I watched with interested yesterday (November 09, 2011) as the Twittersphere exploded with rumours about a crisis unfolding on Waitrose’s facebook page. With reports of Waitrose heading for a ‘Nestle’ incident ringing in my ears, I immediately logged on to facebook to see what all the fuss was about. At teatime yesterday, the outpouring of outrage on the page was threatening to take on a life of its own as people who had no knowledge of the interest chipped in with their twopenneth.
At that point it did indeed look as if a crisis was unfolding before our very eyes, as any PR worth their salt knows, the media abhors a vacuum, and social media is no different. Waitrose was notably absent from the discussions evolving online and, starved of facts, people made judgements based on assumption and rumour, with tensions running very high at one stage.
However, about an hour ago, Waitrose stepped in to fill the vacuum and provide a statement which, as I write, seems to have stopped the discussion in its tracks and satisfied the disgruntled posters. So what can Waitrose, and the rest of us, learn about this incident? The key to successfully managing an issue and ensuring that it doesn’t become a crisis is to keep communicating. Keep on talking, explaining and reassuring people and you gain their trust. Dialogue requires effort from both sides and it is only through dialogue that mutual understanding and goodwill can be attained. So, even if the claims being made cannot be verified or are being exaggerated, continuing to engage with detractors on their terms is a sure fire way of keeping a lid on things until you can establish the facts.
As for Waitrose, it seems that a crisis has been averted and goodwill maintained. A happy ending?
This just reinforces my personal view that big and complex companies
ReplyDeletehave little to gain from Facebook, and so much to lose. There seems to
be a general view within large companies that they 'should' be using
social media, without fully evaluating whether or not it is a suitable
media channel for them. I'm not against social media per se, just the
inappropriate use of it.
Facebook is a pandora's box and, once open, the demons are very hard to
get back in. Companies seem eternally optimistic about the benefits
that Facebook can bring them, without acknowledging the damage it can
inflict.
Waitrose perhaps envisaged people swapping lovely recipes, or
bemoaning the lack of seasonal exotic fruit. But, as we have seen from
this incident, it becomes a very public forum for some very messy and
complex complaints, involving human beings with all their nuances and
subjectivity. The problem with this, is that the integrity of the brand
values of Waitrose, carefully constructed, crafted and managed over
many years, can be chipped away at, if problems aren't managed
properly. As we can see from this issue, for those people that
threatened to boycott the store, the Waitrose brand became embodied as
the Northampton store manager.
There is a perception that Facebook is free, which is very appealing to
some companies. But of course the reality is that, to provide the
constant monitoring and instant (yet considered) responses required for
handling crisis situations such as these, it is extremely expensive. I
don't think it's worth it. All the benefits that Facebook offer, could
be contained imaginatively on their own website.
Yes, I think that sometimes companies adopt a magpie approach to marketing communications tools, i.e. 'we must use whatever is new and shiny' without giving any thought to the strategic approach that is required in that platform.
ReplyDeleteThere is a growing body of research (see Brian Solis' work, for example) into the kinds of online communications strategies that work, so to simply try to apply offline marketing techniques to an online environment is poor practice.
That said, I do think that Waitrose redeemed themselves in the end, although perhaps having learned the lesson that online environments require different handling.