Media, Reputation, Intangibles, Brands, Crisis. Based in media and social media impact and content analysis. By Francesc Pujol. A Blog of Media, Reputation and Intangibles center MRI Universidad de Navarra
Adweek, in partnership with Google, presented by mid December 2012 the list of top 20 Most Watched Ads of 2012. The selection of these videos, is, according to Adweek:
Nike, Pepsi and Volkswagen, three global marketers that are old pros at creating blockbuster video content, produced the three most-watched commercials on YouTube this year, according to the video site’s 2012 Ads Leaderboard—a list of top branded spots with at least as many organic views as paid views throughout the year.
The site by Google, ‘Think with Google’ establishes a more stronger connection between number of views and a a ‘great ad’:
What makes an ad great? Simple: people choose to watch it. On YouTube, we see this more and more – fans are opting to view and share content they’re passionate about, be it a music video, a favorite show, or an ad. The 2012 YouTube Ads Leaderboard celebrates the U.S. ads that most moved audiences through a winning combination of promotion (paid ads) and popularity (organic views). And with over 200 million combined views, it’s proof that if you make it great, they will come.
We claim that, while viewing counting is a good selective variable for identifying successful ad campaigns, it is rather useless for helping us to determine, among popular commercials, which ones are the most interesting to watch.
Imagine that you had time just for waching 5 out of the top 20 list of most watched ads. If you do not count with any additional information, you will probably choose to watch top 5 ads by numbers of views. They attracted more people than other commercials in the list. If they are more popular, they probably deserve it, one should guess.
Yes, they surely deserve it. But not because of the attractiveness of the ad, or the positive reaction that they create among viewers. Not all ads present the same profile and characteristics. Some of them can count with ingredients that create traffic whatever the quality of the ad.
A typical traffic-driver is to include sport stars or other celebrities in the ad. The more popular the star, the more the number of viewers the ad will attract, not because of the brand or the quality of the ad, but simply because it is shooting my idol.
This sort of bias creates a clear difference between most popular and most liked ads.
We propose in this post to present you the list of the 20 Most Liked Ads among YouTube’s 20 Most Watched Ads of 2012.
Our metrics are the result of the combination of liking ratio, reaction and participation ratio.
We provide first our top 3 list of Most Liked ads, and then we present the actual top 3 most watched ones. Like this you can compare which one of the content of these two list pleases you more.
Our list is completely different than the one based in number of views
****
Best Ad 2012: GoPro Camera “HERO3: Black Edition”
Quality: 85.14 points
(Rank by views: 7)
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Top Ad 2012 #2: Old Spice “Bounce”
Quality: 75.90 points
(Rank by views: 14)
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Top Ad 2012 #3: Samsung “The Next Big Thing is Already Here”
Quality: 61.30 points
(Rank by views: 4)
***
And this is the list of top 3 ads by views, as established by AdWeek/Google
Top Ad 2012: Nike Football “My Time Is Now”
(Rank by Quality: 5; 58.56 points)
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Top Ad 2012 #2: Pepsi MAX “Uncle Drew”
(Rank by Quality: 7; 39.94 points)
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Top Ad 2012 #3: Volkswagen “The Bark Side”
(Rank by Quality: 4; 59.36 points)
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We present in the figure below the relationship between quantity (number of views) and quality (our measure of viewers satisfaction).
Although there is a certain positive relationship between both variables, as videos with more views tend to get better viewers’ ratings, such connection is rather weak. There are too many exceptions to this rule, as we find some views that perform poorly in terms of views but are ranked among the finest ones (green circle). The opposite also happens (red circle).
***
You can find below the list fo top 20 ads in English in Youtube 2012 ranked by their perceived quality.
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Top 20 Ads 2012, ranked as Most Liked Ads.
(If you prefer to watch the ads ranked by views, visit Adweek site here)
1. GoPro Camera “HERO3: Black Edition”, 85.14 points (rank views: 7). See above.
2. Old Spice “Bounce”, 75.9 points (rank views: 14). See above.
3. Samsung “The Next Big Thing is Already Here”, 61.3 points (ranked views: 4). See above.
4. Volkswagen “The Bark Side”, 59.36 points (rank views: 3). See above.
5. Nike Football “My Time Is Now”, 58,56 (rank views 1). See above.
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6. Old Spice “Vending Machine”, 55,48 (rank views 20)
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7. Pepsi MAX “Uncle Drew”, 39.94 (rank views 2). See above.
