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.

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.

If you missed it:

• 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
• Comments start flying thick and fast attacking the poor lad
• Online paranoia goes into overdrive as it’s “discovered” that Max’s dad has also written for the Guardian Travel Section
• 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

1. I think levelling a charge that he’s “young, white and middle-class” and The Guardian should’ve known that would wind up their readers is laughable. We all know that newspapers have detailed demographics of their readership, both on- and off-line, and we all know where The Guardian audience sits…
2. Accusing his father of nepotism I also don’t find valid. It’s not like he was the section editor (he was at that stage an occasional freelancer for them) and again, let’s get real, do journalists not help out other journalists? Isn’t that just like any other industry? The fact that Max is a proven writer, having secured work on Skins etc, validates his work. I don’t feel disclosure is a huge issue here
3. With the dust settling we seem to be left with “it just wasn’t good writing”. Well, that’s the debatable and I would hope The Guardian is allowed some authority on determining this for themselves

Blog writers and readers have always tended towards the cynical, so negative comments is not unexpected. I *do* think it’s a shame that The Guardian didn’t give the blog a chance. In fact, as a PR, I think it looked like some sort of admission of error. They could’ve stood behind their decision to launch it and supported Max. (Heck, now I’m keen to have followed it for a bit and I bet I’m not the only one!)

Is it standard practise for publications to cancel columns after one response like this? I can’t be sure on everyone’s editorial policy but surely they could’ve seen how things progressed. Isn’t social media all about allowing discussion?

I went travelling when I was 19 and I kept a travel diary just like generations and generations before me. When I read it now I absolutely cringe, but it’s fun, it’s of its time. That age and those experiences are relevant to 1000s and 1000s of young UK people every year. The blogosphere is all about niches.

So if not all content appeals to all audiences was it right for The Guardian to try this? Well, why not? They’ve demonstrated leadership in trying new online content and I would think more than any other newspaper (except for maybe The Sun) a strong youth audience to grow.

Has anyone started selling “Team Max” t-shirts yet?

Read the official Guardian response here