MarketingVOX: The Voice of Online Marketing | MEDIA KIT | NEWS TIPS
Laredo Group - Click Here!

How Will Advertisers React to the Looser ABC Standards?

The Audit Bureau of Circulations is loosening its standards to allow subscribers of digital subscriptions and hybrid publishing...

The War Against Poor Unsubscribe Processes

Vendors that send e-mail marketing messages to Margaret Farmakis better monitor their unsubscribe inboxes carefully over the next...

Marketing Data RoundUp: Women and social networking

Following are recent findings by various studies on marketing and advertising-related topics. For a more in-depth look at...

ERSP: Yes, Weight Loss Claims on Twitter Can Count as Ads

The Liquid HCG Diet's promotion efforts on Twitter have been deemed by the Electronic Retailing Self-Regulation Program (ERSP)...

Special Report: What Marketers Need to Know About Domain Reputation

Spam is a problem that is costing ISPs hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to battle. ...

Top Industry News for 7-28-10: Google builds a rival for Facebook

Social Media: Google develops a Facebook rival. What has happened to all the social media start-ups? Apple upgrades Safari, adds extensions...

More iPhone 'Killers' Marketers Should Consider

The smartphone industry has been predicting an iPhone killer would emerge in just about every product release cycle...

Pepco Follows Social Media Playbook in Power Outage

This past weekend more than 301,000 customers in Maryland and the District of Columbia lost power after unusually harsh thunderstorms hit the area. The storm, which clocked in at 90 miles an hour in some parts of the area, was over within 20 minutes. The power outage, though, lasted for days with service not restored for many until Thursday. Customers quickly became disgruntled with the utility, posting their ire on Twitter and in the blogosphere. Unlike other PR crises - last winter for example, when the outcry over high bills reached a crescendo on Twitter - this time Pepco knew what to do. By Monday it had in place  a dedicated staffer to respond to the hate on Twitter under the handle Pepco Connect. (via the Washington Post).

Pepco is hardly alone in turning to social media to counter a brewing PR disaster. Even Apple, notorious for its lack of social media outreach, has established a Twitter account in the wake of the issue over the antenna-based reception problems of iPhone 4.0. Other beleaguered companies from Toyota to Southwest Airlines to, most notably, BP have used social and online media to respond to complaints or criticisms - to varying degrees of success. That is because using social media to combat negative PR is not an exact science given how quickly a conversation can turn on the internet. There are, though, guidelines emerging for this slippery art that companies can try to follow - and hope for the best. These include:

Maybe you can't measure the benefits, but now is not the time to think about that.

There has been much debate about how to value social media outreach and its ROI.  It is an interesting and, in these fiscally conservative times, a necessary conversation. Just not during a crisis. Proceed from faith that your social media efforts will at least slow the downhill rolling stone that has become your company's reputation and get started without worrying about metrics or benchmarks.

Claim every single possible URL or handle with your company name, if you haven't already.

BP didn't think to claim the Twitter handle BP Global PR, an account that was established after the spill for the sole purpose of mocking BP's efforts to plug the leak by purporting to be the voice of BP. It has attracted 188,025 followers with such needling posts as "Tony Hayward is leaving us because YOU all demonized him! Make it right, and leave him with some kind words." Enough said.

People are going to talk. Accept it.

Between January 1 and April 20, 2010, BP had a largely positive image with bloggers and other social media users. Unsurprisingly after the oil rig explosion, it was mentioned far more frequently, and negatively, in blog and other social media posts, according to Sysomos: 92,905 times in blogs, 69,273 times in news items, and in 243,903 tweets and 202,697 message board postings. (via MarketingCharts). As the amount of social media chatter about BP dramatically increased, so did the negative overtone to that chatter.

Don't assume it will stay this way forever.

BP is a special case - it may be unable to rehabilitate its image anytime in the foreseeable future. However that is not true for most companies. Such firms as Toyota have rehabilitated their images in part by using social media as a tool.

Don't assume they'll win.

Not every social media campaign succeeds. A social media campaign to Quit Facebook fizzled out despite the site's privacy issues.

Get the right person to head your efforts.

Pepco tapped Andre Francis, a 25-year-old who is on his first week into the job. So far, he has done well soothing outraged customers even as he was unable to offer up what they really wanted: electricity.

In general, though, the wise course is not to assign a junior staffer or inexperienced agency to a crisis social media campaign. Nestle found itself on the defensive earlier this year after an attack lodged by Greenpeace on YouTube and its Facebook page over its palm oil sourcing activities. Nestle, which has weathered its share of corporate crises and protests over the decades, handled this one poorly, in large part because the company was caught off guard by the viral and social media elements to the campaign - but also because some of the comments it made in response were seen as needlessly antagonistic.

"Had Nestle's social media team been experienced in crisis management and properly trained, Greenpeace's attack on the Nestle Facebook page could have been made to fizzle out in under an hour," writes Brand Builder. "Corporate communications isn't about creative copy and pushing it out through a breadth of channels. It's professional chess."

Pepco, though, was lucky or smart or both with its choice of Francis. His responses have been along the lines of "I understand your frustration" ; "I understand your concern" ; "I appreciate your humor." As it happened, when he first joined the corporate communications office at Pepco a customer-oriented Twitter account was only part of his duties, the Post reported. Pepco then decided to turn it into a full-time position, with the start date on Monday, July 26. The storm hit on Sunday, July 25.

email this · permanent link
Related topics: user experience, best practices, pearls of wisdom, viral marketing & buzz, branding, campaigns & creatives of note, signs of what's to come, tools & software, How-to

Top Industry News for 7-29-10: Apple extends mobile ad platform to developers

Mobile Marketing: Apple extends mobile ad platform to developers. Google rolls location-based mobile display ads. Publishing: Mixed ad message from newspapers. Measurement &...

As Retail Gets Social, Will It Finally Nail Search As Well?

Amazon pushed the concept of social retail forward by a large measure by linking shoppers to their Facebook...

Old Spice Viral Campaign Translates into Sales - Lots of Them

New figures quantify the viral success of the Old Spice viral video campaign using the one metric that...

Top Toolkit News: Mobile ValueTrack

Mobile Marketing Google has launched Mobile ValueTrack for advertisers to track clicks on mobile devices.  Mobile ValueTrack...

Automated Welcome Message Boosts Subscriber Response

Kelly's Running Warehouse, an online specialty retailer of running equipment, has increased subscriber response to its emails by...

Don't Fear Social Media Failure

Marketers should embrace social media failures, rather than fear them, according to a recent blog post from Sysomos. In...

Top Industry News for 7-27-10: Yahoo claims comScore miscounted page views by 1 billion

Measurement & Analytics: Yahoo says that comScore underreported its U.S. page views by 1 billion last June. Ad Technology: New...