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8. Old Spice “Blown Mind”, 36,67 (rank views 13)
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9. Nike Football “Cristiano Ronaldo vs Rafa Nadal”, 35.11 (rank views 9)
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10. Chrysler “It’s Halftime in America”, 31.55 points (rank views 10)
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11. Old Spice “Bed”, 29.9 Points (rank views 19)
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12. Honda “Matthew’s Day Off”, 29.4 points (rank views 5)
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13. Volkswagen “The Dog Strikes Back”, 28.5 points (rank views 6)
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14. Chevrolet “2012″, 25.4 points (rank views 11),
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15. Audi of America “Vampire Party”, 24.8 points (rank views 10)
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16. Toyota “It’s Reinvented”, 22.4 points (rank views 16)
We published our previous post about current FedEx reputation crisis just two days after the YouTube video ‘FedEx Guy Throwing My Computer Monitor’ was uploaded. It counted at that moment with 1,7 million visits. The extreme viral diffusion announced a massive increase of visits, which means devastating reputation losses for FedEx.
Disaster damages are now confirmed, just one week after. This video has received 7,5 million visits. It has been reported in no less than 800 news alone in the United States. In our previous post we mentioned that this video has killing characteristics as it is perfect for massive distribution: it is just 20 seconds long, the quality of the recording is perfect, FedEx logo is constantly seen in the video, and there is no language barrier as nobody talks, allowing for a global diffusion. These characteristics enable also to be aired completely in TV news and programs, multiplying its fabulous negative reputation effects.
It will also allow for the multiplication of funny spoofs, but disastrous for FedEx corporate reputation. There is already a Conan O’Brien spoof. Just one week ago, and the video has received 200,000 visits. As you can appreciate if you watch it, you can call it perfectly a PR nightmare.
Lousy FedEx Delivery Guys – Conan on TBS
The video and the crisis created started just ten days ago, but we can offer some elements of perspective that help us to assess how damaging this present crisis is. This is also telling us how critical will be for all companies social media and reputation management in what we called this new Transparency Age.
First analysis refers to virality. We present in the following two figures the daily evolution of views of the video in YouTube, and the daily evolution of comments from YouTube registered users after watching the video.
We can observe that there is a massive viewing during the four first days (20 to 23 December), with more than 1 million views daily. The we find a quick substantial drop of interests, with daily views moving around 200-400 thousand visits per day since Christmas Day. This evolution is even more pronounces as for viewers reactions commenting the video. They concentrate in the initial stage of the viral distribution of the video.
Another way to measure the extent and timing of the viral distribution of a reputation crisis is to check what is going on in Twitter, as it is becoming the main viral platform.
We have monitored the number of tweets per hour where the YouTube video was included as link in a Tweet since the inception of the crisis. Twitter results are quite in line with actual Youtube views: first 3-4 days correspond to the critical moments of the reputation crisis in terms of direct impact.
A first lecture of the results is that the worst part of the reputation crisis is overcome. Yes, it is, as it happens with all reputation crisis with a strong viral component. But this is not to say that now FedEx is in a ‘business as always’ status as is a crisis did not happen. The huge viral profile of this crisis imply that during these 4 awful days, customers receive a massive negative impact and perception about FedEx services, and this concentration tend to create new mindsets about brands. Now, FedEx is in a post ‘FedEx Guy Throwing My…’ brand experience for many costumers. This new perception will last, and it will have direct implication for FedEx management and marketing. Now, all upcoming FedEx commercials will need to be designed in a way that it does not established associations and easy jokes with the ‘Guy Throwing’.
Secondly, even if the worst part is overcome, additional damages are really severe. Receiving ‘only’ some 250 thousands new views every day is a terrible figure. As we will show in the next figure, most viewed FedEx commercial in Youtube reach, the caveman story, reaches 1,2 million views, i.e, like running 5 days more the crisis video. This shows how powerful this reputation crisis is.
Now we will present some other pieces of evidence in order to put this current crisis in perspective, by comparison with other valuable references.
First task is to check which place will take this negative event inside the FedEx brand profile inside YouTube. If you look for FedEx related content in YouTube, you find right now our killing ‘FedEx Guy Throwing’ video in first position. It keeps this top position if you check results by number of views. We present below which are the other top 10 FedEx YouTube videos in terms of views, and then by number of comments received.
