The Nightmare before Christmas: Eurostar, the channel tunnel, and We Are Social
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”.
Max’s travel blog, The Guardian, crisis comms?
I’m a bit late to the party with this but a friend told me about “Max-gate” and The Guardian travel blog and asked me what I thought so i did some reading up.
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19 year old writer Max (I’ll leave the surname so as not to contribute to his Google searches damage) starts a travel blog for The Guardian to share his experiences of a gap adventure
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Comments start flying thick and fast attacking the poor lad
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Online paranoia goes into overdrive as it’s “discovered” that Max’s dad has also written for the Guardian Travel Section
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Further conspiracy theories question, via Max’s work on the TV show ‘Skins’ and a bad URL, whether the whole thing is a PR stunt
I think, from my tone, you get where I sit on this. Sometimes the viciousness of online allowing everyone to have their say, particularly when it’s anonymous, really annoys me; this goes double when it’s a target like this. The guy wrote *one* post and people were all over him
About:
I'm Darika Ahrens and I help brands develop marketing strategies for Social Media.
My background is in Public Relations for companies like Orange, Microsoft, Philips, HTC, Yell.com, and Estee Lauder. I've worked with and trained some of the UK's top agencies.
In 2009 the Financial Times referred to me as "a new breed of business matchmaker" due to my network of contacts and way I work creating bespoke teams to deliver projects.