Taking marketing too far can create a need for crisis management
Marketers are battling to see who can be the next viral sensation, but along with that push to be at the leading edge comes the risk of creating reputation issues for yourself in the process.
Video game company Ubisoft found this out first hand after a carefully timed stunt went awry, leaving employees at an Australian media company scared and upset. See, Ubisoft is promoting its new game Watch Dogs, which features the story of a hacker antihero, by shipping sealed metal safes to members of the media. The recipients were supposed to receive a call with an unlock code just as the safe arrived, making for a fun cyber-spy experience that would hopefully lead to buzz around the title.
Well, the Ninemsn offices never got the voicemail, and as a result were left with a sealed safe that started beeping when they toyed with it…and wouldn’t stop, sparking obvious fears of an explosive device. Staff was quickly evacuated, and law enforcement brought in to clear the device.
As you might expect, police and Ninemsn staff were less than amused when a collection of Watch Dogs swag was the safe’s only contents, and the story quickly hit the media, causing Ubisoft to take a heavy dose of mockery.
Knowing it had made a mistake, Ubisoft released the following statement as a crisis management effort:
“As part of a themed promotion for Watch Dogs, our team in Australia sent voicemail messages to some local media alerting them that they’d receive a special package related to the game. Unfortunately, the delivery to Ninemsn didn’t go as planned, and we unreservedly apologise to Ninemsn’s staff for the mistake and for any problems caused as a result. We will take additional precautions in the future to ensure this kind of situation doesn’t happen again.”
One more point we feel compelled to mention – thus far we’ve seen no reports of a fine or further punishment for Ubisoft. Interestingly enough, if that holds true it will mean that, despite flirting with crisis, this failure may turn out to be a PR win in the end.
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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The cyber crises keep rolling in, the latest being a new ransomware threat attack that affects Apple devices – iPhones, iPads and Macs. Making use of the “Find My iPhone”, “Find My iPad”, and “Find My Mac” apps, hackers have found a way to access the cloud-based controls for others’ devices and lock them remotely. After this, they demand a ransom be paid via PayPal in order to have the device unlocked.
Rumor about the level of access hackers had gained to Apple’s iCloud service quickly began to fly, and the company didn’t wait long to get its side of the story out, delivering the below statement to media outlets:
“Apple takes security very seriously and iCloud was not compromised during this incident. Impacted users should change their Apple ID password as soon as possible and avoid using the same user name and password for multiple services. Any users who need additional help can contact AppleCare or visit their local Apple Retail Store.”
While this is where we would typically lambast an organization for a failure to even attempt to show compassion, or any other emotion really, the fact that such robotic communications often has no negative impact for Apple is why the company remains a virtual anomaly in the world of crisis management and public relations.
As for what we should all be doing to protect our data, the solution is simple enough – avoid using the same password for multiple services, back your devices up regularly, and, if you are hit by this latest ransomware, head to the nearest Apple store for help restoring your device. Of course, if you’re really worried about it, you can just disable the “Find My _____” service on your iDevice as well, cutting off the angle of attack entirely.
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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More and more believe people should be held responsible for things they say and do online
In 2013 we created the Weiner Awards to recognize cases in which individuals disrupt their own lives or careers due to bad behavior on social media, and with a YouGov survey showing more Americans than ever think companies should be able to discipline employees based on inappropriate social media use, we fully expect to see even more entries this year than we did last.
This is a clear reminder for individuals to watch their behavior, but what about their employers? How can they safely remove employees who are creating issues for them on social media without facing problems as a result?
It’s actually more simple than you may think. Put policies in place, and train everyone on those policies regularly. If you have a set of rules you can prove you’ve made clear, you’re far less likely to see difficulties removing a problem employee from your ranks.
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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Delivering the details on crisis management straight to the public via YouTube
Baton Rogue, Louisiana-based Kleinpeter Farms Dairy has been chasing the source of mysterious issues with their milk products for months. Despite a quest that saw outside consultants hired, equipment replaced, employees removed, and the help of an actual dairy scientist, consumers continued to return the milk en masse, and wholesale customers continued to drop Kleinpeter as a supplier.
