understand that social media is a pull, not a push, mechanism
While traditional news media 'broadcast' to masses of people who may or may not be interested in all of their content, those who subscribe to Twitter and blog feeds or routinely visit specific sites have a strong interest in whatever it is that is covered there. They are deliberately seeking it out, not just stumbling across it. This group is not impassive, impartial or only mildly interested: chances are they will care a great deal more about the issue at hand than your average punter.

It's one-to-one environment - in public
The tone, style, content and approach of your posts or tweets needs to reflect this. One-to-many is the way of traditional media. There's an intimacy and authenticity that comes with social media, and the power of it can't be underestimated.

Use the old-school model to make sure you've got your bases covered (with a couple of new media twists):

Twist a: in addition to your public feed - privately message those directly involved
Twist b: Publicly address those you can't reach directly by referencing them with the @sign and their Twitter name.

Content wise...

1. Acknowledge the mistake and its impact
2. Quick summary of where things are at
3. Explain what's being done to rectify it
3. Outline what is being done to put things right long term
4. Solicit input/feedback from your followers.

A lot to achieve in 140 words, which brings us to our next tip...

Use the full arsenal of social media
Blog posts are a great way to get extended explanations out there and pitch your side of the story.

Don't forget traditional news outlets
The war is very rarely contained to the blogosphere, especially if it's a big issue.
Mainstream media allow you the opportunity to flesh out your organisation and give it a more human face. Don't hide away online and shy away from traditional interviews - they're still an integral part of any reputation management strategy.

Stay on top of things and be ready for the long haul
The internet has news cycles just the way traditional media always has. They are likely to be longer and more diffuse, and it may feel like you are fighting fires for an eternity. However you need to be there, right down to the last tweet, to show you are willing to front up, fix things and learn for next time.

A World Gone Viral

Caught a conversation lately?

We are officially a brand-in-the-hand society.

For years marketers have yearned for low-cost, high-impact ways of getting the message across in a way that seemingly gains its own momentum, minimising ongoing investment in expensive, cumbersome and distant mass media, while maximising reach and the credibility that comes when the messenger is as close to home as possible.

Word-of-mouth and viral marketing are just two of the key manifestations of these sorts of ideas - both of them built on strengths that come with messenger and recipient being extremely cosy. The rise of PDAs drags these two campaign clip-ons out of the shadows, and firmly back into their moment in the sun.

Getting people talking

When I worked in radio a hundred years ago (at least, that’s the way it feels!) we used to line everything up against the water cooler test. Would it promote talk around the water cooler? If so, sweet. If not – ditch it. We were breakfast radio jocks, not marketers. But instinctively we understood that if we could get people at the office talking about that morning’s show, maybe a few of their friends would tune in tomorrow.

While word-of-mouth – still, despite the rise of mass media, the foundation stone of the marketing activity of a significant number of businesses and not-or-profits – has always been harder to define, capture and get to behave in sensible ways, viral techniques, with their pseudo-scientific sounding list of attributes have been easier for marketers to grasp, explain and apply. Good viral campaigns use existing relationships to spread messages through self-replicating viral (i.e something that is easily transmitted and caught) processes.

Part of the appeal of viral is that it’s relatively easy to line a potential campaign up against a pre-existing list of criteria that we are all already familiar with – the sort of conditions that are necessary for the common cold to take hold.

It’s catching

Successful viral marketing campaigns have much in common with successful diseases: they are more easily transmitted through close contact by people who trust one another enough to have close physical proximity, and once planted, spread exponentially. A certain threshold has to be reached for a disease to really take hold – and then it gains a life of its own, requiring nothing in terms of further investment from its point of origin – making it incredibly elegant in budgetary terms.

An attention-deficit society coupled with mass media overload and the rise of technologies like My Sky (allowing viewers to skip through ads at warp sound) have led to marketers working harder than ever to find ways to cut through – not just in media terms, but in the very essence of messaging, too.

And in a climate of anti-hierarchy and the flattening of traditional structures, peer-to-peer is more important than ever.

Power to the people

Clay Shirky adresses it nicely in his seminal book ‘Here Comes Everybody: the power of organizing without organizations’.

His view is that the seismic shift that personal media devices like iPhone and the Blackberry (referred to some as ‘brand in the hand’) bring is not so much the technology (though there is no denying it’s cool!) but the power that everyday people now have to be broadcasters, as well as receivers of messages. He likens the current internet revolution to the introduction of the telephone and television, in terms of significance, but the difference, he says, is the incredible power that the average person gains when they become media outlets in their own right.

Shirky does a great job of methodically deconstructing how trends emerge and opinions form – it’s inspiring parallel reading to a review of the Obama campaign (check out our Exchange discussion for more) with its groundbreaking use of personal media like Twitter and text messages. Shirky is also a good read if you are interested in the dark side of word-of-mouth and viral.

Viral downunder

Downunder we're only just beginning to see the potential that personal media devices bring to corporate comms of any kind - let alone the pass-it-on variety.

Organisations like Air New Zealand have been at the forefront of introducing the sort of technology that allows for a truly one-to-one, tailored message set, with its flight update services. And texting featured heavily in the last election campaign. But the two main telecoms have turned most of us off the idea by texting us to let us know our bill’s overdue.

