Crisis communication

Saturday, February 06, 2010

Are we overvaluing real-time feedback?

Warning: Lost post follows

Back in 1995, “Snow Crash” author Neal Stephenson teamed up with his uncle George Jewsbury under the pseudonym Stephen Bury to produce a potboiler titled “Interface.” The premise: A presidential candidate suffers a stroke and has a chip implanted in his brain. The chip features a wireless connection to feedback from thousands of watch-like devices distributed to a representative sample of Americans. These devices gauge the wearer’s reaction to political speeches, allowing the candidate to make mid-course adjustments and bolster public reaction to his candidacy.

To me, this bit of speculative fiction defines the notion of a real-time feedback loop.

As the Web proceeds along its evolution into a more real-time network, a idea of a real-time feedback loop is becoming a popular topic of discussion. I attended a panel discussion on Thursday night, part of Social Media Week here in San Francisco, that focused on these loops, defining them as “a method for capturing ideas as they arise and bringing them back into the group for examination through the use of social media.” Promotional copy for the event asserted:

When an idea’s expression generates a creatively relevant or insightful response, a well-organized listening/engagement practitioner captures that flash of brilliance, and feeds it back to the originator as an enriched question, thus creating a real-time feedback loop.  In this transformational moment, a thought-leader may have a second opportunity to be heard and have their expression innovatively re-cast. 

With social media we facilitate this process ever more effectively. It is like cold fusion—when used properly, it creates more value than it consumes, lowering the carbon footprint of innovation.

The idea of real-time feedback loops have been rattling around in my brain since Thursday night’s discussion. Then it occurred to me: What better place to organize my thoughts than my blog?

Where do real-time feedback loops begin?

The Internet didn’t invent real-time feedback loops. The thunderous applause of an audience that leads to a multiple curtain calls is a real-time feedback loop; so is tepid applause followed by a rush for the exits. The Grateful Dead’s symbiotic relationship with its audience influenced the band’s live improvisational music. The crowd’s response almost always affects a standup comic’s routine.

The Net, however, has added two dimensions to real-time feedback loops: specificity and reach.

Specificity—The aggregate response of the crowd is pretty simple. They love it, they’re into it, they disagree, they don’t think it’s funny, they hate it. The Net has provided individuals a voice that allow the performer or communicator to analyze why the crowd is reacting the way it is and respond to specific observations or alter behaviors in order to influence opinions. This is nothing new: For at least a decade, probably longer, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) has provided the infrastructure for backchannels, on which conference attendees discuss presentations with one another in real time. In some instances, these backchannels have been projected on a screen where a speaker can see and react to it. Now, Twitter’s hashtag convention—along with some other tools—have made backchannels available to more people than just the geek crowd who knew how to tap into IRC.

Reach—Streaming media and Twitter have expanded the reach of events—from keynotes and panel discussions to product launches and press conferences—to people who can’t be there in person. Again, this is nothing new. The presidential State of the Union address is one example of a speech that is available to larger audiences than just those who can squeeze into the chamber of the House of Representatives. The Net’s streaming capabilities, though, have made it possible to extend this ability to speakers and events that don’t warrant mainstream television network coverage. The most recent LeWeb, for example, was streamed to an audience hungry for presentations they couldn’t see in person due to the event’s cost (expensive) and location (Paris).

Combine these factors and the significance of real-time feedback loops becomes clear. Not only can an executive speaking at a product launch hear specific feedback in real time, but the audience is now expanded to customers or stakeholders from anywhere in the world.

Generally, this feedback comes in two forms: the general chatter of individuals expressing their opinions or talking with one another and targeted questions from individuals to the speaker. Both were in play last Thursday night as people watching a live stream of the presentation (courtesy of Justin.tv) talked among themselves and posed questions for panelists that were relayed by an in-person moderator.

All eyes on real-time

It’s clear that the Net has altered and expanded realt-time feedback loops. Google has incorporated real-time results into its search results. A new category of real-time search engines has emerged sporting names such as Collecta, Topsy and Scoopler.

Prominent people are writing about the real-time web, including the authors of influential outlets like ReadWrite Web, GigaOn, Mashable and TechCrunch. Jeff Pulver, Stowe Boyd and Jeremiah Owyang have written about it. It found its way onto many 2010 prediction lists.

