1. When bad things happen

    Wednesday, 30 Jun 2010 View Comments Posted by: Sean McDonald

    Bad things happen in this world, it is a sad fact.  When bad things happen, how you respond greatly influences the duration and intensity of the crisis. Right now our country is outraged, sad, confused, and struggling with the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. What is more upsetting is how BP responded to this tragedy. Compare BP’s response to how Johnson & Johnson (parent of McNeil, makers of Tylenol) responded during the 1982 Tylenol cyanide crisis. It’s interesting that even with all the social media tools and hype, a good company response (5 BE’s) still works 28 years later.

    BP Response

    Because BP was slow to respond to the public’s needs (information, action) the topic of “oil spill” (which is the paramount disaster) is actually not mentioned as often as BP. In the chart below (source: Radian6 May 23-June 22, 2010), AEV’s Listening 360 service measured online mentions (blogs, forums, comments, tags) of “oil spill” vs.“BP” (included “Exxon” and “Chevron” to give a sense of the baseline of online mentions for other large oil companies).  There were more online mentions (avg. 80,000/day) for BP than the actual crisis itself. It’s interesting to note that where our attention is should be focused on an environmental issue, BP is now in the spotlight because of their response.

    “Oil Spill” vs. “BP” vs. “Exxon” vs. “Chevron”

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    You might feel that no company can really respond appropriately for a crisis like this.

    Johnson & Johnson Response

    Wednesday morning, September 29, 1982, 12-year-old Mary Kellerman of Elk Grove Village, Illinois, died after taking a capsule of Extra Strength Tylenol. Adam Janus of Arlington Heights, Illinois, died in the hospital shortly thereafter. Adam’s brother Stanley of Lisle, Illinois, and sister-in-law Theresa died after gathering to mourn his death, having taken pills from the same bottle. Soon afterward, Mary McFarland of Elmhurst, Paula Prince of Chicago, and Mary Reiner of Winfield, Illinois, also died in similar incidents. Investigators soon discovered the Tylenol link. Urgent warnings were broadcast, and police drove through Chicago neighborhoods issuing warnings over loudspeakers Johnson & Johnson, the parent company of McNeil, distributed warnings to hospitals and distributors and halted Tylenol production and advertising. On October 5, 1982, it issued a nationwide recall of Tylenol products; an estimated 31 million bottles were in circulation, with a retail value of over US$100 million. The company also advertised in the national media for individuals not to consume any products that contained acetaminophen. When it was determined that only capsules were tampered with, they offered to exchange all Tylenol capsules already purchased by the public with solid tablets.(source Wikipedia “Chicago Tylenol murders”).

    J&J wanted to solve the cyanide tampering crisis, same as BP would like this oil spill to be contained and all the spilled oil cleaned up. But what J&J practiced was to find a solution first, damage control later. By being open for help and communication with the public and police, FBI, and FD&A; J&J got vital information that help identify source of the tampering, solutions to prevent future crisis and public trust that listen and responded positively to J&J messages.

    They did this practicing the 5 BE’s:

    BE Timely
    BE Honest
    BE Responsible
    BE Transparent
    BE Human

    So how could BP have accomplished the 5 BE’s?

    1. BE Timely

    • Early BP messages were to avoid guilt and to control
    • Damage control, instead of assessment and solutions. Lacked sense of urgency.

    2. BE Honest

    • Admit that size of spill is not understood in the beginning

    3. BE Responsible (but don’t focus on control)

    • Ask for help
    • Invite ideas, set expectations about ideas taking time to test/evaluate. Give idea givers homework before they submit ideas

    4. BE Transparent

    • Talk about the who is working on the ideas, what you are doing with the ideas submitted by public

    5. BE Human

    • Empathetic, apologetic, disgusted
    • NO whining

    Is BP finished? BP has lost approximately 50% of market cap ($80 Billion) since the Gulf of Mexico oil spill .

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    Normally financial markets will discount any public bad news (i.e., costs of oil spill) in stock price. But this case begged the question: Is the stock price impacted by the hard cost of the oil spill or because no one trusts BP?

