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...Montreal Maine and Atlantic Railway has drawn the ire of local residents and even the premier for what has been described as a slow, largely unilingual, and even tone-deaf response to the tragedy.Ed Burkhardt, the president and CEO of the railway's parent company, Rail World, Inc., arrived on the scene Wednesday, nearly five days after the derailment incinerated the town centre.
He commented to a TVA television reporter beforehand that "I hope that I don't get shot at. I won't have a bullet proof vest on."Quebec Premier Pauline Marois said she understood Burkhardt didn't speak French, but felt he could have arrived on the scene earlier."It's a completely deplorable attitude from the company," Marois said in Quebec City....
Happy, Friday. This week's Friday PR Picks and social media missives are loaded with crisis management, content marketing and communication insight.
We're featuring 9 valuable crisis management, 10 public relations posts and 14 must-read social media articles. Perfect for the long weekend.
Food Network, Walmart, Caesars Entertainment…one by one, the many companies represented by Paula Deen are backing out on deals they’ve forged with the celebrity chef. The latest business to wash its hands of Paula Deen? Pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk.
The bad news continues for fallen idol Paula Deen, who, following allegations of racism, has been losing valuable deals left and right. Whether or not company leaders feel that Paula is actually a racist, they clearly do not wish to be associated with all the bad PR following this case.
JC Penney was under some social heat after some Reddit users (yup, here’s Reddit again – told you it was one to keep an eye out for!) remarked that the company’s new teapot bares a slight resemblance to Adolf Hitler. Yes, this is obviously an innocent mistake and a matter of personal perception – and is most certainly not a crisis. However, as we’ve seen time and time again, when not responded to appropriately, social media issues can escalate into social media crises. How did JC Penney respond to the Hitler accusations? JC Penney was wise to not take the situation too seriously, though they knew that it still needed to be responded to. Their strategy was to develop a response tweet and use it to respond to everyone mentioning the teapot in relation to Adolf Hitler.
Half measures rarely work in sports or apologies. The media are reporting that Nike is cutting ties with Livestrong, the cancer-fighting foundation started by Lance Armstrong. Armstrong himself broke away from Livestrong months ago in hopes of minimizing the blow back the charity received from news that the bicyclist finally admitted the long-rumored story that he had used performance enhancing drugs. The New York Times today reminds us that Nike stood by Tiger Woods after his reputation had a collision with a fire hydrant - and it initiate a new endorsement deal with Michael Vick after the quarterback got out of prison where he did time because of his role in dog fighting ring. But Nike is abandoning the Foundation built on Armstrong's reputation....
Earlier this week, I posted about the Facebook meltdown and trials and tribulations of Amy’s Baking Company Bakery Boutique & Bistro in Scottsdale. Arizona (Epic Facebook meltdown, PR fail or publicity ploy?). This un-reality show couldn’t get much stranger. It has more twists, turns and intrigue than a Shakespearean tragedy. Or maybe the Keystone Cops would be more accurate? The bistro was featured in a raucous season finale episode on Kitchen Nightmares featuring explosive celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. It was an entertaining and highly-charged reality TV episode complete with drama, screaming, yelling, heroes and villains....
In the Twitter era, marketers have to be extra careful that what they put on their websites isn't offensive, even intentionally. Extra, extra careful. It’s a lesson Target took to heart this week, apologizing for a product-naming discrepancy that some fuller-figured shoppers found offensive. The kerfuffle started when self-described “Digital Maven” Susan Clemens was shopping on Target.com and noticed an odd thing: The same style of dress in the exact same color was labeled differently depending on the size. The name of the color on the plus-size version was suggestive, and not in a flattering way. Clemens tweeted her discovery, quickly garnering dozens of retweets....
Owner Samy threatens diner after 90 min wait for pizza" You're about to witness one of the biggest social media meltdowns and PR fails in the short recorded history of the Internet. The big question is was it all a staged publicity stunt? It all happened on the season finale of chef Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares.
...Here’s the problem with that sentence: It doesn’t define what a “crisis” is. Does that advice mean that you should respond to every allegation some random dude hurls at you on Twitter? Or that you should respond immediately to mini-crises that may never be known to more than 12 people? And how can you tell the difference between a true brewing crisis and a small annoyance that will quickly flame out on its own? To help answer those questions, I reached out to four respected crisis communicators. They offered smart suggestions to help guide you in the earliest moments of a “crisis.”...
Mountain Dew might have thought twice about the risk and reward from a deal with someone just as focused on branding as it is. ...The company even earned some good press for buying a promoted tweet to publicize its mea culpa. And the top of its website leads with a giant “We Apologize” note. Following these comments, PepsiCo hasn’t put an executive on a public chopping block, and Tyler has declared they loved the idea when it pitched it. Which begs the question of how sincere this apology is. Audiences will probably trust artists more than brands, so PepsiCo cutting their losses must also include a loss of credibility with Tyler’s base....