Protocols are being developed to support it. RealTime RSS—from RSS godfather Dave Winer—sends updates when they’re added to a site rather than waiting for an RSS reader or other utility to poll feeds to find what’s new. Google’s PubSubHubbub is similar although not necewssarily a competing standard; the two can work together. Chris Messina described PubSubHubbub’s function this way: “Let’s say (you write) a new blog post; the blogging software then pings any number of hubs with a message: ‘Hey, new content here.’ The hub says, ‘Great thanks,’ grabs the content, and then pushes the content to everyone on its ‘subscriber” list.’

These two protocols expand the opportunity for anyone to get real-time feedback. A marketing executive introducing a new product to a live audience and a virtual one watching the stream can hear back instantly from those engaged over conversational channels (Twitter and IRC, for example) as well as those writing for online news outlets and blogs.

As a result, the focus on real-time feedback has become intense. Some have proclaimed the ability to assess sentiment through real-time search a replacement for costly polling that has been the province of organizations like Harris and Gallup.

But how important is all this real-time feedback?

Is it accurate?

What you think at the instant you hear something may not be what you think after you’ve had time to digest it. Consequently, your immediate feedback may not reflect your long-term view.

This is one of the issues many speakers have with members of the audience live-tweeting their talks or with journalists live-tweeting events.

Much of the tweeting of live events is objective, though, rather than subjective. It’s more like note-taking than analysis. And even the opinions tweeted in real time have value. After all, you’re presenting in real time and people are reacting. Before, you could only see them shifting uncomfortably in their seats, or maybe actively booing or walking out. Now you can assess exactly why they’re reacting the way they are.

But in some respects, the critics have a point. Consider the widely-covered Apple iPad announcement. Information from Steve Jobs’ presentation was made available in real time through a number of channels and a lot (though certainly not all) of the real-time feedback suggested Apple had another sure-fire hit on its hands. But then came the analysis. Tech journalists, bloggers and others began producing the more thoughtful, detailed reviews after they had a chance to internalize the information, consider it, chew on it. FOr many members of the audience, digesting these views, then sharing them and discussing them with each other, led to a shift in their opinions. In the end, their early tweets didn’t reflect their ultimate views.

Is it representative?

During Thursday night’s panel, the point was made repeatedly that only about 10 percent of your audience will offer real-time feedback. And your larger audience—the customers for the product you’re launching, for instance—won’t even watch the event.

Reacting to real-time feedback, then, could mean that you’re taking action on information that isn’t representative of your customer base. In fact, those who pay attention to the live stream or real-time tweets of your message could be as far from a statistically valid sample of your population as you can get.

Is it contextual?

As I sat in the room where the panel was presented on Thursday, I was able to take in everything at once. There was the reaction of other panelists to what one panelist was saying, panel moderator Jennifer Lindsay‘s reaction, the panel’s reaction to Lindsay’s questions and the reaqction of the audience.

Those watching the stream, on the other hand, saw only what the camera allowed, and the camera was almost always focused on whoever was speaking. Those watching the stream got only a sliver of the experience had by those in attendance. IT’s even worse with those who see only the 140 characters broadcast by those who are live-tweeting the event. The reactions of those receiving these messages, then, could be based on incomplete or out-of-context information. It could conflict with the opinions of the people whose opinions you’re really trying to understand.

Because of these realities, the rush to embrace the real-time web can easily lead us to overvalue real-time feedback and make inappropriate decisions based on it.

When real-time feedback matters

Of course, recognizing the limits of real-time feedback doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be paying attention to it, only that you should be cirumspect in terms of what you do with it.

In a crisis, for example, you’d be foolish to ignore commentary emerging in real time. By monitoring public sentiment, you can determine the depth of reaction to the situation and quickly develop a response strategy. Real-time feedback in response to change initiatives is equally important. People resist change for a variety of reasons and listening to feedback can help you shape your efforts to overcome that resistance.

