Archive for the ‘issues management’ Category

Social Media: Anti-Social, Or An Opportunity For Influence?

09.12.01

“Are sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube making it easier for customers to hate you?”

Head in the sand

This was the question posed by Timothy Taylor in a Globe and Mail story entitled “anti-social media” yesterday. Using examples such as product faults (he cites Dell’s exploding batteries, although I think they were made by Sony…) and contest results (Nissan Cube), he asks the reader to consider whether social media may give voice to critics as much as to companies.

In his concluding words, “Everything that makes social media such a powerful tool for brand awareness also makes it a tempting platform for brand sabotage.”

Here’s my take.

The toothpaste is out of the tube

Taylor is certainly right in (at least) one respect – social media does give have the potential voice to a company’s critics. Unfortunately for the naysayers, though, the horse has already bolted on that one. Social media tools have been doing that for coming up to ten years now, and I don’t see this going away any time soon.

With that said, let’s face it – if your laptop caught fire (regardless of the manufacturer), you’d be talking about it. If social media weren’t around, it might be with a smaller group of friends but it might also be to your favourite reporter… and the news would still get out.

Social media tools, used properly, can do several things for companies:

  1. Provide an early warning mechanism – social media monitoring can give you an early heads-up when an issue is brewing. Nowadays, social media users don’t just report the news – they often spark it. Dell’s Richard Binhammer once said that social media gives the company a two-week heads-up on news that may break in traditional media. While I imagine that timeframe has shrunk over the two years or so since then as traditional media have clued-in to the online space, it’s still an important point.
  2. Provide insurance in advance – social media tools can help you to put a face (or multiple peoples’ faces) on an otherwise faceless organization. The relationships that you can build through that process probably won’t save you when something goes wrong, but it can make people (a) pause and ask if something is true rather than jumping to a conclusion and (b) take a more balanced view of the issue than they might otherwise.
  3. Provide an opportunity to respond – these new channels – blogs, social networks, etc – give people more of a voice than before, but they also give companies a voice where previously they had none beyond the mass media.

Bottom line: Far from losing control, these new online tools provide an opportunity for influence where companies previously had none.

Is that a good thing?

I guess it depends on whether you’re open to thinking differently about your communications with customers, or whether you’re pretending you can put the conversation back in the tube.

What do you think?

Posted in: issues management, social media

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7 Lessons From Maple Leaf Foods’ Crisis Communications

08.08.25

Toronto’s Maple Leaf Foods has been front and centre in the Canadian media over the last week after being linked to the illness and death of several consumers. This weekend, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Public Health Agency of Canada determined that a strain of listeria bacteria afflicting the consumers matched the strain identified in some Maple Leaf food products.

According to the CBC, the outbreak "…has been linked to 12 deaths out of 26 confirmed cases of the disease in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan."

The company’s response to the crisis has been fascinating, not least because its openness has caught the attention of the media.

A few notable points about the response:

  • Use a prominent spokesperson: Once it became clear that Maple Leaf Foods was linked to the outbreak, CEO Michael McCain wasted no time in getting out in front of the media and telling the company’s side of the story.
  • Publicly apologize: McCain, as CEO, personally apologized for the tragic incidents in a video that played on mainstream TV, and that the company posted to YouTube:
  • Be Proactive: Once the link between Maple Leaf Foods and the listeria outbreak was confirmed, the company moved to recall all 220 packaged meats produced at the affected plant.
  • Fix the problem: In a release this evening, the company says it "…continues to actively meet with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), in addition to external industry experts, to determine the details of the food safety protocols under which the facility will be reopened." The company has also "…assembled industry leading experts to consult and advise us on several physical and operational enhancements being considered."
  • Use appropriate messaging: The company has kept to several well thought-out messages (as noted by Boyd Neil):
    • "Going through the crisis there are two advisers I’ve paid no attention to. The first are the lawyers, and the second are the accountants. It’s not about money or legal liability, this is about our being accountable for providing consumers with safe food."
    • This is a terrible tragedy. To those people who have become ill, and to the families who have lost loved ones, I want to express my deepest and most sincere sympathies. Words cannot begin to express our sadness for your pain."
  • Be consistent: The company has been consistent in its messaging:
    • "We believe it is important to take these broader preventative actions to respond to this situation promptly, comprehensively, and in the best interests of our consumers" (August 20 news release)
    • "We know this has shaken consumer confidence in us. Our actions will continue to be guided by putting their interest first" (August 23 news release)
    • "Our actions are guided by putting public health first." (August 24 news release)
    • "We remain steadfast in our belief that our actions must continue to be guided by what is in the best interests of public health" (August 25 news release)
    • "…our management of the Listeria outbreak will be motivated by one thing only – the best public health interests of Canadians and specifically, our customers." (MapleLeaf.com)
  • Be open: The company is acknowledging the seriousness of the problem. The homepage of the Maple Leaf Foods website features a full-page update with information from the company along with links to information on the recall. Compare that to the Menu Foods pet food recall last year, where the company denied responsibility.

