Corporate Facebook pages: when “fans” attack

Pictures taken from google images

Article by: Valerie Champoux, Julia Durgee and Lauren McGlynn, Summary done by Shaymaa Al Kharusi

Journal of business strategy, VOL. 33 NO.2 2012, pp. 22-30

Introduction: What happens offline with unsatisfied services migrate to online social media within seconds with angry posts, conversation and activists orchestrated attack. This new form of communication could benefit companies by getting feedback and making changes and holding company’s accountable for their actions. Facebook is a great way companies can collect information about their fans, gather insight and monitor and encourage healthy conversations. Companies use facebook as it’s the most visited website, and companies use it as a new modern way of communicating and using it as a strategy, but an easy target for angry mobs or account hijackers with a message to spread. In 2010 activists who didn’t agree with their environmental impact attacked Nestlé’s corporate facebook page. Instead of Nestle apologizing to their mistake they responded inappropriately to criticism.

Public outrage defined: There are 3 basic sources of public outrage: harm, fear of harm and threatened values. Anger is often aimed at corporations because the publics perception of their unfair treatment. Many journalist, political figures, and activists are in the “outrage business” as it’s easier for them to attract a large number of audiences. Companies would even shift their public anger to their competitors to gain an edge with the public. If the companies are careful they could recover from the negative attacks by correcting their problem and rebuilding their public’s trust.  Listening to the public’s complaints and suggestions on how to fix the problem before attempting to fix or apologize, would give them a chance to express their thoughts and feelings while the company can learn and gain image from that. Some companies consider that a strategic plan as part of their decision making process. Throughout the years, outrage has been formed in different communicative ways; word of mouth, survey, phone call, email but with technology nowadays consumers are targeting louder ways to get their points across and that’s through social media.

Enter Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard University founded Facebook in 2004. It’s a website where it connects family and friends together from all over the world. After 7 years Facebook invited Apple, Amazon.com, and electronic arts to open their company profiles and after a year the invitation was extended to all companies to benefit from it. Facebook made it easier for companies to monitor their profile and their public. Companies can interact with their public by posting new products, competitions, promoting products, relevant articles and topics for conversations, encouraging followers to donate for causes and informing customers of upcoming events. Facebook staffers argue that companies will abandon their websites and rely on their Facebook pages for all business activities (Starbucks has over 21 million likes on FB and their website has 1.8 million visitors a month).

The dark side of social media: The downfall of facebook is when the public attacks you and puts negative comments on your wall, which is viewed by billions of people around the world. In a matter of seconds your company’s reputation could be destroyed through an angry rant of a customer, activist or even competitor. Negative posts or personal insults or accusations has a great impact to media and is quickly circulated by media stream media outlets.

Nestlé’s story: Nestle is the world’s largest food company established in 1905 merger between Swiss food companies. In 1970’s they made a huge mistake when the company actively promoted its infant formula products to mothers in developing nations. These women didn’t know the proper nutrition for newborns or breast milk. On July 7^th 1977, American activists launched a boycott against them and spread the outrage globally. Years later Nestle now includes social consciousness and responsibility messages on their websites. Critics have more catching methods of communication than printed words and booklet.

In 2010, Nestle failed to monitor their facebook properly and faced a melt down on social media in matter of minutes. Greenpeace organized an online protest against Nestlé’s palm oil supplier an Indonesia company Sinar Mas was deforesting the rainforest of Indonesia. They posted a report on their FB page, and a web video campaign targeting the death of orangutans. Nestle removed the video as they claimed copyright claims. This is where Nestle made a mistake by removing the video, which aggravated Greenpeace activists more and acted on it by asking their supporters to talk against Nestle through social media. That actually worked and Nestle announced to stop using products that come with orangutan and Indonesian rainforest. After that Nestle repeated the same mistake by deleting posts of the their followers and commenting inappropriately on their FB page in regards to followers that had the kit kat killer logo on their profile picture. So the activists got aggravated again and started a whole new outrage. The moderator had to apologize for his sarcastic post and deleting post of others. If Nestle was prepared for a social media strategy, Greenspeace campaign situation could have been sorted in a better manner by listening to their public and using the appropriate tone to talk to them. Facebook has been a place for the public to freely express their emotions and thoughts, the only way any company can overcome an FB outrage is by overcoming it and listening to their public.

