Crisis Management via Social Media; Marketing trick or true effort?

My first blog!

I intend to ocassionally write about whatever catches my attention in “the world of Social Media”. No, I am not a social media guru, there are too many already!

I do however, have a strong interest in the changes that social media are bringing about in the various aspects of personal life, business life and the shift of power (or attitude) between consumers & producers. My main business interest lies in the social media tooling that change or facilitate the way we engage with each other. For the better.

I invite you to leave comments in our company blog, if you agree with us, or even better when you disagree! It’s all good.

Crisis Management via Social Media; Marketing trick or true effort?

Nowadays, more and more organizations are discovering the power of social media. Some see the potential for this ‘new ways of working’ and are front runners to improve their reputation, customer service and/or sales.

Some companies are – all of a sudden – starting to use social media due to some form of crisis. A crisis caused by unethical behavior, mismanagement, or even an “act of god” like the Volcano Eruption in Iceland.

In general, a crisis is a good moment to change boundaries, but I battle with my thoughts if these companies are just using social media as a marketing trick or is it true effort to keep an audience informed? In the below blog post are some examples through which I want to show you how companies are using social media in times of crisis (the good, the bad & the ugly).

THE GOOD: KLM ROYAL DUTCH AIRLINES vs. ASH CLOUDS

KLM was already using social media. They really experienced the potential of it whilst in the middle of a crisis.

KLM showed that actively using twitter & facebook can be a very effective way of keeping their travelers informed during extraordinary circumstances. Even though often there was no new information to give, travelers apparently liked/appreciated being ‘connected’ with KLM.

Many travelers didn’t call the call center, didn’t look at the information screens @ schiphol or even didn’t go to the information desk. They went social, because KLM did as well. The result was that their social presence, actually relieved their call center capacity and so KLM was able to keep more travelers informed.

The number of followers went from 12.000 (just shortly after they started using twitter) to 24.723 after ash cloud nr. 1 on 04/05/10. Cloud nr. 2 their followers went to 27.356 (17/05/2010). Today they have 39.063 followers.

By the level of their social activity and involvement (still today) to my opinion this is TRUE EFFORT and here to stay.

THE BAD: NESTLE vs. GREENPEACE

Nestle was confronted with a social media campaign from Greenpeace. They posted a video on Youtube (1.5 million views) pointing out that due to Nestle’s purchasing practices for palm oil, they were contributing to rainforest deforestation. Nestle responded by having the video removed from Youtube. This helped Greenpeace in their exposure and so came lots of reactions from angry fans.

What did Nestle do? Nothing. But, they did refer to a press release, basically signaling their lack of interest or intention to change. I truly think it was their lack of understanding the power of social media. The negative attention got worse and worse and then Nestle responded by asking fans in facebook to leave “their community”. Check: http://blogs.bnet.com/businesstips/?p=6786

Soon Nestle realized they didn’t own their community. The power lies with the fans or consumers. Within 8 weeks they announced a change of policy AND a partnership with the The Forest Trust. It was a lesson learned the hard way and I am sure we will get more examples in the future of companies being forced to change their practices. For the better.

Nestle started using social media as a MARKETING TRICK but in fact were forced in making it TRUE EFFORT.

THE UGLY: BP DEEP OIL SPILL vs. BP

At first the efforts of BP seemed impressive and had a good start of “damage control” following their oil spill in the gulf of mexico. They created a twitter account to keep people informed and register for volunteers. They also used flickr to show the world pictures of all their efforts being taken, to minimize pollution. Check a video on cnn via: http://tinyurl.com/39npmbj

Soon they wanted to further ‘improve’ their corporate image by buying top google search results. Not so great idea. People noticed and started thrashing BP. Are trying to hide something? http://mashable.com/2010/06/08/bp-oil-spill-google/

Recently, it also became known that certain pictures on their flick page had been photo-shopped. I really don’t understand why they did this… http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1296764/Did-BP-Photo-shop-ANOTHER-oil-spill-image.html

Obviously BP has a lot to learn about social media and themselves. If you start to use social media, you better get real and honest. If you are not, someone out there will find out. And this will sooner or later hurt your company reputation again and again, causing significant (and unnecessary) damage.

My verdict on BP: A MARKETING TRICK as I expect that their social activities with time, when the mess is gone, their social activity will be gone as well.

How many companies will wait for a crisis, before they will really start using social media? And when the crisis is over, that will be the moment when we find out if it is trick or true effort!

RvH