The Nightmare before Christmas: Eurostar, the channel tunnel, and We Are Social

Posted by on December 20, 2009 · 2 Comments 

The Nightmare before Christmas

It’s a Saturday morning and 7 days until Christmas. You get a call that your client (who you are not retained to manage crisis communications for) has been involved in a major transport fail. Reports are rife online that passengers went without food and water for hours, babies couldn’t get clean diapers, and information was almost non-existent. Twitter is aflame with criticism including attacks on a Twitter profile @Eurostar_UK which is in fact not in use by your client’s organisation.

To find out how We Are Social dealt with this nightmare scenario Robin Grant has posted a detailed write-up. I encourage you to read it and file as an example of “Best practice when the sh*t hits the fan”.

Why Best Practice?

I am astounded at the number of attacks which have been levied at We Are Social’s handling of the situation which has descended in to some nasty critiques of the agency’s work in Social Media in general. [Like most, I know many of the people employed at the agency and have also worked with them indirectly via client work with Attentio and Tempero].

Firstly, I think the guys at the agency performed admirably under the circumstances. It’s easy for people jump up and down saying “if these are experts they should’ve done better”. If you’ve never worked in a service based industry it might be hard to understand the cold-hard facts which are:

- You can only perform the services you are retained to do

- Just because you advise a client, doesn’t mean they always act on your recommendations

The situation with Eurostar is not an unusual one. In my experience 90% of brands hiring a service provider to manage some sort of Social Media activity do it with a specific campaign in mind before looking at their brand strategy as a whole. Should we continue to say that all agencies are rubbish because this is the current culture? Nope. Couldn’t we just keep working as a whole to show brands Best Practice in the industry instead of continually focusing on what hasn’t worked?

Secondly, as Rachel Clarke has already pointed out, most of the criticism seems to be focused on the use of Twitter rather than the overall communications problem. Why are people getting excited that it was a “social media fail” when the entire situation sounds like a balls up from the moment the trains broke down.

Blood on the tracks

I imagine if I, or someone I knew, was stuck on the train I’d be really irate and probably venting on whatever media possible – Twitter or otherwise. But what’s making me irate today is that some have used this as  another opportunity for petty sniping and criticism of those working in our industry.

We Are Social are not perfect (probably) but in my view they’re still one of the good guys. To Robin, Nathan, and the team, keep your chins up. Unjustified criticism does pass.

Image: austinevan

Recommended reading:
How to prevent your own Eurostar moment by Andrew Grill “…information is so freely available, sites like twitter can completely bypass armies of PR people. The public can now easily sense if information is being withheld and therefore start to criticise those withholding it (or anyone else close by).”
Social Media as a crisis management tool by Matt Rhodes. 5 Observations on how others have managed past crises.

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  • http://www.twitter.com/lindsaydavies Lindsay Davies

    Totally agree. The attacks on We Are Social have been unfair and unjustified, demanding their time and attention in commenting back to the critics. This must have added more pressure during an intense time when they were crisis managing the Eurostar problem, out of support to their client not as part of a paid for service.

    Yes, as an industry we should show best practice and encourage brands to focus on a holistic communications strategy using social media to serve all departments of a business and not just marketing. However, I do think that showing what hasn't worked well helps to illustrate why best practice is best and then maybe more brands will listen.

  • http://daibach.co.uk/wp/archive/2009/12/communications-in-a-crisis/ Communications in a Crisis | Dafydd Vaughan

    [...] Eurostar. You can read about “We Are Social’s” involvement on their blog and a interesting response from Grapevine Consulting about the criticism levelled on We Are Social. Originally published on [...]