I'm rather fond of McDonald's as a company. My first job aged 16 was with them - I survived the whole of the first day so I got all five stars! They were a good company to work for in 1984 and I think they have undertaken some excellent repositioning and communications work in the last ten years too.
In this social media age, many companies rightly seek a dialogue with their customers and try to tell real 'people' stories to show the human face of the corporation. But there is danger too as the massive amount of coverage of McDonald's cock-up last week from the likes of the Daily Mail to the Huffingfton Post and the bloggersphere demonstrates:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/9034883/McDonalds-McDStories-Twitter-campaign-backfires.html
Having critics hijack your hashtag isn't new of course but McDonald's apparent naivety is interesting. Theirs was a 24-hour campaign to insert paid promoted tweets into the streams of Twitter users. Promoting your tweet exposes you to everyone, not just your supporters, making it more likely to attract unwanted attention.
Generating a response from the large number of critics who will never credit McDonalds's for anything shouldn't have surprised them. But within two hours, the company pulled #McDStories, saying that the effort "did not go as planned. It was negative enough that we set about a change of course"!
Did they not have someone monitoring their Twitter account 24/7 who could respond to and engage with criticisms and so dispel myth and counter negatives? That requires a person with knowledge, authority and communication skills - not that week's work experience person.
key lessons?
- have a meaningful objective for your social media engagement
- plan carefully
- resource it properly
- have a plan 'B' for if things go wrong
Andrew Caesar-Gordon
UPDATE 26th January
Here's an emailed statement from McDonald's social media director, Rick Wion:
Within an hour of pulling #McDStories the number of conversations about it fell off from a peak of 1600 to a few dozen. It is also important to keep those numbers in perspective. There were 72,788 mentions of McDonald's overall that day so the traction of #McDStories was a tiny percentage (2%) of that.
With all social media campaigns, we include contingency plans should the conversation not go as planned. The ability to change midstream helped this small blip from becoming something larger.
Tuesday 24 January 2012
Monday 16 January 2012
Costa Cruise’s potentially dangerous blame game strategy
As I glanced through the statement issued by Costa Cruises in the wake of the dreadful Costa Concordia accident, I noticed how it ticked the golden rules for crisis communication: concern and empathy for human life in para one; actions to address the situation in para two; messages about minimisation of environmental impact in para three.
So far, so good. And then, in para four, I read this:
“preliminary indications are that there may have been significant human error on the part of the ship’s Master, Captain Francesco Schettino, which resulted in these grave consequences”
It is the earliest and most explicit attempt to blame an employee for an incident that I have ever seen, and at best, I view it as an extremely high risk crisis management strategy.
Here’s why:
it creates the impression of a business willing to jump to conclusions before all the facts are known, rather than keeping a cool head
it infers that the business’s top priority is protecting its own commercial interests and will use any means to do this, rather than focusing all attention on the human impact at this early stage
it implies a separation between company and employee which could be seen as artificial
it portrays an unflattering picture of a large business prepared to cast an individual employee adrift when the going gets tough
it creates further fuel for an extended crisis – controversy – as the captain denies the accusations
And what if investigations conclude that the captain was not to blame? In this situation, Costa Cruise’s early pronouncement would be hugely damaging to reputation.
Effective crisis management is of course about using all means at your disposal to protect corporate reputation. But that doesn’t mean applying the most expedient and pragmatic message without careful thought. Statements and pronouncements from media spokespeople must be delivered with a clear understanding of not just the immediate term impact, but also how the business wants to be regarded a year later.
As a final point, history shows that businesses which pin crises on “human error” have frequently created the conditions in which human error is likely: insufficient training, a culture of profit before safety or an environment in which front-line employees are afraid to voice concerns, are all conditions which make a “human error” much more likely.
So, even if Costa Cruise’s allegation turns out to be true, it may still not be enough to protect its reputation.
Jonathan Hemus
So far, so good. And then, in para four, I read this:
“preliminary indications are that there may have been significant human error on the part of the ship’s Master, Captain Francesco Schettino, which resulted in these grave consequences”
It is the earliest and most explicit attempt to blame an employee for an incident that I have ever seen, and at best, I view it as an extremely high risk crisis management strategy.
Here’s why:
it creates the impression of a business willing to jump to conclusions before all the facts are known, rather than keeping a cool head
it infers that the business’s top priority is protecting its own commercial interests and will use any means to do this, rather than focusing all attention on the human impact at this early stage
it implies a separation between company and employee which could be seen as artificial
it portrays an unflattering picture of a large business prepared to cast an individual employee adrift when the going gets tough
it creates further fuel for an extended crisis – controversy – as the captain denies the accusations
And what if investigations conclude that the captain was not to blame? In this situation, Costa Cruise’s early pronouncement would be hugely damaging to reputation.
Effective crisis management is of course about using all means at your disposal to protect corporate reputation. But that doesn’t mean applying the most expedient and pragmatic message without careful thought. Statements and pronouncements from media spokespeople must be delivered with a clear understanding of not just the immediate term impact, but also how the business wants to be regarded a year later.
As a final point, history shows that businesses which pin crises on “human error” have frequently created the conditions in which human error is likely: insufficient training, a culture of profit before safety or an environment in which front-line employees are afraid to voice concerns, are all conditions which make a “human error” much more likely.
So, even if Costa Cruise’s allegation turns out to be true, it may still not be enough to protect its reputation.
Jonathan Hemus
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