As for other feedback—to speeches, to announcements, to events—organizations will have to develop processes to determine which feedback requires immediate internalization and action and which becomes just additional information to factor into longer-term thinking. After all, how much can you really do with real-time feedback? We have no brain-implantable chips to help us adjust our comments in real time based on listener feedback. We can’t alter the presentation in mid-course when CNN’s cameras are on you. You can’t redesign the product if it’s already on trucks heading to retail stores. In most instances, real-time feedback won’t be more important than other forms of input, including the articles, reviews, blog posts, tweets and other consumer-generated content that will trickle out over days, weeks and months in response to your company’s message. Your best bet will be to add it to the mix in order to figure out your next steps, whether it’s a version 2.0 of your product, an enhancement to a program or a response to a query or criticism.

None of which means that engaging people through social channels is less important than it was before the real-time web became a hot topic. Engaging individuals through social channels isn’t necessarily the same as participating in a real-time feedback loop. Engaging in conversations, responding to questions and participating in communities is all part of an effort to establish strong relationships that will pay off over the long term.

Nor does this suggest that the real-time web isn’t important. The instant delivery of news means organizations have less time to prepare and more information through which to sift.

But when it comes to taking immediate action on the instant feedback to your message, tread with care. You could be solving a problem that doesn’t really exist.

Related post from Tom Foremski, who was on the panel (and is in the photo above): The Real-Time Web Turns ‘Conversational’ Media Into Noise

Friday, February 05, 2010

Evidence exists for the “high-school” notion of admitting mistakes

In an interview on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” broadcast addressing Toyota’s PR woes, a crisis management executive dismissed the notion of a company quickly admitting when it has done something wrong.  Eric Dezenhall, CEO of Washington, D.C.-based Dezenhall Resources, responded to a question from host Rebecca Roberts:

Roberts: ...when a consumer base needs some compassion and needs some hand-holding, as you say, that conflicts with legal advice to admit no wrong. So how do you tread that line between admitting error but also apologizing to your consumers?

Dezenhall: You’re hitting what the great tension is. I mean, whether it’s Tiger Woods or anything, you’re always hearing these very silly PR people when a crisis hits dive in front of the camera and dish out this ridiculous cliche that if you just fessed up, the problem would go away.I see absolutely no evidence whatsoever that that’s true. Okay, it sounds wonderful in a high school PR class. I don’t see evidence that it’s true. If all of these people start confessing to things and apologizing to things, you’re vulnerable legally.

Well, I suppose if you shut your eyes really, really tight, you won’t see any evidence. My question to Mr. Dezenhall is simple: Have you ever looked for such evidence?

Here are a couple nuggets from a post I wrote last June:

In a study conducted 12 years ago, the year-end closing stock prices of companies that experienced crises were compared. Those that responded well saw their share value 4%, then rebound and remain 7% above their pre-crisis close, while those responded badly (that is, did what their lawyers told them to do) experienced initial declines of 10% with share prices remaining down, closing the year 15% below pre-crisis levels. That’s a 22% difference in year-end share value between companies that responded honestly and candidly versus those lawyered up over the possibility of lawsuits.

(The Oxford Executive Research Briefing that reported these findings is detailed in this Wharton Leadership Digest, a PDF file.)

Another study, this one from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, found that companies taking responsibility in a crisis outperformed those that blamed someone else by 14-19%.

(Note to Mr. Dezenhall: The “American Heritage Dictionary” defines “evidence” as “a thing or things helpful in forming a conclusion or judgment.”)

In the same blog post, I referenced Jim Golden, a negotiation counsel for a Tennessee law firm, who said that doing the right thing and telling the truth results in fewer cases going to trial and smaller judgments from those cases that do make it to the inside of a courtroom. Why? Because the truth that was hidden and denied on advice of counsel is revealed in court to a judge and jury who then perceive the organization as the bad guy. As I wrote in June, when companies “fess up” (as Dezenhall puts it) “there’s nothing left to be proven in court. Golden’s clients that have taken this approach have had their insurance premiums reduced by up to 30%.”

See? If you look for evidence, you’ll have a much better shot at finding it.

There’s even more evidence in FIR Live featuring Golden and New York-based crisis expert Fred Garcia.

To be clear, neither Golden nor Garcia recommend an organization take responsibility for something it didn’t do. But if they know they screwed up, they’re able to get it behind them faster by just admitting it, rather than allow information to continue to dribble out over weeks or months.

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

“Deny-delay-defend” crisis strategy isn’t sound just because it comes from the legal department

In the countless battles between communicators and corporate attorneys over what to say in response to reputation-threatening situations, the lawyers’ advice to say nothing (or little) usually prevails.