The results show us the extent of the reputation damages of this 20 seconds video. It is the FedEx reference YouTube video, with the current 7,5 million views (and counting). Ten days ago, the reference Youtube video was a spoof run by YouTube well know user nigahiga, corresponding to Ryan Higa, a star 100% YouTube based. This is a spoof also producing negative reputation perceptions, as jokes refer all to poor service experiences. Third video is also a social media creation, as it corresponds to a political statement by Republican Gingrich where he praises FedEx and UPS services and delivery tracking as compared to public services quality. Fourth most popular video is a funny commercial by FedEx. It reaches currently some 1,2 million views. You can compare this figure concerning a video created and paid by FedEx with the angry costumer video.
We find among top 10 videos 5 commercial created by FedEx, two spoofs, one Japanese news video about a FedEx plane crash, the mentioned political video.
The last one in the top 10 list corresponds also to a homemade video by an angry customer that captured a FedEx driver also throwing boxes improperly. It counts with some 600 thousand views. What it’s striking and revealing is that this video, upload more than two years ago, counted ten days ago with just … 40 thousand views. This is another very important example of the collateral damages of this current reputation crisis: it has sharply increased the YouTube popularity of other existing recorded cases of low quality FedEx delivery service. We will come back to this point later in this post.
We show below the videos corresponding to the top 3 Youtube videos (excluding the ‘Guy Throwing’ video), plus the last one showing a similar case.
FedEx #2 most popular video. ‘FedUp’, a spoof
FedEx #3 most popular video: ’FedEx vs. Government Bureaucracy — Newt Gingrich’
FedEx #4 most popular video: Fed Ex Superbowl Commercial, ‘Cavemen’
FedEx #11 most popular video: ‘FedEx Guy Launches Boxes Off Truck’
If, instead of number of views we check the number of YouTube users’ comments to each video content, we find the results presented in the figure below. We observe that the trend towards videos with negative reputation content is increased, as comments are concentrated strongly in first two videos, with 22,000 comments for our FedEx Guy video, and almost 19,000 comments to FedEx delivery spoof. Compared to these two, all five videos with clear positive content for FedEx corporate reputation reach barely 2100 comments. As it can be observed, the third video receiving more comments is again a negative one showing how a ’Fedex Guy Launches Boxes’
And now, as another way to measure the extent of the reputational damage, we compare YouTube views with another case that is considered as one of the genuine examples of the new power that angry and upset customers can have thanks to social media. We refer to singer David Carroll reaction by creating a YouTube videoclip as revenge and means to protest against poor treatment received by United Airlines after the company workers broke his guitar.
This video went also very quickly viral and now, two years and a half after, has reached 11,3 million views. You can watch it.
‘United Breaks Guitars’
Like this present case, this homemade protest has caused huge reputational damages to United Airlines reputation. The difference with FedEx case, is that the critics does not attack the core business of the company (safety, on board basic services), while FedEx negative advertising is undermining the basic values of the service provided: fragile and valuable objects are manipulated with the appropriate care and attention. This video erodes seriously confidence and trust among many customers, for sure.
We compare the timeline evolution of these two viral YouTube videos. Here, and once again, we find very negative results for FedEx corporate interests. The up to now trend announces that FedEx video will reach a very substantial amount of total views in the incoming months, clearly above the 10 million mark. It means that this very negative video will become the brand reference for FedEx in YouTube for a while, and will become a global reference of negative publicity, as ‘United Breaks Guitars’ currently is.
Our final analysis refers to the impact of the 20 seconds video in the overal reputation perception of the company. One way to do this is to look into the result that we have already presented: The ‘FedEx Guy Throwing My Computer Monitor’ virality has had a contagion effect in other videos showing a similar content of poor delivery service. We have showed above that the video ‘FedEx Guy Launches Boxes’ has dramatically risen the number of views these last ten days from 40,000 to 600,000. We have performed a similar analysis with all other existing videos available in Youtube directly referring to FedEx workers misbehavior.
The figure below provides a clear confirmation of the contagion effect. We have identified 11 videos counting presently with more than 30,000 views. Ten days ago, before the viral video was upload, total number of views was 516,000. Now, ten days later, they have surpassed the 1,8 million mark. Some of the videos present a very regrettable package handling by FedEx workers. Because of the computer monitor video, their visibility and negative impact on FedEx reputation has multiplied almost fourfold.