Social media done right: In April 2011, Southwest Airlines was forced to cancel approximately 100 flights for inspection after a hole was found in a Boeing 737 from Phoenix, Arizona to Sacramento, California. The roof ripped open which caused an emergency landing in Yuma, Arizona. Passengers suffered minor injuries and were in shock, within hours a replacement plane was sent for the passengers to board.  Social media played a big rule in this event, updating the public about the incident to feedback and analysis of Southwest consequently grounding other planes. Southwest crew didn’t try to downplay the incident or delete the comments that were posted they allowed the public to vent out knowing 1.35 million fans are reading and the rest of the world. Southwest showed how to handle a situation like this, by allowing the conversations to roll as they are. The company has learnt that FB is a great platform to be proactive, where the public voices their concerns and the company replies back.

Another FB outrage story is the Gap’s incident in October of 2010 when they decided to change the logo and the public responded by comments of not liking it and wanting it to go back to how it was. And the company responded to the comments of the public and they kept the old original logo and used facebook to their advantage to know their public opinion.

Steps for success: 7 steps a business can apply to help reduce a crisis on social media:

1-    Have a team in place

2-    Track company mentions on the internet

3-    Act quickly

4-    Manage ongoing dialogue

5-    Take responsibilities

6-    Fix the situation

7-    Move on

Conclusion: A company can’t predict what comments their followers would post on their facebook page, so they should be prepared in advance with a strategy plan specially for social media incidents according to the 7 steps easily to follow. As social media is a huge part of our life today, Nestlé’s story is the perfect what not to do in a situation of outrage on social media. The future of social media is still not defined in the business world but facebook will continue to play an important role on companies communication strategy.

Making A Crisis Worse: The Eleven Biggest Mistakes In Crisis Communication

Picture via google images

Abstract: A nationally known author in crisis management consulting provides guidelines about avoiding common mistakes made during a crisis by communicators in organizations.

Introduction: All organizations are drawn to crisis, it could come in any form; lawsuits, accusations, Mother Nature, sudden changes in company ownership or management, audience’s reaction, media views. The cheapest way to turn experiences to opportunity is by learning from others mistakes. Here are eleven what not to do during a crisis:

1-    Play Ostrick: Hoping no one knows about the crisis, and not do anything about it.

2-    Only start working on a potential crisis situation after its public: Make sure you prepare before your crisis gets public, doing it last minute

3-    Let your reputation speak for you: Ignore polishing your reputation and keep it as it is, with the world assumption of you.

4-    Treat media like enemy:  Go against the media and don’t give them what they want, it would backfire by them going after your organization in a negative way.

5-    Get stuck in reaction mode instead of proactive: Instead of acting on your plan you continue to look like the guilty party defending yourself.

6-    Use language your audience doesn’t understand: Jargon and arcane acronyms could confuse your audience.

7-    Assume that truth will triumph over all: perception is damaging.

8-    Address only issues and ignore feelings: Don’t care about people’s feelings and concentrate on the issue.

9-    Make only written statement: It’s easier to send written statement than face people.

10-Use “best guess” methods of assessing damage: Conclude from the negative press and not find out what your people know and want.

11-Do the same thing over and over again expecting different results: Repeat the same mistakes from the first crisis expecting different results.

Article by Jonathan Bernstein and Summarized by Shaymaa Al Kharusi

Journal of Promotion Management, Vol 12(3/4) 2006

Case Study: Sayonara citibank

*Picture taken from google images

Summary by Shaymaa Al Kharusi, Said Khalil, Neha Dutt, Sarah Rahman

Case study

Japan’s regulators ordered Citigroup to close its private banking offices in Japan because financial service agency “FSA” accused the private bank of selling securities and derivatives at unfair prices to its clients and Citibank ignored warnings to teach it’s salespeople better practices and for letting a client open an account that could be suspected of being associated with money laundering and for lending money to clients who used the proceeds to manipulate share markets. Finally, the bank had built a law evading sales system that ignores the law and regulations of Japan

Identifying the issues

• —  Selling securities and derivatives at unfair prices to its clients
• —  Citibank ignored to train their salespeople
• —  Opening accounts to clients who would be money laundering
• —  Giving loans to clients who used the proceeds to manipulate share markets

How Citigroup handle the issue

• —  Douglas Peterson, person in charge of Citigroup Japan, had to fix the bank’s practices and reputation
• —  They didn’t try to play the charges down
• —  The chief executive “Charles O Prince III” released/issued a memo to his employees highlighting the serious consequences of neglecting to comply with regulatory requirements and of violating their business standards (the bank standards).