While shipworkers in Mobile, Ala., are busy scrubbing and sanitizing the ill-fated Carnival Triumph, it seems cruise passengers are cleaning up with big discounts... Subsequent problems with the Carnival Dream and Carnival Legend, however, put the company back in the spotlight — the Dream cut short a cruise in March while the Legend had to skip a port call — and a soon-to-end sale was extended for another week. “The word I would use is ‘desperate,’” said Jay Caulk, general manager of The Travel Experts in Pompano Beach, Fla. “They have a lot to do to get rid of the black eye.” That’s not the reason for the discounts, says Carnival spokesman Vance Gulliksen: “These prices apply to just a handful of close-in sailings,” he told NBC News. “We’re trying to top off the voyages.”...
RBC broke the first rule of public relations, failing to plan for the possibility that employees whose jobs were being outsourced would be upset and take their complaints public, says one PR expert. In February, 45 of the bank's personnel were informed that they would be replaced by outsourced workers after the bank contracted a number of technological services to iGate, a California-based firm that specializes in sending jobs offshore. According to an RBC employee, personnel were given 90 days' notice. At least one of the Canadian employees complained that she was asked to train her own foreign replacement....
While social media can build your business brand, it can also tear you down. View this list of 10 potentially damaging social media problems. Small business social media is a good thing…usually. Of course, this week observers in business and technology fields got a good look at how social media can also go bad. Challenges in small business social media are inevitable. Social media tools can build your brand. But, they can also tear you down. There are many uncertainties too. Below are 10 troubles with small business social media and how to set them right..--
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Fans had made a to-be-published book by Paula Deen a top seller on Amazon, but the publisher, Random House, joined the list of business partners that have cut ties to the embattled chef....
The book deal was one of the last remaining lucrative business relationships for the embattled celebrity chef. Its cancellation came on a day when Sears, Kmart and J. C. Penney announced that they would stop selling products, including cookbooks, branded with her name. Since last week, the Food Network, Smithfield Foods, Walmart, Target, Caesars Entertainment, QVC and the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk have decided to suspend or sever ties with Ms. Deen after her admission in a legal deposition that she had used racist language in the past and allowed racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-Semitic jokes in one of her restaurants. Ms. Deen was deposed on video as part of a discrimination lawsuit filed last year by a former employee....(New York Times)
Last month, a man named Ken Hoinsky added his project to the [Kickstarter] website. He’s a writer who wanted to publish a book on the art of seduction called Above The Game: A Guide to Getting Awesome with Women. He quickly raised more than $16,000.
But some of the advice Hoinsky has dispensed in the past is controversial. Some critics even called his book a “rape manual.”... Many horrified people contacted Kickstarter and asked them to remove his listing. They didn’t. As the outrage understandably intensified, so too did the company’s crisis.
But when Kickstarter finally responded, they did it perfectly. You’ll find Kickstarter’s full apology below, deconstructed to analyze why each part worked so well. It’s a terrific template for a crisis response.
The arrest of the animal hospital’s former employee for bestiality horrified the public, but Peak Communicators disassociated the clinic from the accused—and pushed a positive story instead.
Carnival Cruise is an example of a company suffering long-term repercussions from a crisis. Not only has it affected the company, but the entire industry. I often mention the differences between a social media crisis and a social media issue. Yesterday, I evaluated how JC Penney handled their recent social media issue like a pro, and how they will suffer no negative consequences as a result – which is what defines it as an issue, rather than a crisis. Today, let’s evaluate the repercussions of a crisis. In doing this, I hope to help you clearly differentiate between a social media crisis and a social media issue....
Abercrombie & Fitch’s two-hour meeting this week with critics of its no-large-sizes strategy, and of CEO Mike Jeffries’ 2006 remarks that it only courts “attractive, cool” kids, prompted a mea culpa from the chain, and a vow to “take concrete steps to demonstrate our commitment to anti-bullying in addition to our ongoing support of diversity and inclusion,” the teen retailer said in a statement.
During the meeting, 18-year old activist Benjamin O’Keefe — whose Change.org petition urged A&F to carry larger sizes – Lyne Grefe, the CEO of the National Eating Disorder Association, among others, urged Abercrombie executives to add bigger clothes to store shelves, feature larger models in their branding efforts, cease hawking hyper sexualized advertising to its teen audience and redefine its warped, harmful notions of cool, O’Keefe told Forbes.com. Although the CEO was not at the meeting, the retailer offered a tacit apology for Jeffries’ remarks seven years ago, which included this gem: “A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes] and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”...