And here comes what we pointed out in the title of this post. UPS should not rejoice as much as many think and comment in Youtube and in Twitter. The contagion effect does not stop inside the borders of FedEx reputation. it could be expected that Youtube users do also check for similar cases in other companies, like UPS and USPS. And this is indeed what is actually happening.
We have monitored all top YouTube videos with content directly related with UPS. We find 25 videos counting with more than 50,000 visits. We exclude videos referring to several companies including UPS. We have organized them into five categories. Like we did with FedEx, we have counted visits before the viral video was upload (Dec 10), and 10 days later (Dec 28). We present in the following figures our results.
We find that the category that has suffered a substantial increase of views during these 10 last days is the one referring to poor delivery and service, all homemade videos or surveillance cameras. Total number of views of these negative reputation videos have moved from 1,39 million to 2,26 million.
You can check here one of the examples of the UPS videos experiencing a substantial increase of views these recent days. This is also a 21 seconds camera capture, labelled as ‘UPS “special” delivery’. Views are currently 356,000 while it counted with 206,000 views ten days ago (72% increase).
All this means that UPS is experiencing a deteroration in the quality of its portfolio of YouTube videos showing its brand. The following figure presents the distributions of YouTube views concerning top 25 UPS related videos, ten days ago. Weight of positive videos for reputation, based in their own commercials was 39%. This was slighly higher than the weight of negative videos showing poor delivery service, that reached 35%.
Now, by the end of December 2011, we find that the distribution of views has substantially increased the share of negative reputation videos, and particularly those showing a bad delivery service. Now they reach a share of 47% of all views related to UPS. Nothing new came directly from UPS operations: all this increase is directly attributable to the contagion effect coming from the FedEx viral video. As views of commercials has not increased during this period, its weight has decreased to 32%.
We do not find a so strong contagion effect in other postal or delivery companies, like USPS or DHL.
With all these empirical results, we can clearly state that UPS has not much to rejoice and laugh at the current reputation crisis that its archrival FedEx is suffering. At first and superficial sight it could seem that FedEx crisis is a blessing for UPS interests and, as many say, FedEx has created the best commercial ever for UPS. But in the mid-term, once the viral distribution of the FedEx video has fadded away, what it will remain is a strong tarnishment of FedEx brand reputation, but also a decrease of brand reputation for UPS, as YouTube users will find more embarrassing videos about UPS workers’ bad practices than before this crisis, as we show in our precedent figures.
We have shown in this post a dark reputation horizon linked to this current crisis. We wanted to show that it is an illusion to think that this video will become a trendy but short lived YouTube story. We consider that it will produce permanent effects in FedEx reputation. As explained, a first consequence is that all new commercials and ads will necessarily take into consideration that many costumers have this video in mind.
In the meanwhile, FedEx management has reacted, and a senior manager has used the same channel, YouTube, to explain the company position and the measures taken to counter the effects of this video. We showed the video and the text of the statement in our previous post. This strategy has been praised by many corporate reputation and PR experts. We will come back soon with a new post showing our measurements about the effectiveness of the decisions taken.
FedEx. Reputation management in the Transparency Age. How to react and restore this present colossal reputation crisis? Impossible mission. The reputation damage for FedEx will be huge and durable. Of course, it will be very interesting to follow the communication crisis pattern followed by FedEx. But our judgement of this reputation crisis is that FedEx will pay the hard price.
The story: Youtube user goobie55 bought a computer monitor. It was delivered by FedEx. Goobie55 had a video camera in the house entrance. It recorded how FedEx worker ‘delivered’ the very fragile box: throwing it from the street. As goobie55 points out in his/her Youtube video “The sad part is that I was home at the time with the front door wide open. All he would have had to do was ring the bell on the gate. Now I have to return my monitor since it is broken”.
This 21′ video isthe epitome of awful negative advertising: this is high quality recording, it is very short, it shows constantly the FedEx logo, the video captions that we show below show also that the fragile computer content of the box was evident, it finally clearly shows that the FedEx worker does not attempt to ring the bell of the property.
This is a 21 second duration video. It was upload 19 December 2011. Two days after, it counts with 1,7 millions views. For sure, the number of views will explode in the incoming days, at it has become a viral video. Liking rate of this video is 95.4. Viewers like this video, and of course not because they appreciate this FedEx quality express deliver. There are already some 9.000 outraged comments.
