Maureen Juniper is co-founder and partner at Praxis. While she has more than two decades of experience in communications consulting, Juniper maintains that her horses have taught her most things she knows about relationships, effective communication and risk management
Companies and brands are scared to death of the possibility of mistakes that can lead to a crisis, and rightly so. The wrong kind of crisis can take a company or brand down to its knees, bring down shareholder confidence and stock price, or even wipe it right out.
Maureen Juniper
It used to take a bit of time for a mistake to blossom into a crisis and then really do some damage, but not these days. Whereas a crisis used to unfold over hours or days, today it can take just minutes, even seconds, to wreak havoc. I would hazard a guess that most companies today are unprepared and just lucky that they haven’t had a runaway problem. And when they do, it will hurt them more than they think.
Speed of response, of course, has always been a critical success factor in managing a crisis of any magnitude. But the speed needed to respond effectively to a crisis today makes most companies incapable of even having a shot.
Consider, then, the amazing accomplishment it is to not only move fast enough to manage a problem, but to apply such smarts to the response strategy that it actually affects the brand’s key performance indicators in a positive way. This is something truly to be admired and respected.
One such example occurred on the popular entertainment social networking service Reddit. The brand was Fathead, a privately held company based in Detroit that sells life-sized precision-cut vinyl wall graphics. Their mistake didn’t have the potential to take the company down, but it could have hurt their reputation and negatively affect sales.
Fathead sent a poster of Tim Tebow to a customer who actually ordered a poster of Tom Brady—the old switcheroo order blunder. (Personally, I would have been quite happy with a life-sized poster of Tim Tebow, but that’s just me, and I digress.) The unhappy Tebow poster recipient took his disgruntlement to Reddit, where he posted a complaint. Before too long, his post was seen and discussed by a rapidly growing community of Reddit users.
According to Digiday, Reddit contacted Fathead to let them know they had a PR problem brewing and recommended they buy an ad on Reddit to help remedy the situation. Fathead jumped all over it. Not only did they respond swiftly, they took a risk and layered in a sense of humour, which is usually not recommended when you’re on the hot seat. The ad read: “25 percent off NFL Fatheads with code NFLOOPS today only. Buy now, and there’s a good chance we’ll ship you the right one!”
Clever, and it worked, even bumping traffic to the site. And, icing on the cake, Fathead was given a thumbs up by the original complainer after sending him not one, but all the Tom Brady posters, some cash and goods, which prompted him to post a happy comment.
On a larger scale, I was impressed recently with how Under Armour handled its speedskating suit crisis in Sochi. When the U.S. speedskating team started to lose, the finger of blame was pointed directly at Under Armour, who had suited the team in what they trumpeted as being the fastest, most aerodynamic ‘skin’ ever. Only problem was, it wasn’t helping the athletes’ performance. Allegedly, the vents in the back of the suits were actually slowing the skaters down. Under Armour tried in vayin to fix the suits, but in the end, the team didn’t medal for the first time in decades, and Under Armour looked like it might have caused the disappointing performance.
According to Ad Age, Under Armour quickly went into action with a three-pronged strategy of defending (rather than blaming), putting its most senior executives out in front, and engaging influencers on social media. The first two strategies are tried, true and tested over decades of time, but only in recent years have we had the opportunity to use social media to help fix problems. Under Armour did it very well by bringing highly influential gold medal athletes like Michael Phelps and Lindsay Vonn to defend Under Armour’s technology on social media without mentioning the speedskating controversy.
What is remarkable about the Under Armour story is that the U.S. speedskating team renewed their partnership with the brand, which was due to expire this year, through 2022, cementing their support of Under Armour through two more Winter Olympic Games.
Talk about making lemonade from lemons.
It’s one thing to survive a crisis and come out of it no worse for wear than when you went in. But it’s another thing altogether to turn risk into reward.
The companies and brands that are ready, nimble and can see through the panic to the other side will likely fare well, or even squeeze out a win, when trouble comes knocking.
GET READY FOR TROUBLE
The top five things you should be doing to minimize your chances of, and ready yourself for, trouble:
1. What’s the plan and the process? If you’ve got an “old” crisis plan that’s been kicking around for a few years, it’s out of date. And if you’re feeling lucky that you haven’t had a major public mishap, I can tell you that luck almost always runs out. Just ask a gambler. Force those who don’t see the value in a current plan and a well thought-out process to see the value; show them some ugly case studies that will wake them up. Choose case studies that are as close to your business as possible. Fear can be a very good motivator.
2. Have a comprehensive playbook to guide your behaviour on social media. Be detailed. How often will you monitor the conversation? What’s your commitment for maximum length of time to respond? When will you let conversation just occur, and when will you inject your voice? And, most importantly, who signs off on what and how do you escalate a problem? The playbook is your best friend and confidante; it holds most of the answers you’ll need when the going gets rough because it’s a product of advance preparation.
3. Know and trust your team. If you use an agency, know them intimately—how they think, how they behave under pressure, whether they can lead in good times and bad.
4. Be open to creativity in problem-solving. A looming crisis may not feel like the right time to experiment with out-there ideas, but provided you are guided by your core values, a curve ball can sometimes deliver a home run when you had two out and two strikes.
5. Never forget who you are. A company that lives by its values no matter what is swirling around it has the best chance of weathering the storm. Speak up if you see anyone swaying off course, and always ask the question: what is the right thing to do?