The Consequences after the scandal:

• —  After financial service agency “FSA” statement, Citigroup could struggle in growing private banking markets in other Asian countries such as China and India
• —  Japanese clients would run away in response to Citigroup’s bad reputation
• —  The bank might attract scrutiny from regulators outside Japan, pressure from NY Head office

What happened to the bank after the crisis?

• —  The bank shares has been reduced to neutral from a buy, with a charge that “aggressive profit rewards are dominating judgment” and this aggressive charge created a “monster” beyond the control of the management.
• —  They had to create a culture with shared set values that guides employees behavior
• —  Analyst said they need a more aggressive approach and sending a memo wont fix anything
• —  There was a financial threat to the banks goals
• —  Mason said that Citi cant achieve their goals because they cant safeguard themselves from regulatory and reputation risk

 

Issues Management Defined

Summary by Shaymaa Al Kharusi and Shima Vezvaei

There is always a difference between an issue and a crisis. This chapter talks about the differences and the definitions of each of these terms. We always see how organizations try to run their place and try to adjust to the shift in public’s expectations and values and their needs.  If you don’t attend to their issues and needs and they react to it proactively, that could cause a huge problem to your organization. Your organization would look at the loss and profit, and that’s what is important at the end of the day.

What is issues management?

Issues management has been around for over 20 years now, which major corporations have been using it as a powerful strategic planning tool. In the 70’s, there was a lot of hostility towards corporations that resulted in communicators to rethink towards the role of corporate communication. Due to the increase of criticism, companies started to hire PR companies to clear their imagine and reputation.

Issue management’s aim was to define the strategies that companies needed to take to avoid the activist groups, which was putting pressure at the organizations. Therefore, corporate communication implemented a way companies could deal with these critics and issues. In 1978, the US Public Affairs council describes it as a program a company uses to increase their knowledge of the public policy process and increase the image and values of their involvement in the ongoing process. Heath and Cousino definition of issues management is that it’s a result of activism and pressure that corporation have to implement and define CSR and what its standards should be. Another scholar W Howard Chase and another specialist introduced “advocacy advertising”. Companies were advised to move from information base to advocacy position. As a result of that the relationship between business and society has become an important strategic tool in reputational and financial terms.

Chase and his colleague Barry Jones defines issue management as a tool that is used to identify, analyze and mange upcoming issues and respond to them before the public knows about it. They thought most companies had to react after the issue has been exposed and were forced to settle for the new regulations and guidelines that were given to them.

Some scholars say that public policy is the formation of government intervening, media and the public. According to Chase and Jones they describe the formation of public policy as an outcome of interaction between public and private view. They state that any corporation has the right to formulate public policy without waiting for government to intervene.

What about the skeptics?

Critics say that the term “issue management” implies manipulation. While others say that no organization can control their environment to stand still or can know the direction in which the environment will change.

According to Tucker and Broom, adopting to issue management exists in the following areas:

—  Financial risk

—  Boundaries

—  Diversity

A research was conducted in the UK across major public corporations indicated that corporate communication and public affairs knew the importance of managing issues, only 10% of the sample thought that their senior management dealt with their issues proactively with strategic planning process. Less than 5% thought their organizations applied a mixed approach (linking planning, communication, regulatory & other appropriate functions) to execute the plan for possible upcoming issues on corporate objectives. While, 95% of the sample thought the issues were handled accordingly and in an ad hoc manner, for the sake of their financial performance and the reputation of their organizations goals.

Case studies and academic research show the effective use of issues management techniques can:

—  Increase market share

—  Enhance corporate reputation

—  Save money

—  Build important relationships

If organizations fail to maintain the issues management it could lead to destruction of the market share, effect reputation of the organization, increase in expenses, management perceived in a negative way and reduce corporate independence by being strict with the organizations policies.