The result is often disastrous for the organization, but CEOs and senior leaders presume that mitigation of legal risk is of paramount concern. Industry pundits often agree, arguing that corporations are legal entities, requiring leaders to sweep legal concerns under the rug.

There is no need to characterize this situation as a battle between PR and Legal, however. The fact is that, viewed strictly through the legal prism, the counsel coming from corporate attorneys is frequently bad legal advice. The reasons bad advice comes from the general counsel’s office:

• In a crisis, lawyers are no less inclined to jerk their knees and make bad decisions than any other unprepared member of senior management
• Law schools do a lousy job of equipping their graduates to address the long-term consequences of short-sighted legal counsel

Still, bad legal advice is followed with barely a thought simply because it’s coming from a lawyer who has a seat at the management table. In far too many organizations, management does not share that same level of built-in trust with its top communicators.

Bad advice

The typical advice from legal counsel—silence or something close to it—is usually designed to minimize the risk of judgments awarded to plaintiffs in lawsuits filed in the wake of whatever situation prompted the statement in the first place. That same silence, however, is construed as guilt by a risk-averse public, which can have consequences far more dire than a large judgment. Stakeholders are inclined teo assume the worst about companies in a crisis, so they lose confidence when they resort to typical non-responses.

This isn’t opinion. In a study conducted 12 years ago, the year-end closing stock prices of companies that experienced crises were compared. Those that responded well saw their share value 4%, then rebound and remain 7% above their pre-crisis close, while those responded badly (that is, did what their lawyers told them to do) experienced initial declines of 10% with share prices remaining down, closing the year 15% below pre-crisis levels. That’s a 22% difference in year-end share value between companies that responded honestly and candidly versus those lawyered up over the possibility of lawsuits.

(The Oxford Executive Research Briefing that reported these findings is detailed in this Wharton Leadership Digest, a PDF file.)

Another study, this one from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, found that companies taking responsibility in a crisis outperformed those that blamed someone else by 14-19%.

Expressing regret, apologizing, and acknowldging blame (if there’s blame to acknowledge) do more than help a company’s reputation, though. They actually produce better legal results. While this flies in the face of conventional wisdom—that same conventional wisdom that drives CEOs to buy into the say-nothing strategy promoted by their attorneys—just isn’t supported by the facts. Just ask Jim Golden.

Golden served as general counsel for a company in the trucking industry, a litigation-prone business if ever there was one. He practiced what he calls the “deny-delay-defend” approach to crises, but has since concluded tehat the legal results are far better if companies embrace the responses so often advanced by their PR advisers. Golden, now a negotiation counsel for a Tennessee law firm, says that doing the right thing and telling the truth results in fewer cases going to trial and smaller judgments from those cases that do make it to the inside of a courtroom.

In those cases that do go to trial, Golden says, juries believe that justice has already been done and see no bad guys in the case; there’s nothing left to be proven in court. Golden’s clients that have taken this approach have had their insurance premiums reduced by up to 30%.

This isn’t just Golden’s experience. A study of doctors accused of malpractice found that those who apologized for the outcome (without necessary taking blame) experienced fewer trials and lower settlements. That’s counterintuitive to the legal advice most doctors get, to keep their mouths shut so the lawyers can deal with it in court.

Blame law schools

Golden—who recently participated in an FIR Live discussion on lawyers and communicators—blamed law schools for the deny-delay-defend tactic. Corporate counsels, Golden says, “don’t know their options” because law schools aren’t presenting them. Mid-career attorneys, however, are increasingly seeking training on just those options, with bar associations and litigation departments bring the training in-house.

In the meantime, communicators can do a better job of making the case against deny-delay-defend by pointing out that there are more options than saying nothing (what the lawyers prefer) and self-destructive blathering (what the lawyers fear). According to Fred Garcia, founder and president of crisis management firm LOGOS Consulting Group—and another guest on the recent FIR Live—there’s a lot of room to maneuver in between those two extremes.

It would help, though, if the top communicator’s views were held in the same regard as the top legal counsel. A Financial Post article suggests that’s not the case, with communications relegated to middle management where they don’t have leadership’s ear:

Whether it is due to arrogance, entitlement or a sense of invulnerability among senior executives, as one expert suggests, the reality is that many kings of the corporate world no longer put communications at the top of their agenda. Such isolation has made them more vulnerable to crisis.