There’s a lot of product and competition-based activity, and tertiary institutions have embraced text technology with open arms as a way to connect with 'Generation Unreachable'. But we’ve yet to see much in the way of really clever pass-it-on campaigns – the sort of thing to rival some of the viral emails that manage to capture popular imagination and skip from one in-box to the next.

Those that get it right

The shining exception is the work of 42 Below, whose rapid growth has been built primarily on viral campaigns. It’s also hugely content based; given the brand’s irreverent stance and dismissal of tradition, it stands to reason they would look to alternative marketing techniques to sit at the core of their brand platform.

And they are not alone.

Andrew Tinning, Group Creative Director of Perth based agency Market Force, says there is no doubt that content is king in an interactive web environment, but the medium can be as just as important as the message.

“Companies like Nike and Apple are expected to be at the forefront. We expect to see them use cutting-edge technologies in their marketing, not just their products. So if you’re in that space and you’re not there, that can be a risk.”

And how they do it

Tinning points to the phenomenal success of Earth Hour in Australia as a great example of B2B viral marketing.

“The idea of not doing something for 24 hours is nothing new, but it’s just the way they’ve implemented it.”

The original Aussie Earth Hour was originally conceived by a media group and ad agency – who used the power of their own networks to make it hum.

“They went out to all their own clients, like McDonalds, and got them to switch off their signs, all the lights in all their stores, and that’s a great thing for McDonalds, because they’re trying to fight that whole mythology about cutting down rainforests. For them, it makes sense to do something like that.”

The Tool box:

Catch My Disease

Remember, you’re trying to start a conversation that will go on and get bigger – pick your tactics accordingly. If your virus hits a host who doesn’t pass it on to many more, it’ll eventually wither and die. Use conversation starters, where you can. A clever device or giveaway, a product attribute that will generate its own buzz, something that will make somebody want to tell somebody else about your ‘thing’. Think of it like a loss-leader for a supermarket. There are some things, some elements of a campaign or promotion that you do just to get attention or because they tell a great story for you. Compelling, spellbinding stories are gold in the 90-second economy.

Get permission – yeah, sure we’ve got that whole anti-spam thing happening. But when did it ever make a dot of difference to your inbox? Of course, you're going to get permission to communicate with your database beforehand because that’s the sort of socially responsible citizen you are. But is it real permission? Are you trying to sell something in there that they didn’t really mean to sign up for? If you’re uncertain, get yourself connected to a copy of Permission Marketing today.

Get creative – you’re fighting for attention in an attention starved, oversaturated world. And you have all the tools of engagement with their wonderful creative potential, at your disposal. Use them! But…

Be strategic – doesn’t happen as much as it used to, but still, people seem to lose their heads a little when it comes to online. Just because it’s not on page 3 of The Press it doesn’t mean nobody’s looking. In fact, potentially everyone’s looking through windows you don’t even know exist. Your viral strategy needs as much discipline and alignment with your business plan as anything else you undertake that can have a serious impact on your brand or reputation.

Be prepared to spend money – it’s not all about cheap. And you can bet on spending offline-levels of budget online these days.
Why? Because viral marketing is growing up, and successful campaigns are solely dependent on people passing on your marketing message for you. They’re not going to do that unless there is something in it for them. Your content has to be hot enough for them to want to share and feel darned good about doing it. The rest is just spam.
Don’t forget your competition - the TV shows and sophisticated campaigns of the giants in this zone, are formidable.

Don’t call it real if it ain’t – Telecom tried to go viral with that TV ad of the office party a few months back – but faced blogger backlash when it was quickly discovered that the clip was filmed in a fake office by an ad agency.

Personalise it – viral marketing of any kind, whether it uses new media or plain old water-cooler talk gives you an unprecedented opportunity to tailor the message. Don’t screw it up by boring people who don’t have the remotest interest in your product, service or idea.

See it in context – viral marketing can’t be set apart from other social media, and gains even more momentum when coupled with other tools like social media sites, and of course, your off-line efforts, which brings us to our next point…

Keep it simple, and don’t forget we’re all overwhelmed – remember Chinese whispers? It doesn’t take many iterations for an entire message to get trashed, and anyway, it’s just way TMI (‘too much information’ in case you’re scratching your head). Don’t try to get your viral device to carry a whole campaign. Often all that is needed is a clever, catchy URL to get people to the next information ‘layer’.

Keep your messages straight and consistent - ‘nuff said'.

Provide the infrastructure and resources needed to ensure the campaign has all the components it needs to work – don’t leave it hanging out to dry in cyberspace, all on its own. Seriously good viral campaigns are backed by seriously sophisticated infrastructure plans that make them as easy as possible for the consumer to use – but as comprehensive as they need to be for the campaign to work at all the levels it needs to.

Integrate – while you can’t move your offline tactics online lock, stock and barrel (check out Meatball Sundae for more on that one), consistency and some logical sense of integration between one world and the other is a must.

Be prepared to trade or lose control – the currency of the new economy is different (think last year’s smash hit gorilla commercial for Cadbury’s. Not a sales message in sight. Just a total brand immersion experience. If you’re a charity, you might have to cede control of that coveted ‘list’ in exchange for peer-to-peer promotion of your cause and others becoming mini campaign managers on your behalf.

Make it easy for people to convert talk into action – be sure your website is functional, easy and as zen-like as it can possibly be. We are all too busy and tired for complexity, things that don’t work and people who want to make it really hard for us to do what they are asking us to do.