There is a difference between issues management and crisis management. Issues management is less action and more predictions, thus, its proactive and tries to solve the issue before it gets out of hand. As for crisis management it’s more reactive and deals with situations after it had become public knowledge and affects the companies image. There is limited timeline when it comes to crisis management; the issue has to be solved straight away. The audience and actions are known and has to be communicated immediately. With issues management you have time to solve the issue before it escalates to a crisis. Here you tend to eliminate any possible issue that would affect the company’s image by making changes and following the trends. According to Tucker and Broom issues management is the process an organization should follow to help protect the market, reduce risk, create opportunities and manage the reputation of the corporation for the benefits of the organizations and shareholders.

What is an Issue?

There are so many different definitions of issue. Hainsowrth and Mend (1988) US specialists defined it as a consequence of some action between one party and another, which resulted to a private negotiation with adjustments to public policy through regulatory action. Others put it in a basic form and said it’s a conflict between organizations and their audiences. Basically, an issue is a gap between corporate practice and stakeholders expectations. According to Chase and Jones they describe an issue as an unsettled matter where you can handle it with a decision. Usually managing issues involves change. The aim is to control the impact before it ends up badly. The goal is to benefit the organization by knowing early the potential impact of the change, and by knowing through your surroundings and environment what are the upcoming changes so they have time to analyze and think creatively towards the issue.

Who should practice issues management?

According to Chase, public relations practitioners and the categories that follow public relations, like public affairs, communications and government relations.

What are the functions of issues management?

—  Identifying issues and trends

—  Setting priorities and evaluating the impact

—  Establishing where the companies position

—  Designing companies action and response to help them achieve their goals

—  Implementing the plans

These functions must go hand in hand with helping the organization to accomplish their tasks through management. The key tasks are: planning, monitoring, analyzing and communicating. In order for a company to maintain its positive outlook to their audience they have to sustain their public policy environment by establishing a relationship with the stakeholders.

Smart planning and operations

If the issues managers capture the changes in public policy and integrate it to strategic planning, that can offer opportunities for organizations to grow and guide them to the standards that the company can operate by. Issues management can enhance the company’s responsiveness to environment change.

Tough defense and smart offence

If companies get involved and find the core of the issue before it becomes bigger then their communication campaign would likely succeed.

Getting the house in order

This is about getting the CSR matters going. Public affairs have to consider the public policy forces and help in establishing a proper corporate planning and ethics in the organization. A responsive organization doesn’t look at how to cope with external demands only they also look at how these demands can work technically and economically.

Scouting the terrain

Organizations study and analyze what’s going on around them. They look at what could affect their corporation or what are the issues that are happening now that could be monitored and changed. There are different ways you could monitor your public by surveys, polls or futurist, and a more modern way is through scientific technology where valuables show how issues could be identified, monitored and analyzed. The key to make this work is through understanding the culture of your organization, organizational and political structures and public policy issues analysis.  Only then they would be able to monitor and analyze and improve their public policy and strategic plans.

*All pictures in this post are taken from google images

Online PR: Emerging Organizational Practice

By Pertti Hurme

International Journal of Corporate Communication

Abstract: This article describes the changes in the media and how companies and organizations operate. These changes have big impacts in public relations practices and education. New PR tools are described, identified and guidelines are given.  In the future, there wont be two kinds of PR practitioners anymore. Instead PR practitioners are expected to integrate all means of communication in their professional qualifications.

Introduction

The development of information and technology goes hand in hand with communication.  Ross and Middleberg (1999) state that information and communication technologies are revolutionizing the practice of public relations. They believe that if PR practitioners don’t use Internet communication as a PR strategy in this era they may damage their clients and employer. This article describes recent changes in the media landscape where companies and organizations operate. These changes have great impact on the basic practice of PR and education.

Organizational Media Landscape Changing

There have been many innovations in information and communication technology in the last few decades.  A crucial factor in the success of these innovations depends in the speed they are adopted by organizations. It took radio 30-40 years to have 50 million listeners, and TV more than 10 years, while the World Wide Web (WWW) the number of users in 3-4 years. It seems like Mobile Internet will be adopted even faster.