It is this inattention to the reputational issues at the heart of communications’ agenda that has led (at least in part) to “the AIG spa scandal, the car manufacturers’ jet debacle and the bonus blowup,” the Post article concludes.

We in communications have been talking about that seat at the management table for at least as long as I’ve been in the profession—more than 30 years. The obvious approach to securing that seat is to prove the bottom-line value of our counsel. But I’m curious: What’s your approach to being taken as seriously as the lawyers in your organization?

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

GM and social media: damned if you do, damned if you don’t (even if you do)

We hear that most companies still haven’t jumped on the social media bandwagon and we roll our eyes in dismay and maybe even a little contempt. But there are reasons companies resist getting engaged with communities. It can be seriously perilous.

Look at General Motors. The magnitude of the company’s problems have inflamed peoples’ passions; our emotional reactions to its situation—and how GM responds—will forge its reputation for years to come.

In the midst of this classic institutional crisis, GM has committed to engage in social media at virtually every level. Say what you will about other dimensions of General Motors, from labor practices to product innovation to financial management. The companies’ communication efforts have been sincere and wide-ranging:

They were pioneers of the corporate blog. Members of the communications team participate in the auto blog communities. Communication staff have reached out to answer questions and participate in conversations wherever they are found. Employees throughout the organization have been encouraged to talk about the company’s future in conversations they encounter during their day-to-day online activities. The public was invited to join GM leaders in open conversations about controversial issues. They have hosted mommy bloggers and podcasters on a retreat. They’re on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and Flickr. To record the company’s 100-year history, they created a wiki to which anybody can contribute.

In other words, GM has put into practice the kinds of actions most social media consultants would have advised. Still, even people engaged in the space are oblivious to those efforts, even as they insist upon them. In a comment to Joe Jaffe’s blog (in response to something I wrote), Viveka Weiley wrote, “People are already having these conversations, we don’t need GM to facilitate, centralise and filter them. It’s up to them to join our conversation, not the other way around.”

Exactly what GM has been doing.

Jaffe’s post about which Viveka and I were commenting, by the way, is a savaging of GM over a 60-second spot the company unveiled concurrent with its bankruptcy filing. In the commercial, the company brands the bankruptcy as a turning point and acknowledges that a massive rethinking of the company is required. It ends with the URL for GM Re: Invention, the repository of all things related to GM’s turnaround effort.

The site shows an understanding of the networked world, with…

• Sharing links
• RSS feed
• Links to Twitter accounts of GM designers, engineers, and other front-line employees
• Link to a Facebook fan page where critical comments are a part of the conversation

I saw the video as an invitation to come to the site, one channel for engaging consumers among many. Joe things “Somebody deserves a real hefty bitch-slap” because (among other things) “advertising is not the answer….especially during times where cathartic healing needs to take place via honest…authentic, transparent and open dialogue.”

Which, again, GM has been doing to a degree few other companies—and even fewer outside the technology world—can claim.

Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

Perhaps the best example of this peril comes courtesy of the Huffington Post, months before the bankruptcy filing. Back in February, Huffington blogger Allison Kilkenny tweeted a message to her followers: allisonkilkenny: sees GM is phasing out the small, fuel efficient Saturn. Oil companies: 1, Earth: 0.

Kilkenny was nonplussed when she got a reply: @allisonkilkenny we don’t have indiv trash cans at ofc cubes at hq, just an ex, not sure total $ saved from small ideas, but likely large

Kilkenny was bewildered. Why would a company needing to focus on its recovery invest in people who respond to Tweets, especially those that weren’t a specific request for help or information? “No one likes that in your rush to modernize and embrace the technology of the internet (complete with Twitter experts,) you forgot how to compete with foreign car companies,” she wrote.

So Kilkenny’s complaint, on the highly-visible Huffington Post, is that GM is doing exactly what Joe Jaffe and Viveka Weiley (and scores of others) say they must do.

Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

Make no mistake, GM is doing the right thing, even if they’re making mistakes along the way. But knowing the kinds of hits you’ll take from both sides for stepping up as GM has would deter many a CEO from taking the social media plunge.