How was this costly mystery resolved? Kleinpeter CEO Jeff Kleinpeter put it all out for the public to see in the following YouTube video:
An admission of fault, an explanation of what happened and how it will be prevented in the future, and a way for stakeholders to ask questions or find more information – not to mention the late-night investigative work. Not bad crisis management, Kleinpeter.
The two things that could have improved this video would have been a tall cup of compassion and some material amends. If Mr. Kleinpeter had started off with something like, “We know you’re careful about what you put into your bodies, and we here at Kleinpeter would like to apologize for any concern we may have caused”, the entire video would have been that much better received. Combined with some sort of deep discount and/or giveaway of product to compensate customers for the inconvenience and worry, that apology would have packed a wallop.
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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Network’s latest hire creates huge crisis management risk
Even in an era where many members of the media are more keen on big ratings than credibility, Fox is scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of reputation. While one might expect the network, lambasted regularly for biased reporting and a lack of fact-checking, would be cautious when it came to situations that could grind its name further into the mud, a recent move from Fox Business Network shows it’s doing just the opposite.
The problem is, Payne’s financial trustworthiness has been called into question multiple times in the past. Most recently, a 2013 investigation by watchdog group Media Matters for America found that Payne had been paid to promote three companies that are now worth almost nothing.
“Payne used his Fox credentials in promotional materials to assure skeptical investors that his advice was trustworthy,” Eric Hananoki, a research fellow at Media Matters, wrote in the report. Payne joined Fox in 2007 as a paid contributor.
Brainy Brands Company, which Payne claimed could turn “$10,000 into 33,300,” is now worth a fraction of a penny per share. Payne said NXT Nutritionals Holdings could “turn $10,000 into $25,000,” but it is now worth less than a cent per share. And Generex Biotechnology Corporate, which Payne recommended could trade at $1.38 per share, is now worth less than 3 cents per share.
Even worse, Payne has already paid out a $25,000 fine to the SEC after failing to disclose that he was paid to promote various company’s stock, although he managed to avoid admitting any wrongdoing in the process.
This is actually one case we’re surprised the lawyers haven’t jumped into already. While legal and crisis management teams can sometimes be at odds, the potential for bad behavior by Payne to have a financial impact on his employer should be very much apparent to both sides.
Fox bringing someone already proven to be lacking in ethics into the fold, and allowing them to dispense advice to unsuspecting viewers, is the very definition of asking for trouble.
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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Retailer still feeling the pain of holiday data breach
A full five months after its enormous data breach, Target is still scrambling for ways to convince shoppers to come back. The big red retailer’s latest move was to give CEO Gregg Steinhafel the boot, allegedly to bring in new leadership that will, “help restore consumer confidence”, but so far all the move has done is spook investors.
“You got to wonder what prompted it now. What else will come to light,” said Dieter Waizenegger, executive director, of CtW Investment Group, which advises union pension funds with about $250 billion under management, including those owning about 3.3 million Target shares.
“We would hazard a guess that first-quarter sales continued to be hurt by the data breach aftermath and that the Canada expansion is still in trouble,” Carol Levenson, an analyst with bond researcher Gimme Credit, said in a report.
“We believe this to be a very inopportune time for a change at the top of Target, given the challenges the company is facing on multiple fronts,” Moody’s [Investors Service] Vice President Charles O’Shea said.
Any dip of this magnitude is bound to take time to climb out of, even when everything is done properly. Between the stumbles with external crisis management and what comes across as difficulty keeping things together internally, Target has a long road ahead.
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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This is why you need to look at advertising with an eye for crisis management
Dove has been quite successful as a brand in recent years, in part thanks to its campaigns focused on women with a wide range of body types. Its latest campaign never went to print, however, thanks to an early reveal from the New York Times that got stakeholders fired up.