    My opinion is that it’s probably a combination, with a low public trust, financial markets are heavily discounting the stock price, and it is not over. The costs of clean up can be a sensitivity analysis on a spreadsheet. But the impact of no/low trust in the company can be a going out of business signal, unless major change is enacted. I want and need BP to be successful in stopping the oil spill and cleaning up the mess. But my trust is on the sidelines, I need BP to express some of the public emotions. The current media messages are not coming across as genuine, is still appears that BP is more worried about their image ahead of the oil spill.

    So what can BP do at this stage? Stop the oil spill and make progress on the clean up, then the public will be ready to listen. Use the 5 BE’s once you have some genuine messages to communicate about the crisis.

  2. Social Media Measurement and the Summer Conference Season Challenge

    Wednesday, 16 Jun 2010 View Comments Posted by: Kira Wampler

    Ah, summer. You tempt me with the smells of BBQ, the sounds of kids playing in the pool and the sights of slides in a conference room! With summer conference season in full swing, many of us are leaving the confines of our cubicles and listening to and networking with a variety of thinkers and speakers on the social media trail.

    With all of this thinking and talking, it can be easy to forget about doing. So, here is the summer conference season challenge. What is the one thing you are going to start doing, right now, based on what you learned from a conference you attended?

    Here are a couple of ideas from the Social Media Summit, a Ragan Conference held at Cisco Headquarters:

    • Establish a baseline of traffic coming to your website from social media: This is easier than it sounds. Start by making sure that all relevant social media URLs are classified in your website’s analytics tool. This means not only top level domains but all sub-domains. If you are in a large organization, make sure these URLs are classified not only in the global suite but also in the local suites that your business units use. Fewer than half of attendees during an ROI presentation at the summit said they’d already done this.
    • Ask your customers about how social media does, or does not, impact their purchase process: You typically know the last step your customers took before they purchased, which, if online, is usually search. But, almost no one pops out of bed each day, types in a search query and then makes a purchase. That’s why it’s called a process. So, ask your customers about their process. What influences their purchase process of your product or service? Is it a primary influence, one of many or not at all? Yes, this is self-reported behavior, but the data gives you a lot of insight into how social media plays a role in sales. For reference, no one in the audience had asked their customers this question.

    What’s inspired you recently from a conference you attended that you’ve put into action? What have you learned once you did?

  3. Tech Talk: The “Gist” of Connecting Your Inbox with Your Social Network

    Tuesday, 15 Jun 2010 View Comments Posted by: Joann Jen

    In today’s business world, the average working professional sends and receives about 160 e-mails a day and costs companies around $650 billion per year in wasted productivity. Needless to say, for many businesses and working professionals alike, this inbox infomania coupled with social networking and increased touchpoints can be a serious and costly problem.

    How do you keep track of the e-mails, tweets, status updates of the people that matter most to you or your company?

    This week’s Tech Talk (a roundtable discussion featuring new products, tools and trends during Ant’s Eye View staff meetings) focused on a tool called Gist, an intuitive personal relationship manager that helps those of us who feel inundated by incessant e-mails better manage our inbox and build stronger connections with the people we care about — whether clients, customers, friends, family or co-workers.

    But what’s most compelling about the tool goes beyond the efficiency features. Listen to Gist CEO, T.A. McCann describe Gist.

    While Gist is one of several e-mail management tools on the market, it sets itself apart from competitors by augmenting e-mail search with some of the following relationship-centric functions:

    • Integrate contact information, calendar events, links, news, and social networking data from Outlook, Salesforce, Lotus Notes, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail into one intuitive dashboard;
    • Tag contacts within a network to create an instant “influencer” list for future reference;
    • Gain business-critical insights about contacts and companies within a user’s network from 50,000 news sources and 20 million blogs; and
    • Rank and score information and contacts based on what the user has determined to be most relevant and important.

    We’re still discovering many of the different ways Gist can be used, but one thing we’re sure of, this notion of building better relationships and maintaining connections is at the heart of Gist and the reason why it was created. In fact, if you ask T.A. for the story behind Gist, he can tell you the two people he built Gist for and why he and his company continue to innovate and make it easier for individuals to maintain and sustain their network.

    At Ant’s Eye View, we’re constantly looking for new social tools we can learn about and recommend to our clients. What are some tools you’ve used and can recommend to us? We’d love to hear from you.