Measurement is key. If we cannot convince business leaders that the business results of community engagement will outweigh the kinds of risk on display with GM, it’ll be hard to condemn them for their obstinence. I have no doubt that GM’s leaders are getting regular reports on the payoff for their commitment to community engagement. Given the current climate, it’s a good thing they’re in it for the long haul.

Friday, May 01, 2009

Shel Holtz’s Crisis Communications Presentation at New Communications Forum 2009

Content summary: Shel Holtz delivered the closing keynote of the opening day at the Society for New Communications Research New Communications Forum on Monday, April 27, 2009.

The presentation, “Social Media and Crisis Communications (Revisited)” updated the breakout session Shel presented at the first NewComm Forum in 2005.

Both audio and PowerPoint are available here.

Special thanks to Michael Procopio, who recorded the session, and Kenny Yeung, who shot the photo.

• Download the file here (MP3, 31.8Mb, 1:09:21).

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Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Domino’s update: Missteps and baby steps

Just some quick thoughts here on the latest developments in the Domino’s story:

First, the fact that you release a video in the Dave Neeleman mode (the former JetBlue CEO who offered a heartfelt apology for the Valentine’s Day 2007 crisis) doesn’t mean you’ll be forgiven—especially if you’re disingenuous in the video.

Using the same YouTube venue his two former employees used to post the clip that kicked off this whole crisis, Domino’s USA President Patrick Doyle apologizes, but also asserts that the company was on top of the crisis instantly. Here’s an audio clip from the opening few seconds of Doyle’s video:

Problem is, not only is this not true but Domino’s communications VP, Tim McIntyre, is on the record in more than one place insisting that the company was not going to address the situation publicly for fear that it would only add fuel to the fire. How credible is Doyle when he says the company did something it did not do? And if he’s not credible about this, how credible can he be about anything else he says?

In AdAge, McIntyre said the company could handle the impressions but that “a strong response from Domino’s would alert more consumers to the embarrassment.” And in an interview with Ragan Communications set to appear on Thursday morning, McIntyre claimed that the story was only getting coverage in the blogosphere. “It’s not on ABC, CNN, or USA Today,” he told Ragan reporter Jessica Levco.

Of course, now the story is all over the mainstream media, which was inevitable and predictable. When I blogged the story yesterday, only the Consumerist was showing up in a Google News search. Tonight, as I repeat the search from my hotel room in Pittsburgh, Google News is showing coverage in The New York Times, UPI, the Chicago Tribune, FOXNews, SkyNews, the BBC, several local TV news outlets, the list goes on.

In his most recent blog post, Edelman President and CEO Richard Edelman offered up a thought about the role of PR and the definition of news. In not so many words, Edelman defined the altered nature of the news machine. No longer does the public catch the news at 6 p.m., then wait for updates at 11 p.m. A variety of sources, from bloggers and Twitterers to journalists and analysts, are covering the news on an ongoing basis; the thirst for news is insatiable and if PR counselors do not satisfy that thirst on an ongoing basis, alternative sources will fill in. Your opportunity to tell your company’s/client’s story is based on your ability to maintain a presence. As Edelman puts it, “We will have to persuade our clients to be more public with more news. News is less an event and more a continuous flow of information informing the ongoing discussion; we must correct misstatement with alacrity.”

The company now has a Twitter account (@dpzinfo), which currently has 271 followers (including me) and about 2-1/2 pages of messages; it’s an encouraging move. Now, McIntyre and his team will have to begin using this channel to address the underlying issue that could cause Domino’s the most damage—the belief that the two employees who created the original video are representative of many Domino’s employees. The crisis was never contained to the North Carolina operation, despite the fact that it’s the only restaurant where these two employees worked, yet the vast majority of the company’s focus is on the actions taken against the employees and the sanitizing of the store.

I would also hope that the next time a crisis hits Domino’s, the “let’s wait and see if this warrants a resonse” mentality has been shelved in favor of a “let’s get our story into the the continuous flow of information to inform the discussion” approach.

There will no doubt be more to discuss as the public and Domino’s continue to react.I’ve recorded some comments for Neville to use in tomorrow’s FIR as part of his commentary on the story.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Two employees threaten pizza chain’s reputation

After seeing a tweet from Barbara Nixon with a link to a truly disgusting video, I responded with a retweet of the link and a declaration that, after seeing the video, I’ll never eat at Domino’s Pizza again. My tweet was then retweeted by a variety of people who added prefaces like “Over to you Domino’s” and “Domino’s are you paying attention.”