Have a look at the proposed design, which would have gone up on billboards in New Jersey this summer:
That’s right, the ad, which, considering it came out of a multimillion dollar organization, had to have passed through several committees and was signed off on by company leadership, seriously addresses New Jersey as “The Armpit of America”.
For our readers not in the States, this is not a term used endearingly, but rather the go-to insult for anyone looking to take a dig at Jersey. Making the choice even more baffling, Dove parent company Unilever is actually headquarted in New Jersey!
As far as we’re concerned, this is a complete crisis management failure. An ad like this, that is so clearly offensive to a large group of your stakeholders, should never make it to the public eye. Heck, if we were Dove artists and drew this up as a joke amongst ourselves we’d be putting it through the shredder twice before we clocked out.
Predictably, Dove’s Facebook and Twitter pages bubbled over with comments from angry and offended New Jersey residents defending their home state and blasting the billboard, waking the brand up enough to let everyone know their feedback had been heard and the ad would be pulled.
It feels like we’re dishing this advice out nearly every week, but here goes again – when you finish drafting up that edgy new ad campaign, how about taking a little survey?
Ask your family, friends, colleagues…heck, maybe, if you’re one of the largest manufacturers of personal care products in the world, you might even have the budget to bring in a focus group of those in your target area to ask what they think.
Just sayin’.
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[The following guest post from Rick Kelly, Vice President of Strategic Communications at Triad Strategies examines the dangers that arise when you let the legal department override common sense.]
Failing to balance legal concerns and reputation can create major crises
When conducting crisis management training, one of the points we always make is that what works in a court of law and what works in the Court of Public Opinion aren’t necessarily the same things.
General Mills, which possesses an exceptional stable of iconic food brands, learned this the hard way last week when it changed the terms under which its customers are permitted to interact with the company online. The ensuing public backlash caused the company to revert to the earlier agreement and apologize after three days of social media turmoil.
Like many consumer product companies, General Mills capitalizes on social media and other digital communication tools to build and strengthen brand loyalty. Customers are able to get recipe ideas, download coupons, take advantage of promotions, view videos, etc., and in doing so, imply their acceptance of a “terms-of-use” agreement.
And again, like many consumer product companies, General Mills is interested in limiting its legal liability and avoiding the over-the-top awards that plaintiffs extract from deep-pocketed corporations on occasion.
What caused everyone to choke on their Cheerios was when General Mills updated its website terms-of-use agreement to include a provision requiring website visitors to give up their right to sue the company. Instead, they would be required to resolve any claims through binding arbitration, an approach that tends to be more favorable toward the defendant and eliminates class-action opportunities.
The New York Times began the buzzkill with a business-page article that posed the question of whether downloading a 50-cent cereal coupon could cost customers their legal rights. Facebook and Twitter were immediately onto it, and posts questioned whether “liking” the company’s Facebook page or following it on Twitter constituted a forfeiture of consumers’ right to sue as well.
The Times reported that the company had made the revisions following a California judge’s ruling last month against a motion to dismiss a case brought by two mothers who accused General Mills of deceptively marketing its Nature Valley products as 100 percent natural when they are not.
Digiday, a media company for digital media, marketing and advertising professionals, quoted National Consumer Law Center attorney David Seligman as saying arbitration clauses are more common than most people realize.
“General Mills was public about it, so it caught people’s attention,” Seligman told Digiday. “The vast majority of companies already have arbitration clauses. I don’t think this will put pressure on companies to remove them, and there are all kinds of sneaky ways to put these things up.”
In other words – and we apologize in advance for our lack of restraint – the folks at General Mills aren’t the only ones with Trix up their sleeves. We’re likely to see more about arbitration clauses moving forward, and we’ll watch with interest to see which court – court of law, or Court of Public Opinion – prevails.
Is poor customer service creating unnecessary crises for your organization?
Customer anger affects business today to such a degree that there are studies focused entirely on the subject. The 2013 National Customer Rage Study aimed to determine what causes rage in customers, how to best mitigate it, and which systems could help to minimize its impact.