This is Transparency Age. Social media magnifies little but disgusting mistakes. Waste of time if companies try to deny or justify them. Impossible to fight against the viral dissemination of this new source of brand reputation. Companies will have to decide if they are positive and thankful to these opportunies offered by the new channels providing information about customers feelings and complaints, and react introducing improved product and service standards. Really, this video is telling to FedEx management that something can be improved in terms of service delivering. This was a 20 seconds delivery, and we don’t know if FedEx job protocol rewards more quantity delivered than quality. If they understand this, Fedex cand improve long term quality service and customer satisfaction.
As for possible responses in this communication crisis, we feel, in line with our basic analysis, that only a message asking for pardon to all costumers plus a determination to improve delivery standards, training and control will be considered by the video viewers.
We showed in other post in this blog how KFC Malaysia reacted to a food tampering video scandal by also using social media (Youtube and Facebook) for explaining Kentucky Fried Chicken position and measures. Our assessment in that case was that even if unintended, KFC management was fuelling the viral diffusion of the video and, thus, we doubted about the communication strategy, praised by other observers. See here the KFC food tampering blog post.
In this FedEx crisis we are persuaded that the social media impact of this video will be massive. The scenario is so terrible for the corporate brand and reputation team at FedEx, that there is almost nothing to lose in this crisis. They would nevertheless still worsen the present nightmare situation if the follow the denial approach or the ‘this is just a regrettable isolate case’.
Video images
Video ’FedEx Guy Throwing My Computer Monitor’
Update: 22 December 2011
As expected, number of Youtube views is currently exploding. We count now 4,1 million views, just 3 days after its upload. As for comparision, views of the KFC Food Tampering video in Malaysia has received som 400.000 visits in six months.
We have an official reaction from FedEx. Here it is:
FedEx Response to Customer Video
December 21, 2011
FedEx team members work very hard every day all around the world delivering millions of items on time and in perfect condition. The one delivery shown on the video is completely at odds with our training and policies. We have apologized to the customer and secured a replacement delivery. We’re pleased to have resolved the situation and the customer is satisfied.
As a result of this absolutely, positively unacceptable delivery, we are redoubling our efforts to keep things like this from happening in the future. In this specific case, we are following our established disciplinary process, which is intended to protect the privacy of team members. We can say that the employee is not interacting with customers during this process. Additionally, we look at this as a great learning opportunity. We have already used the video internally to remind all of our team members that every single package is the most important one.
We take pride in having a low damage claims rate and are very upset by this incident, which is so at odds with our Purple Promise to make every FedEx experience outstanding.
And another official reaction from Matthew Thornton, FedEx Senior Vice President of US Operations
Along with many of you, we’ve seen the video showing one of our couriers carelessly and improperly delivering a package the other day. As the leader of our pickup and delivery operations across America, I want you to know that I was upset, embarrassed, and very sorry for our customer’s poor experience. This goes directly against everything we have always taught our people and expect of them. It was just very disappointing.
However, from the customer’s perspective, I am pleased to let you know that the matter has been resolved in a very positive way. We have met with the customer face to face and they already have a replacement monitor at no cost to them. They have accepted our apology and say they are fully satisfied with what we’ve done in response to this unacceptable delivery. They’ve made it clear, though, that they prefer not to be identified in any way, and in this case as always with customers, we fully respect their privacy.
I know you recognize that this absolutely does NOT represent the professionalism and dedication of the 290,000 FedEx team members worldwide. It is one person and one package. While many people are publicly speculating about what will happen to the employee, FedEx takes care to protect team members’ privacy as well as our customers’ privacy. We do take this matter extremely seriously, and have initiated action in accord with our disciplinary policy, while respecting privacy concerns. Without going into detail, I can assure you that this courier is not delivering customer packages while we are going through this process.
This matter is an unfortunate exception to the outstanding service FedEx team members deliver every single day. Our customers know and value that service. We have been doing this almost 40 years, and if we weren’t doing it right, we wouldn’t have gained the widespread respect we have enjoyed. As a matter of fact, we have a very simple motto we try to live by – the Purple Promise: “I will make every FedEx experience outstanding.”
While this delivery fell way short of those high standards, we are already using it as a learning opportunity. We’ve shared this video internally to remind everyone that every single package is important to you, our customers, and that actions like this are totally unacceptable. We are also going to build this into our training programs as a constant reminder of the importance of earning — and keeping — your trust with every single delivery. We hope that you, like the customer involved in this incident, will see it as an unfortunate exception that proves the rule that our company cares for its customers.
