Much of the world’s knowledge of the Costa Concordia’s grounding off the Italian coast was gathered through social media, creating an instant PR crisis for Carnival Cruise Corp.
Consumers on social media are active, passionate and demanding of transparency and engagement. But in the days following the accident, it was clear that Carnival had no plan for dealing with them. Its main Facebook page continued to offer the usual updates on trips, deals and specific ships, while the Facebook wall became packed with several hundred comments expressing questions, fears, anger and compassion. Most went untended. The same thing happened in the Twitter feed. Micky Arison, the CEO of Carnival and owner of the Miami Heat, an avid tweeter, suddenly changed his tune – from a smack-talking, fun and energetic basketball fan and cruise enthusiast tweeting 20-30 times a day, to a quieter, more measured executive.
On Jan. 19, six days after the accident, the following two posts appeared:
“Out of respect for all those affected by the recent events surrounding our sister line, Costa cruises, we are going to take a bit of a break from posting on our social channels.”–Carnival Cruise Line’s Facebook status on 1/19/2012
“I won’t be as active on Twitter for the next while. Helping our @costacruises team manage this crisis is my priority right now. Thnx”–@MickyArison
The Facebook post appears to have generated some sympathy for Carnival – more than 5,000 “likes” and over 800 comments, with mixed sentiment. But after virtually no public activity for nearly a week, Carnival returned to Facebook on Jan. 24 with a “we’re ready to re-engage” post and much less positive welcome. There were 3,000 “likes” and over 600 comments, the majority negative. People were sharing their own experiences of safety drills comments on ship safety and shock over Carnival’s 30% discount offer on future cruises to the Costa passengers involved in the accident.
With the public’s comments appearing on the same social-media page as its own statements, Carnival’s online image quickly became tinged with a negativity that is hard to reverse. Clearly Carnival’s decision to go silent had backfired. Why?
Social Platforms Were Treated Like A Print Ad
In the face of such an accident, it’s smart to perform triage, as Carnival did, and suspend the usual run of print ads in national newspapers offering last-minute cruise deals and targeted communications to lapsed cruisers and high-value prospects. But the company could not withdraw with the same effect from its “owned properties” (Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+) and conversations happening across online communities. Online never shuts down, and the public traffic only grew more intense and more negative, and Carnival wasn’t present to moderate any of it.
Conversation Volume Tripled
In the two weeks after the accident, conversation volume grew by 320% compared to the prior two-week period, based on our research using Sysomos. Blogs, forums, Facebook Newsfeeds and Twitter exploded with comments, perspectives, questions and dialogue. Comparing the pre-accident two-week period to the post-accident two-week period, sentiment for Carnival plummeted from 91% positive/neutral (48% positive), to 66% positive/neutral (16% positive), a precipitous drop. Might engagement in those conversations by Carnival executives have prevented such a steep slide?
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