The study found plenty of reason to make providing quality customer service an integral part of your crisis management efforts, including that:
– Since 2011 the number of people who have gone online to post information about problems with an organization has nearly doubled.
– Overall customer rage has increased 8% since 2011.
– MOST complaintants are dissatisfied with how companies are handling their complaints.
– 56% of complaintants felt they got NOTHING as a result of complaining.
– 76% of these just wanted an apology, only 32% got one
– Automated response phone systems, understaffing of customer care agents, and lack of empowerment for agents to make necessary changes are all major factors contributing to customer rage.
– When companies added non-monetary remedies (most often a simple apology) to the monetary relief they provided customers, complaintant satisfaction DOUBLED.
– Word of mouth resulting from dissatisfied complaintants is nearly three times higher than the word of mouth communicated by those who were satisfied.
– Posting information on the web about customer problems has almost doubled since 2011.
As you can see, a huge percentage of customers are left unhappy not necessarily because they encountered issues with a brand, but because of how the issues were handled. In fact, the study shows that MOST complaintants are dissatisfied with how their problems are being handled, and, even with the technology at our disposal, complaintant satisfaction is no higher than it was back in the 1970’s.
To us the item that stood out the most were the figures regarding apologies. The fact that with figures like a literal DOUBLING in satisfaction as a result of adding an apology to any monetary recompense, as well as seeing a huge majority of complaintants walking away unsatisfied with customer service because they weren’t even offered a simple, “We’re sorry”, means many organizations out there are just not putting in the work they need to keep customer-related crises at bay.
The rest of the survey contains many more as eye-opening findings and figures. Take a look, and make customer service an asset, rather than a detriment, to your organization’s crisis management.
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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Our current generation of millennial professionals will make up the majority of the workplace in the next twenty years. Employers report millennials aren’t ready for work–that in management and leadership areas they only succeed because they are bright achievers. So far. We have the power to change that.
It’s not anyone’s fault–everything is happening so fast. But a solution is of national–if not world importance. This world will be their world so millennials look at it differently. They see business and politics interconnectedly on the world stage, and for the world’s benefit.
Giving millennials the right tools is a matter of national concern–at the least. Making them fit into the current organizational parameters seems impossible, but it’s not.
Millennials don’t fit in now, for the most part. And, they don’t feel like they do either. According to the Deloitte study released January 2014, more than 30 percent, feel unprepared. Those in the system are taking risks while trying to innovate in an environment that doesn’t think like them.
Two-thirds of the next generation to run our business, nonprofits our government believe “the outlook and attitudes of management are serious barriers to innovation, such as a reluctance to take risks; a reliance on existing products, services, and ways of doing business; and an unwillingness to collaborate with other businesses or universities,” reports the study.
“It’s clear that millennials want to innovate and businesses should be listening,” said Salzberg, Chief Executive Officer, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited. He also says that traditional ways of training and developing employees doesn’t work anymore.
So, how do we as trainers, help millennials gain the critical skills they need as well as change employer support?”
Millennials think business and government should do more to help alleviate the wrongs of the world–that our way of doing business only makes matters worse. It is apparent that they feel strongly about collaboration and cooperation, not only with other businesses but government organizations.
Here’s what employers need to do:
Offer employees the means to feel connected to the whole.
Help them experience the entire organization by giving them work that is either linked to all areas in the organization or provide them an opportunity for multi-mentors.
Provide opportunities to take on entire projects with lots of networking and partnering and run with them.
Let them help or lead the company in making significant changes in the world, and in the worldview of the company by adapting its business practices or assist with branching out.
Let them lead community outreach areas.
Involve millennials in foreign offices or with government actions abroad.
This is by far not an all-inclusive list. Millennials connect to everyone, everywhere. It’s a very small world to them–as small as their devices.