Maple Leaf Foods homepage

We should absolutely remember that this stems from tragic events and that people died during this. It’s difficult to tell how badly Maple Leaf Foods will be affected; 12 deaths is a tough pill for people to swallow and communications can only solve so much.

From a crisis communications perspective, though, it’s difficult to see where Maple Leaf Foods has put a foot wrong. It looks like the company had a plan for a scenario like this and, now that the worst has happened, they’re implementing it.

What’s your take?

(Disclosure: Maple Leaf Foods is a client of Fleishman-Hillard, a competitor of my employer Thornley Fallis)

Posted in: crisis communications, issues management

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How To Write A Good Communications Plan – Part 11 – Issues

08.07.12

You’ve planned-out your announcement to perfection – your objectives, your strategy, your tactics. Your communications plan is almost complete! But what if something goes wrong?

Be prepared

Issues management is all about catching problems before they become crises. Your communications plan should help you to prepare for that. It’s rarely possible to anticipate everything that may come up, but with some careful thought you can usually catch most things.

In the communications plan format I’ve recently worked with, the issues section is often used as the basis of your media Q&As when you draft your products later. As such, we usually wrote them in a Q&A format. This has the added benefit of making the issues easier for those further up the chain to understand:

Q: What about X?
A: Here’s our response.

Identifying issues

Think through your initiative and ask yourself a few questions:

  • What is changing?
  • Which parts are controversial?
  • Are any advocacy groups paying attention to this?
  • Who might not like it, and what might they not like?
  • Are any stakeholders expecting something different?
  • Have any aspects of this attracted media attention in the past?
  • Which blogs write on this topic? What have they said in the past?
  • Will this have an emotional impact on people?
  • Will anything you’re doing affect others directly? Have you (as an organization) talked to them about this?
  • Are any parts of this hard to understand? What might need explaining further?

That’s a lot of questions, but fortunately you’ve already done much of the work to answer them. Read back through the other sections of your plan – through the context, the environmental scan and the stakeholder analysis in particular – with those questions in mind. You’ll find many of the answers in there. Also talk to your subject matter experts – the people that are closest to the initiative – and ask them for their thoughts.

As with some other parts of the communications plan, you should think about your issues management section throughout your planning process and not just at the end. Whenever you think of something that might crop up, note it down for inclusion later.

Mitigating the issues

Once you’ve identified the potential issues, think about how you might be able to mitigate them.

Sometimes a simple Q&A will suffice for an issue. Other times you may want to revisit parts of your announcement (strategy, messages, audience, tactics etc) and tweak them. In some cases it may require more than just communications to resolve – you may want to go back to the subject matter experts and flag something for them to resolve before the announcement is made. Working issues management into your entire plan will provide you with a solid foundation to build on.

Your thoughts?

I’m a strategic communications guy, not an issues management expert. Fortunately I’ve been able to attend multiple courses on this and I’ve had some great colleagues to learn from, but I’m sure there are gaps in what I know.

What do you think? How would you approach the issues management section of your communications plan?

The “Communications Plan” Series

This is post number 11 in a series of 13 posts exploring how to create a good communications plan. To read more of the series, check out the other posts here.

(Image credit: nickobec)

Posted in: 101, communications planning, issues management

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Chapters Indigo Shows How To Handle A Product Recall

08.05.05

I’ve written occasionally about companies that have messed-up their issues management, so it’s nice to write occasionally about a company that got it right.

I received an email from Canadian book retailer Chapters Indigo this afternoon. I’m part of the company’s iRewards loyalty program, so this is nothing new. Normally I delete the emails after a quick glance, but this one caught my eye:

It has been brought to our attention that our Mother’s Day Gift with Purchase Tote Bag has been associated with causing minor skin irritations in a few cases. Initial testing has revealed elements found in the manufacturing of these bags may cause these irritations.

The health and safety of our customers and staff are of the highest priority and we wish to avoid any possible risk. We ask those who have received the blue tote bag with a green lining as the Mother’s Day Gift with Purchase in-store only between April 30th and May 2nd to return the tote to any Chapters or Indigo store for a $20 gift card.

No other tote bags or products in our assortment are affected in any way by this voluntary recall.

We regret any inconvenience this may have caused.

The email links through to a page on the Chapters Indigo website with more information.

A few things I think Chapters Indigo got right:

  • They proactively put out a voluntary recall.
  • They contacted their most loyal customers to let them know.
  • They didn’t try to hide the recall – they put a notice of the recall on their homepage.
  • They provided more information for people that want it, and linked to their help desk for people who want even more.
  • They led with the most important message: “The health and safety of our customers and staff are of the highest priority.”
  • They generated goodwill by offering $20 gift cards in exchange for bags that were originally given away for free.

