jonathan nguyen

a tale of two craigs

craig badings and craig pearce colleague and ex-colleague here at ogilvy were discussing issues and crisis management over on mr pearce’s blog. given that they were talking about a conversation we’d had i thought i throw in my two cents worth.

let me preface this by saying the gentlemen mentioned are seasoned pros with years of this stuff under their belt and it was an honour to be included in the conversation. definitely one of the perks working for ogilvy.

mr bading’s and i had the opportunity to work together on a high profile brand crisis and throughout the crisis we evaluated our actions and evaluated against best practices. as social media is just another type of channel, most of the same rules applied. there were however a number of key differences which i will outline in a series of posts. i’ll start with this one.

handling a crisis

the basic rules, are:

• communicate openly and honestly
• correct factual inaccuries
• communicate regularly

this is an over simplification, but they’re the basics.

respond or not to respond?

mr badings points out that in the traditional media world you want the whole thing to blow over. don’t inflame the situation if you can avoid it. there is no point in creating a longer than necessary news cycle. which can sometimes mean you don’t go back and correct factual inaccuracies if it looks like the news cycle is ending anyway. whether the client has done anything wrong or not, constant discussion about it the crisis will associate the brand with that crisis which is generally not a good thing. once it all blew over, people forgot and no one ever hears about it again.

this worked. it worked quite well. but news back then was contained to a local area and researching old news involved sifting through rolls and rolls of microfilm. if a crisis erupted for a brand in new york, it would not be a major deal for the brand in sydney. you couldn’t simply google a brand.

not so today

news today is not contained. it is not temporary. so it’s not possible to just bury it. the technology has changed, we need to reconsider if and how we respond.

the challenge now is, if you google a brand, you get all the bad stuff, as well as the good and people can go back even before the internet began. every subsequent generation around the world will see the situation and analyse it and it becomes associated with your brand, like it or not.

so the question is, do risk inflaming a situation by responding, even to correct inaccuracies at the risk of making it worse? it’s a case of making a decision that may hurt in the short term, but leave a better internet memory.

by responding, in the short term, you extend the news cycle and more people see it and associate it with your brand. in the long term, if you don’t those future generations will continue to see only the factual inaccuracies.

these things are never cut and dried though. unlike other commentators i don’t prescribe one path over another because it’s a ‘commandment of social media’. ‘thou shalt engage’, ‘though shalt be transparent’ etc… baloney.

what’s problematic about making a decision that may hurt in the short term is that it could be so painful it kills the organisation. it won’t be internet memory that you have to worry about but internet memoriam.

consider this next time you or a client is in crisis mode. there are no simple answers, anyone offering one is a quack. each situation is different but do consider this when you think about acting on the old adage of letting the story die a natural death. is not necessarily the right thing to do anymore.