Coping with Crisis

It seems that now a day’s marketers are very quick to grab the benefit of every big or small thing going around. Take the Egypt case, Kenneth Cole quickly found an opportunity with the uproar moving in the country and advertised its latest design via twitter i.e. KC’s tweet which is -



"Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard that our new spring collection is now available online."



But Mr. President had already played with the countryman's emotions, so KC didn’t got a chance and within minutes the tweet gifted KC with a boom of hatred. Yes, people didn’t liked that; they called it shameless, inappropriate and blah blah.



Many marketers, advertisers and businessmen had given their suggestions that KC should not have played with the emotions, he should have planned the ad before shooting it on the internet.



Now, if you cannot change what has happened; though you can take the measure to correct and prevent it. So some suggestions would be–



1.



Apologize right away – Accept your mistake and apologize on time. Just like you take every path to market your brand, so can engage with the every tool to apologize.



2.



Blogging – Don’t choose to go for Press releases or blogging through your site, instead go for Third Party Bloggers or news media that can help spread your comments.



3.



Don’t argue – Do not argue or justify the act which you did and has hurt the general public, that’ll not solve, infact it would go more in negative way.



4.



Design a brand that represents – Build a brand that can represent your organizations responsibility towards the crisis.



5.



CEO email – Provide personal email id of company’s CEO or Chairperson on social networking sites for people to respond directly. Of course that may increase the spam, but the management will also get what’s actually going on.



Measuring Crisis Management

Taking steps to manage the crisis does not certify that all is under control. Nope! You can’t assume it, rather companies should keep a watchdog on their social media campaigns for crisis management whether they served the purpose or not.



Why Crisis Management ?

Crisis, that’s what I want to lay stress on here, why do you let it happen and if it happened, then why don't you go for its management?

Consider these points for crisis management –



1.



Check out your social media online presence – Keep an eye on your online ads, campaigns; whether they are targeting the right public.



2.



Monitor Brand – How your brand is being talked about, how many social networking sites are responsible for your existence keep a track upon those.



3.



Measure what stakeholders perceive – Measure your brands effectiveness with the peers and competitors, to know what impact your brand creates on your company’s image.



4.



Respond immediately to a highly positive or highly negative commentary, which talks about your brand and can affect its goodwill.



5.



Brand & Consumer Engagement – Don’t respond occasionally, develop a strong relationship between brand and the consumer by responding and engaging in interactive sessions online, this helps in building brand loyalty.





Arifa Raj

The author is a business researcher with CheckBuzz, a social media monitoring company.



About CheckBuzz : A Social Media Monitoring Company, which tells brands/corporates what bloggers, journalists, powerful consumers, or even ordinary people are saying about them. Having a healthy experience of 3+ years, this company gives its solutions on Social media consulting, Social media marketing and Social media monitoring.



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