The only thing I think I would change is to provide a phone number if people wanted more information, rather than making them navigate the confusing ‘help desk’ web page.

Time will tell if Chapters Indigo has successfully kept this issue from escalating. Personally I think they’ve done a pretty good job so far.

What do you think? Did they do a good job?

Posted in: issues management

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Why Business-To-Business Companies Need To Act More Like Business-To-Consumer Companies

08.02.20

There’s been a lot of talk recently about companies’ reactions to fans’ online activities. Target, Ford and Hasbro have all been on the receiving end of many bloggers’ wrath following their responses to these activities (rightly or wrongly, depending on the situation).

Hasbro, in particular, seems to be having a hard time getting its message out in response to the Scrabulous issue. Conversely, Target (which, in my opinion, dug its own grave on this particular issue) managed to communicate that it is "reviewing the policy" of not dealing with non-traditional media and Ford quickly set the record straight with the Mustang/CafePress issue.

Could it be that the reason why Hasbro is struggling is that it’s not used to dealing directly with consumers?

Business-to-business (B2B) companies – companies that sell their products or services to other companies, rather than directly to consumers – face a difficult challenge when it comes to online communication. On one hand they’re not used to dealing directly with the public except in carefully controlled forums (call centres, for example, where the company controls the conversation). On the other, modern web technologies raise consumers’ expectations that the company will deal directly with them.

These new tools, which let individuals produce audio, video and other multimedia content at the touch of a button, bring consumers much closer to being on an even footing with companies online. Without them, dissatisfied customers are like a falling tree in a forest – no-one hears them. With these new tools, though, consumers can reach hundreds or thousands of people, each of whom can reach many more. This kind of ‘word of mouth‘ can do real damage to a company’s brand.

All this means that B2B companies are starting to have to think and communicate like B2C (business-to-consumer) companies. To complicate matters they’re being forced to do it on other peoples’ terms, not their own. Consumers are forcing them to dive in before they’re ready, and before they’ve experimented with these new tools.

The solution? Business-to-business companies need to start thinking like their business-to-consumer counterparts before consumers make them engage on the consumers’ terms. Experiment with the tools. Engage (or at least listen to) the blogosphere. Be proactive.

It’s impossible to predict when consumers will decide to remove the middleman and talk directly to companies. Preparation can be the difference between a flash in the pan and a major crisis for a company’s reputation.

(hat tip to Mitch Joel for kick-starting my thoughts on episode #91 of Six Pixels of Separation)

Posted in: issues management, social media

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Canadian ISP Rogers Hijacking Web Pages

07.12.12

Rogers stirred up a storm this week with revelations that it is splicing its content into other companies’ webpages.

rogersgoogleAll of the reports I’ve seen have referred to this under the banner of "net neutrality."

For those of you that don’t speak geek, here’s the basic gist.

Rogers is, in essence, forcing customers to view content they haven’t asked for… on other peoples’ websites.

Alongside the disturbing side to this, as Shel Holtz points out, it also raises questions about what other companies could do with this technology.

Google Isn’t Happy

I wonder how Google feels about Rogers essentially deciding it can ignore Google’s advertising system and slap its content on any page it likes.

Oh, wait, we know.

Here’s a quote from a Toronto Star article:

"As a general principle, we believe that maintaining the Internet as a neutral platform means that carriers shouldn’t be able to interfere with Web content without users’ permission," the Google statement said. "We are in the process of contacting the relevant parties to bring this to a quick resolution."

This isn’t limited to Google’s pages, either. Here’s a quote from Rogers communications VP Taanta Gupta, from an ars technica article:

"We do not interfere with the content of the search (it could easily have been a Rogers yahoo search or any web site visit so is certainly not specific to any search engine or web site). "

Both traditional media and the blogosphere immediately slammed the move, with Christopher S. Penn calling for Rogers customers to drop the company immediately.

Customer Disservice

Rather than following Penn’s suggestion and dropping Rogers immediately, I contacted the company myself:

I’d like to comment on the various news reports about Rogers inserting its own content onto sites viewed by Rogers users.

I STRONGLY encourage you not to pursue this approach.

If this becomes standard and I see Rogers content inserted onto pages I view, I will immediately move to a different service provider, taking my cable and cell phone accounts with me.

Later in the day, I received this response:

Thank you for taking the time to write to us, we appreciate your use of online customer service.

In your recent email, you have informed us that you concerned with the various reports concerning Rogers inserting content onto sites viewed by Rogers s users.

We do apologize for any confusion that may have resulted.

Providing an automated real-time message while customers are browsing is a more effective and preferable means of usage notification than sending an e-mail which customers may not see in a timely manner. I can assure you that there are no privacy issues around this process   it s an automated message that is simply tagged onto the page being viewed and does not alter customers  data requests.