I waited to see if I’d hear from Domino’s and searched to see if the pizza heavyweight had replied to Barbara’s or anybody else’s tweets. Only later did I learn—in a phone conversation with a colleague—that Domino’s had, in fact, responded. Not on Twitter, where people are talking about it, but on the Consumerist blog, which had also been covering the story.

This raises a question corporate communicators should ponder: What is an adequate response to a social-media generated attack on your reputation?

A follow-up to the original Consumerist post included an email from Tim McIntyre, VP of COmmunications at Domino’s, to a Consumerist reader who had alerted McIntyre to the situation. McIntyre included an email he had received from one of the employees involved apologizing and insisting the video was a prank. McIntyre, however, didn’t know whether to believe the employee, and followed up with this:

Our chief of security has spoken to the franchise owner this morning, who was dumbfounded, to say the least. He has told us that he will be terminating their employment today. The “challenge” that comes with the freedom of the internet is that any idiot with a camera and an internet link can do stuff like this - and ruin the reputation of a brand that’s nearly 50 years old, and the reputations of 125,000 hard-working men and women across the nation and in 60 countries around the world.

That’s not a bad response, but remember, it was an email to one individual. So far, as near as I can tell, the publication of this email on Consumerist is the only public acknowledgement of a situation that continues to spiral out of control. I checked Twazzup, the nifty new third-party Twitter search tool, and found a fast-updating stream of tweets pointing to the video (on YouTube, not the Consumerist article), along with links to blogs and other sources referenced in the tweeets.

Domino’s needs to get out in front of this situation.

It would be a mistake to hope this would simply blow over. Already, volunteer sleuths have tracked down the store, an increasingly common activity, as The New York Times reported last week. Left unaddressed, other likely results are former employees starting to discuss what they saw, boycott groups forming on Facebook, and ultimately external media coverage (which, according to Google News, hasn’t happened yet). Already, there’s the likelihood that popular blog posts like those on Consumerist, once they have attracted enough inbound links, will be part of the top Google search results for Domino’s for years to come.

There’s clearly a lesson to be learned from Scott Monty’s handling of the Ford Ranger Station story, in which he replied directly to many of the tweets alerting him to the situation. He also sent several updates via Twitter, asking his followers to retweet the message, ensuring his updates were seen by an expanded audience. The result of this effort was the (accurate) perception that Ford was on top of the situation and taking appropriate steps to resolve it. That situation was resolved in less than a day and never attracted mainstream media coverage.

Twitter isn’t necessarily the only channel for engagement. Domino’s should post a comment to the YouTube video itself, which features over 350 comments as of this writing, along with any other venues where the perception persists that the company isn’t doing anything about this. (By the way, when I first saw the video on YouTube about an hour ago, there were about 200 comments. It had been viewed some 8,000 times; right now it’s up to 14,013 views. That’s the very definition of “spiraling out of control.” I expect the count to skyrocket over the course of the day.)

There’s also a lesson to be learned from McNeil Consumer Healthcare’s handling of the MotrinMoms kerfuffle, with Marketing VP Kathy Widmer apologizing publicly on the Motrin website.

In general, Domino’s should be viewing the situation as a crisis, an unanticipated event that could result in damage to the company’s reputation. With so many people alreading vowing never to eat Domino’s again, there can be little doubt that the this story qualifies under that definition. That means Domino’s needs to address a risk-averse public by owning up to the situation and outlining steps the company is taking to ensure this would never happen again. (It’s far too expensive a solution to expect, but wouldn’t it be cool if Domino’s installed webcams in every kitchen so customers could watch their food being prepared at their local restaurant?)

And Domino’s needs to make sure this message gets out through all the major channels where the story is under discussion. An official statement on its corporate site wouldn’t hurt, especially if the story does migrate into the traditional media.

Finally, the Domino’s story serves as another reminder of the importance of monitoring how you’re being discussed. Such a monitoring effort would surely turn up the Twitter stream, blog posts (more and more are turning up all the time), Digg, and the broad range of other channels. Knowing where the topic is spreading should inform your communication strategy.