As you've probably heard by now, what The Onion is apologizing for is a tweet sent during the Academy Awards about the nine-year-old star of "Beasts of the Southern Wild." ... "Miss Wallis, you are young and talented and deserve better,” Onion CEO Steve Hannah wrote, vowing to “take immediate steps to discipline those responsible.” It’s the first time anyone can remember that The Onion has apologized for a joke that offended, and not for want of opportunity. If The Onion has a rule that children are exempt from outré humor, it must not have been in place when it published “Fun Toy Banned Because Of Three Stupid Dead Kids,” “God Answers Prayers Of Paralyzed Little Boy; ‘No,’ Says God,” “Ex-Pedophiles Share Tips On How To Make Your Kids Less Attractive,” or “Pope Vows To Get Church Pedophilia Down To Acceptable Levels.” Or, to cite a few that riff on real children, this one about Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson, or this one about Suri Cruise, or this other one about Suri Cruise, or this one about JonBenet Ramsey....
Crisis management has changed significantly. If you are a corporate leader of a multinational company today, and aim to protect your reputation for the long term, you need to ask yourself two questions: are we ready and are we nimble? Are we properly organized and can we respond in time when faced with a crisis? If you still rely on manuals that are more than six months old and do not have social media at its core, both questions are answered. Millions of citizen journalists roam society every day, with phone cameras and Internet access at the ready. They capture and instantly transmit around the world what they witness-or think they witness. They pass along unverified "news flashes" from acquaintances. Their tweets and posts become stories, alongside news from more established sources. These reports, unregulated and uncorroborated as they are, can create irreversible damage when inaccurate and left unaddressed....
Fans dressing up as their favorite movie characters while attending opening weekend film showings is nothing new. However, costumed moviegoers who partnered with Capital 8 Theatres in Missouri to promote the premiere ofIron Man 3 recently caused a panic, for which the theater is now apologizing. Had the cosplayers been dressed as Tony Stark and Pepper Potts, we imagine no one would have been particularly alarmed, but some group members donned S.H.I.E.L.D agent costumes — complete with fake firearms — which, given last year’s tragic shooting at an Aurora, COmovie theater (and the current high-alert mentality when it comes to guns), might not have been the best idea. Moviegoers, understandably frightened by the sight of people dressed in what appeared to be body armor and carrying assault rifles, called the local police. Once the dust settled, the complaints began rolling in and the theater was skewered on social media, some even accusing Capital 8 of intentionally causing the kerfuffle as a publicity stunt. In response, the company issued the following apology...
9 Ways to respond to reputation threats online... There's an increasingly dark side to online reputation management A week ago I had no idea the hornets’ nest I’d opened when I wrote about the things to do when your business is disparaged online.... ... Loaded for bear, my first questions to Ruddie were about the irony of a reputation management company being the focus of unanswered complaints. His responses surprised me. I learned several things that I believe are valuable news and that will even alter some of the advice I’ve been formerly giving to our agency’s clients. My thanks to Ruddie for his contributions to the following points. For example...
A dark website is a pre-developed site that is not set live until your corporation finds itself in the midst of a social media crisis. Pre-crisis, a dark website is equipped with the appropriate legal and other documentations that your corporation may feel will be needed, but not have the opportunity to acquire during an attack. In the event of a crisis, the dark site is set live and the appropriate information and details are added to it – such as communications to the public, as well as direct information and news concerning both the crisis and the brand. Dark websites are a highly effective social media crisis management strategy used in different situations by major corporations who want to position themselves as the leading source of information throughout the crisis. The following is a free white paper on dark websites and best practices for using them as a social media crisis management strategy....
BlackBerry, the beleaguered Canadian handset maker, today said it is contacting the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Ontario Securities Commission for formal reviews of the analysts Detwiler Fenton, after its analysts issued a statement saying that its new flagship handset, the BB Z10, was seeing record-levels of returns in retail sales — reports that BlackBerry today says are “false and misleading.” “Sales of the BlackBerry® Z10 are meeting expectations and the data we have collected from our retail and carrier partners demonstrates that customers are satisfied with their devices,” said BlackBerry President and CEO Thorsten Heins said in a statement. “Return rate statistics show that we are at or below our forecasts and right in line with the industry. To suggest otherwise is either a gross misreading of the data or a willful manipulation. Such a conclusion is absolutely without basis and BlackBerry will not leave it unchallenged.” The move is a sign of just how sensitive BlackBerry is right now to getting the launch of its new device right — and how harmful publicity slams like this one can be as a result....
Carnival cruise experiences multiple technical problems resulting in negative media coverage based on MediaMiser's monitoring and analysis.
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Terrible tragedy made worse by terrible Railroad CEO response...