We are pleased to have been able to address your inquiry. For additional information please visit our website at www.rogers.com.

You are a valued customer and we thank you for your business.

For future email correspondence with respect to this e-mail, please quote reference number [deleted]

Regards,
[deleted]
Rogers Online Customer Service http://www.rogers.com

Rogers just doesn’t get it.

Leaving aside the awful spelling and grammar in the response (suggestion: maybe try hiring some people who can copy & paste properly), here are my thoughts:

  • This response does nothing to show they might take my concerns into account with their ‘test.’ There’s no evidence they’re listening to their customers.
  • I didn’t mention privacy anywhere in my note. Their reply actually leaves me with more concerns than I started with.
  • They didn’t address my query, but assumed they did.
  • I sent Rogers a specific concern; they responded with a generic link to the same website I originally contacted them from. Amazingly, I couldn’t find anything about this issue on that site.

What’s a better reply, I hear you ask?

Off the top of my head, how about:

Thank you for taking the time to contact us, and for alerting us to your concerns.

You expressed some misgivings about a test we are conducting to help us communicate better with our customers.

Please be assured that this is currently just a pilot project. We will consider all the feedback we receive from our customers before deciding whether to introduce this feature more widely.

If you would like more information on this test please visit www.rogers.com/specificinformation.

Thank you again for your feedback and your valued business…

If you’d like to have your say, you can contact Rogers here.

Personally, after their pathetic response to my concerns, I’m now considering dropping them anyway.

Posted in: issues management, marketing, public relations

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iSorry – Apple’s Handling Of The iPhone Price Issue

07.09.08

Steve Jobs stirred up a storm this week when he announced a $200 price reduction for the iPhone just two months after its release (see the video here)

Not surprisingly, Apple’s early adopters, who paid full price for the iPhone not long ago, weren’t too happy. Importantly for Apple, early adopters also tend to be influencers – the people who can drive word of mouth for new products, so alienating them would be a disaster.

Apple’s responded quickly to the criticism by announcing a $100 rebate for everyone who paid the original price for the iPhone. They also announced that anyone who had bought an iPhone in the past two weeks would get a full $200 rebate.

Now, Apple could have ignored the criticism – as ABC News pointed out, anyone buying a product so soon after its launch should know they’re paying a premium. It wouldn’t have been the best tactic, but let’s face it – it wouldn’t have been a surprise. However, as Andy Beal at Marketing Pilgrim pointed out, they did a decent job:

  • They acted quickly – the next day, in fact. Apple didn’t let the criticism fester before acting

  • They used a credible spokesperson – the CEO himself

  • They issued more than just an apology – they offered something tangible in the form of the rebate

The response to this has been pretty good, but I think Apple probably could have done more:

  • Given that Apple chose to make the rebate announcement online, why through a static webpage? Why not a blog or some other interactive format? By using a static page, they’ve pushed all of the discussion out here into the blogosphere rather than hosting some of it themselves.

  • The letter itself seemed stilted and scripted. Mattel, through all its problems, did one thing right when it posted a video of CEO Bob Eckert’s apology following their latest product recall. Where’s the video of Steve Jobs?

Posted in: issues management, public relations

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Has Online News Killed The Friday Afternoon Announcement?

07.09.06

Last Friday, Google announced that it would start hosting material from several large news agencies, including Associated Press, Canadian Press, the UK Press Association and more, through Google News.

Not surprisingly, this has been a little controversial – the announcement raised concerns that this change will take traffic and revenue away from other online news sources (amusingly, these concerns were also raised in a frequently-used AP story – is that the definition of irony?).

The SearchEngineWatch blog posted an interesting piece titled, “Was Google’s AP announcement a PR disaster?“

The posting makes one interesting point about the age-old tactic of using Fridays and the days before long weekends to ‘bury’ controversial announcements (the ‘dark side’ of PR, if you will). The author, Greg Jarboe, notes that this tactic may no longer work:

Everything in the PR playbook changed five years ago this month when Google launched Google News. And over this year’s long Labor Day weekend, I was able to use Google News to find more than 275 articles about Google’s AP announcement.

This is a great observation. I agree with Greg that this tactic’s effectiveness is greatly reduced given today’s shortened news cycle, democratized media and citizen journalists. Still, I don’t think this spells the end of Friday afternoon announcements. Let’s face it, the stories may be out there but how many people are reading them at the weekend?

Then again, perhaps this change is a good thing. If the standard tactics don’t work any more, perhaps organizations will be forced to actually engage with their stakeholders. Rather than hide controversial news, perhaps they’ll be forced to reach out and work with affected groups.

Then again, perhaps there will always be ways to bury bad news.

Posted in: Google, issues management, pr, public relations

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