In most offices, working overtime or late hours today is the norm–especially now the economy is not terrific. Since millennials are more connected than most of us; their priorities are different. They believe their personal lives are as important, if not more so, than work, but they aren’t lazy? Not at all. It seems they see the whole picture as an interlocking puzzle. That the answers are innovation derived from everywhere. Think “out the box?” These guys live “outside the box.”
So, how do we train them to be productive employees and eventual leaders in the world of work–participating in commercial, nonprofit or government organizations?
Millennials have admirable traits that we have to bring out in the workplace. Although inclusive, millennials are achievers; they goal–oriented, civic-minded, confident and hopeful. Oh, and connected.
That even goes for college students preparing for the world of work. We need to start here.
College student millennials have to be treated and taught as any other. In addition to training, I teach public speaking at a local university. My university classrooms are task- and product driven. Primarily, individual in nature, these tasks and products are the result of cooperation–and certaining bringing in outside sources as we would expect. There’s theory, too. The “why” of what we do or effect.
My millennial students are connected as well. While my world of communication is focused outward, while they focus communication inward. More and more students seem to be introverted and shy these days. It’s no wonder with all the devices, new technology and games. My own high school kids tell me, “It’s even cool to be a nerd.”
These shy millennials may not seem a perfect fit for the mainstream; they soon will be anyway. We have to do something now to make that transition easier. To do so, there are ways to draw them out, while deriving the advantages of their innovative nature.
Here are some techniques that will work for trainers as well to bring them out of the inner world of technology:
Learn their language–just as a missionary learns the language of the people he or she is trying to convert.
Let them know what’s important.
Model the behavior you want to see in them,
Always explain the why you are asking them to do something. They are curious–more than wanting to know what’s in it for them.
Always tell the truth. Millennials respect that–even if they don’t like it. They want to be clear.
Make the training or teaching session fun. Not like the ones we usually do with other trainees. Remember these folks are particularly adept at games–so nothing simple.
Look for opportunities to praise them in public, and give them the tools to do the job.
Although millennials are confident, it’s not expressed in public. They are confident of their abilities.
In my class, the first impromptu speeches my students give count very little, and in fact, students are usually given the maximum number of points no matter their performance. This helps the student’s confidence level in public; the students also know they won’t fail. My class is loose but controlled. Millennials like a measure of control. I tell them how I am grading their activities or speeches. Even if my grading seems subjective, as long as I tell them that may be the case, they accept my word and the grade graciously.
The same characteristics that are successful in the classroom apply readily in the workplace. I’m talking about preparing a millennial for that world of work and we have to be inside their heads.
Whether in school or work, they are the same. Doesn’t it make sense that teaching them should start early? I can only start with college, but I’m sure other innovative teachers from kindergarten to 12th grade in high school can figure it out.
Obviously my classroom isn’t typical. Students are speaking everyday as I told them they would at the beginning. I told them I might stop them and have them start over, but that did not mean the action would affect their grade. I set the tone for every lesson by telling them what I and they are going to be doing–and why. When they ask about future lessons, I am frank with them. I also tell them how they can fail, which can be by lack of participation, i.e., attendance, or by “texting” in their homework. There is no “just good enough;” there’s only the standards I set for them and they acknowledge. Employers should say the same.
Hopefully, we can see the application in both areas of teaching and training millennials. We want our workers, devoted to tasks, take pride in their work and make our organizations in the world. The economy gets better and the nation perhaps more politically savvy. The situation in both have to improve. It’s a matter of national interest.
By the way, this is not all I do. I don’t only write about training and development, but I believe in connections. Information and communication is applicable in many ways. If you are interested in my approach here or in other offerings on the site, you might also be interested in my book, The Cave Man Guide to Training and Development. “Cave” and “Man” are separate on purpose. The “cave” is simply where we train. I promise there will be a II and III based on my articles here. If you like what you see here, I have a blog site, Shaw’s Reality, where I look at the world’s reality from a variety of perspectives.
By all means though, check out The Free Management Library’s complete training section.
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