Spain is voting tomorrow 20 November to elect the new parliament and the new Spanish Prime Minister. With an unemployment rate above 20% and increasing risks of public debt insolvency, the crisis, its consequences and the measures to recover have become almost the only issue during this campaign.
We have designed at Media, Reputation and Intangibles an analysis to check how this campaign has been designed by the main political parties in Youtube, and how the users have actually behave.
We show now some results that are included in the report, what will be published in Spanish in MRI Universidad de Navarra site.
We have monitored all videos launched by two main parties, PSOE (socialist party) and PP (popular party, cernter-right). These two parties control almost 90% of all parliamentary seats. We have also followed all videos provided by any other source reaching at least 500 views.
We have identified some 330 different videos fulfilling our conditions, present in Youtube during the campaign (between 3 Nov and 19 Nov 2011).
Total amount of views is 1.6 millions.
Our analysis show that the main type of videos viewed during the campaign are political spoofs and parodies, as they represent some 42.5% of all views.
Surprisingly enough, videos about political meetings only represent 4.4% of all videos viewed. Content provided by the Youtube channels of official parties are basically about meetings. They have no attracted the interest of Youtube users. Our results clearly show that communication agencies in charge of the official Youtube channel of the political parties have not been able to adapt the communication strategy and content to social media rules.
Concerning the videos with political spoofs, many of them are manipulations intended to create amusing videos, but they do not send any specific political message.
There are nevertheless some of them that have a clear political content. We present the analysis of top 3 by influence in terms of viewers during the campaign.
Most viewed video is ‘Alfredo no te creo’ (Alfredo I do not trust you). It attacks the candidate from socialist party PSOE, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba. The musical video adapts a song and lyrics accusing Mr Rubalcaba for being responsible for the economic crisis and not respecting past commitments.
There are two videos attacking Partido Popular (PP), the conservative party that all polls announce as the winner, probably with an absolute majority of seats. ‘La niña de Rajoy’ is a parody of an image used years ago by PP candidate, Mariano Rajoy. A girl explains the secret plans of PP to cut expenses on social policies. Finally, ‘El hundimiento de Mariano Rajoy’ is a manipulation of the final scene of movie Der Untergang (Downfall). The parody shows Rajoy as personification of Hitler learning that his party has not reached the absolute majority thanks to the emergence of the third party, Izquierda Unida (former communist party). This last video is a call to end with bipartisanship in Spain.
We show their time evolution and the degree of acceptance by viewers.
You can check here the content of the three videos analyzed.
We open a new series of posts by sharing with you a selection of the contributions published in our daily ‘About Media & Reputation’.
‘About Media & Reputation’ is created by a selection of contributions coming from people I follow at Twitter. Those are mainly experts in brands, reputation and crisis communication. My own Twitter account is @NewsReputation. This publication is powered by paper.li.
We present here a selection of the contributions. We do not necessarily endorse the content in their approach or quality.
Main article is about a reputation crisis propelled and controlled afterwards by social media channel. It was published in our edition of 20 October 2011, “Crisis Communication: KFC Malaysia Food Tampering Scandal and How Facebook Saved the Day”, from cwfong.blogspot.com.
In Jun 11, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) Malaysia was faced with a potential social media crisis when videos of food tampering by their kitchen staff started circulating on the Internet. As part of its crisis response strategy, KFC Malaysia established a page on its Facebook wall to tell its side of the story and restore consumer confidence.
You can check here the two disgusting videos showing food tampering.
As explained in the article, KFC management reacted using the same tools, and launched a video explaining their views and decisions.
They also opened a new section in Facebook KFC Malaysia, ‘KFC Responds’
We show an example of a TV news covering the affaire. Thanks to KFC response, the core of the news is not focused on the food health scandal, but on KFC management reaction, and on the corrective measures taken by the company.
CW Fong & Associates praise Kentucky Fried Chicken reaction, as an example of well managed reputation crisis:
Like many other crisis communication experts, I attribute KFC Malaysia’s success in avoiding a crisis to its timely, open, truthful, Internet present and broadly communicated crisis communication plan – what I have termed the 5 essential elements of a crisis communication plan
There may be eventually a source of concern with this communication crisis success story. And this is not a CW Fong statement but my own feeling: becoming a reference in how to deal a with social media rooted crisis using social media tools, puts you as a crisis management reference (look, KFC is in my blog, and in CF Fong & Associates site, and in the TV news presented in this post). This may be new reputation problem for KFC. This crisis was mainly local Malaysian issue, even if it went viral. Now I know about the story through reputation experts. But the bad news is that I discovered the ugly video at the source of the scandal (and I am increasing its visibility, BTW), as it is an essential part of the story. And for me, not as an expert, but as a potential fast food consumer, my perception about KFC quality standards has not really increased. Sorry for Kentucky Fried Chicken.