WWW started in the mid 1990’s and now it’s widely used in organizations in the form of intranets (internal to organizations) and extranets (clients and partners have access to specific areas of the intranet) in addition to the public Internet. Mobile Internet will increase fast and change the organizational media landscape quickly. Therefore, the gain in network mobile communications will be important in all kinds of organizations.

Impacts of Communication Technologies on Public Relations

PR practitioners have 2 tasks; one involves message production and sending out these messages to public/clients/stakeholders in multiple channels, and the second task planning and executing the communication strategies.

The use of new communications technologies has added dialogue between and within organizations. You have the one-to-one dialogue; which is email between 2 persons, or many-to-many involves a large number of dialogues in a discussion group or chat room… etc.  Organizations have to deal with Web Dialogues, which are very difficult to control.

Mass communication is fading and shifting to dialogical and interactional communication. PR practitioners need to be smarter than the Internet users. The Internet’s speed, interactivity and crossing nations borders make it attractive to the public relations practitioners as a communication tool. The new information and communication technologies have potential for interactivity.

Mobile technologies show plenty of promise in interactivity. 2 types of interactivity:

1)   Quasi-interactivity: one way communication (eg: subscribing to organization’s news releases and sending feedback to the organization)

2)   Two-way, truly: interactive communication (eg: exchanging email messages with a PR person)

Both forms of interactivities are useful.  Networked communication still needs to me monitored if the audience is large. Through the internet PR practitioners can reach their clients and stakeholders directly bypassing the gatekeepers, but also engage in dialogue with them directly.

New Technologies, New Practices for PR Practitioners

4 functions are distinguished in the practice of public relations: analysis, plan, action and evaluation. In PR practice the perceptions and opinions of important publics are evaluated. Conventional methods include analyses of print media and analyses of publics. New analysis have emerged: web pages and electronic publications can be examined, survey questionnaires can be online, Usenet discussions and chat rooms can be monitored to track current and potentially troublesome issues, logs of organizations websites can be analyzed and number of hits monitored.

By monitoring the Internet, PR practitioners learn what their clients, stakeholder and the public are saying. By monitoring and getting feedback you get to know how to improve your strategies and messages.

Evaluation works simultaneously with other functions. Ongoing evaluation of  both analyses, plans and action are vitally important. In modern organizations these functions cant be divided. These functions follow these guidelines:

*   Consider clients/audiences

*   Online means up to date

*   Get in the right lane on the information highway

*   Align yourself with people in similar industries

*   Synergy and integration are important

*   Give the clients, the stakeholders and the media what they want the way they want it

Conclusion

In organizational public relations, print media will stay strong, but the new information and communication technologies will increase. Nowadays keywords of PR practitioners are interactivity, dialogue, dynamism, and involvement. In the future  ‘Web PR age’, there wont be two kinds of PR practitioners; those who use traditional PR tools and those who practice online communication. These two will be integrated together to one tool. Organizations now need to rethink their strategies and tactics.  They need to look at PR in a different way, interactive and networked.

PR practitioners have to have good skills in information and communication technologies. Their outlook has to be wide and they are expected to be experts on group and team communications as well as organizational behavior while there is a constant change in information and communication technologies. They have to understand how people use media, how they produce messages, and how the borderline between the reception and production have become blurred due from the new information and communication technologies. PR practitioners have to integrate all communications to be part of their professional qualifications.

The Book Has Arrived

The book has arrived in time... Ordered this from Amazon for my exam. BUT, every PR practitioner has to have this book. You can find the book online if you need or order it on Amazon or from your local bookshop....

Happy READING

I Am Who I Am Because of You

You always hear the phrase I am who I am because of my mum! That is very true.  A mother always moulds her children to become who they are today.  I’m a strong believer of that. 

My mother always believed in me no matter what stage in my life I was in. She always told me to follow my instincts and go towards my goals, but to always stay true to myself.  I learnt my courage and independence from her and I’ll always be greatful to her.

Being a strong individual where you have your own vision and view in life was always my moto, and my mother appreciated that and always encouraged me to be that way. Her greatest advice to me and still is today  “Be true to yourself” and that to me is the best advice I could every get from anyone. I’ve learnt being true to your self you gain respect and self-confidence. And to me, that is how you can overcome anything you go through in life, whether it’s good or bad.

Another article I wrote for Al Mara magazine and it was published for Mothers Day edition March 2010