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.