As for the measures taken by the company to avoid future scandals and restore reputation, we find that they are mainly oriented to a ‘this will never happen again’ strategy (cameras in the kitchens, additional supervising kitchen staff). These measures are urgently needed to restore trust. But this episode hits KFC not only on product quality issues. It also reinforces the bad reputation of fast food companies on labor conditions. Even if this working misbehavior was an exception, it clearly reflects an attitude of lack of professionalism, commitment with the company and absence of passion for work. This attitude is probably in line with the job and salary conditions in this sector. KFC management announces also a ‘process of reviewing our recruitment and training’. It is really hard to imagine that much can change in workers’ motivation and commitment if basic job conditions offered by KFC are not substantially revised. Even if this crisis is considered a success story by many experts in terms of crisis communication and mitigation, it is far from being solved and it is not a zero cost crisis.
PS: I further develop my thoughts on this case thanks to the dialogue with readers in the ‘comments’ section of this post.
‘Crisis Communication: The Role of Employees’, Associatedcontent.com, from CW Fong & Associates
’5 case studies — Social technology impacting management’, Businessesgrow.com
‘Limited use of sharing buttons shows people’s desire to share links privately’ by Jeff Sonderman, Poynter.org
‘The worst-ever advice about social media’ by Russell Working, Ragan.com
(…)
7. Automatically incorporate blog posts onto Twitter.
Jenny Leonard, editor of Futurity, notes a push to automatically link blog or newsletter posts to Twitter and Facebook. “As a colleague once told me, ‘Automation is not social; it’s the opposite of social,’” she says
(…)
2. Put the intern in charge of social media.
Stephanie Johnson, director of public affairs at Advocate Health Care, says social media is essential, so “you need a team that is invested in staying on top of these changes and adapting new elements that may benefit your audience.”
In this third post about Bin Laden death media coverage, we show some results concerning one of the issues that becomes gradually more relevant each time that a major event or crisis occur: references to social media by traditional news providers, the newspapers.
Each event has its own characteristics influencing the role that different social media channels can play. Time evolution and spacial scope is definetively different in recent events with massive media impact like Japan earthquake and tsunami, Fukushima nuclear crisis, Tunisia, Egypt and Lybia revolts, Prince William and Kate royal wedding, John Paul II beatification, and now, Bin Laden death by US troops. it is arguably that these difference in space and time impact have also an influence on the utility of social media.
Bin Laden killing operation is an event with massive media impact, but the origin of the enws was extremely concentrated in time and space. Virtually no place for amateur live captures of the event. This is why uncoscient live tweets of the event by the right now social media star Sohaib Athar, an IT consultant received global media exposure.
Whata about the presence of social media tools and channels in portraying Bin Laden crisis?
Social media are not comparable as they produce each one of the very different outputs: messages, videos, photographs, text and comments. A way to provide an indirect common measure of theire relative relevance is to check their presence in traditional news channels, that is news published by newspapers.
We show below our results using this approach.
Our answer is clear: the game has been won by Twitter. Results refer to global media coverage all over the world. They capture a 58% share of all references to social media. Second reference is Facebook, with 29%, less than half than Twitter. Google takes another 9%. 4% goes to Youtube. Analysis is made with the information from some 13.000 different news mentioning the social media channels in relation with Bin Laden death media coverage, up to May 3.
We analyze in the following figure the share of media reference of Twitter by regions of the world.
Major dominance is in Latin American countries, as 68% of all news references to social media are about Twitter. Lowest level is reached in African countries, with a share of 40.5%. Media from countries with muslim predominance refer to Twitter in a 44.2% share.
Next figure shows the share of each social media tool in two main media markets: Europe and North America (ex Mexico). By comparison, Facebook has more power in North America than in Europe. Both regions are balanced concerning the use of Twitter. Google and Youtube are most widely referenced by media in Europe.
Final figure shows time evolution of the share of worldwide media references to each one of the social media players. Our results show a very stable path concerning the relative power of each one of the channels mentioned by traditional media. We can appreacite a slighly upward trend concerning the share of Facebook, and downwards trend for Google.
