Crisis | Media Culpa

Luis Suarez in McDStories-like gaffe on Twitter

If there are a lot of negative opinions about your brand, social media may become your worst enemy. We often hear that brands should engage in meaningful conversations with fans through social media. But when there is a lot of controversy or negative opinion around a brand, asking people on social networks to speak up might not turn out the way you expect. McDonald’s experienced this when they initiated the hashtag #McDStories, in an attempt to get people to share nice stories about the fast food giant. Instead, people who disliked the brand, hijacked the hashtag on Twitter and started tweeting complaints and snarky comments.

A similar thing is currently happening for the Liverpool FC striker Luis Suárez. He has been involved in a number of contorversial incidents during the football season in the UK, being suspended for racist comments against Manchester United defender Patrice Evra for example. And then later refusing to shake Evra’s hand before a game, later in the season (disclosure: I am a United fan).

Today, Suárez is taking questions from Twitter users under the hashtag #InterviewLuisSuarez. More than six hours ago, he tweeted that he would now be answering questions.

I’m going to answers your tweets right now at @MarcainEnglish #InterviewLuisSuarez

— Luis Suarez (@luis16suarez) maj 16, 2012

But no answers have yet been posted by the forward. That might be due to the fact that the hashtag is more or less filled with accusations about racism and nasty comments about Suarez’ looks.

Once again we see that brands (or celebrities) underestimate the power of social media and that they really have no control over it. If you invite people to participate, they won’t automatically show up and play nice. If your house is not in order, you will learn the hard way what people really think of you.

In social media, it is just as important to know what your fans think as it is to know what your enemies think.

Fake IKEA gift cards – Spam hits Pinterest

The popular online pinboard Pinterest has been hit by a series of spam ads. Pinterest user Craig Fifield found that a strange image had been posted on of of his wife’s boards. It was something she would never pin on the site, an ad for Wal-Mart. The same thing was noticed by Om Malik on Gigaom:

“Earlier this evening, some kind of spam-exploit injected javascript code that started replacing many Pinterest photos with ads for Best Buy. (see photo.) The actions resulted in disgruntled users blaming Pinterest.”

Fake gift cards for well known brands such as Wal-Mart, IKEA, iPad and others are suddenly all over Pinterest.

They all seem to be pointing to the site facebook-goodies.com and some spammer has probably posted several photos and then after they were repinned, the image changed to an ad through some kind of script. The original images seem to have been posted to boards themed “party ideas”, “beauty” and “quotes” to name a few.

Some of the spam ads have been repinned more than 6,000 times.

This is of course quite serious for Pinterest, since it is a blow to the very heart of the site. If we can no longer trust that images we repin aren’t going to turn into spam ads, dare we use the site at all?

Another form of spam that has been emerging is that the same image is posted multiple times on multiple accounts, but with the exact same text.

Update: one of the accounts that seemed to be the origin of some spam ads have now been deleted: http://pinterest.com/ElisabethCarla/

Barack Obama’s profile on Pinterest hijacked again

After a bit of confusion this week, I finally understood what had happened to Barack Obama’s profile page on Pinterest. It seemed as if the account had pinned several “non-presidential” images to a board, but in reality a user had taken advantage of a security flaw in Pinterest. When you invite another user to collaborate on a board, that board becomes visible on that user’s profile too. So an inactive account like Obama’s could be “hijacked” to include any board without the account owner even noticing it.

After that first incident, the person who managed the board that appeared on Obama’s page, removed it. But now it has happened again. Another board is visible on pinterest.com/barackobama and once again it does not belong to that account.

Having the President look like a fool on your site, can’t be good for business. Pinterest should change the procedure so that a user that has been invited to collaborate on a board actively has to agree that the board becomes visible on its profile.

Barack Obama brandjacked on Pinterest – updated

[Updated – see end of the post] Yesterday Mashable noted that Barack Obama had joined yet another social network, namely the much hyped Pinterest. At that point, the account had no boards. I must admit that I thought that it was an official account for the Obama/Biden campaign. I couldn’t for the life of me think that the campaign people and/or Pinterest would allow someone to snatch the username “barackobama” from the US President. But it seems both Mashable and I were wrong.

The Pinterest account has now posted one board, but it does not at all look like the kind of content you thought would be pinned by Obama. In fact, when you hold the cursor over the board you will notice that the link points to a board by another user: http://pinterest.com/mikestreet/bropin/ This board has some 440 pins, including some images that are NSFW.

Pin It

I don’t know how this is done technically. When I look at my own Pinterest profile I only see boards that are my own. But “mikestreet” has the very same board with the same images on his profile, so clearly this must be a fake Obama account. What do you think? Could there be another explanation?

Update: I emailed with Lauren Orsini who gave a reasonable explanation to what happened. The account is probably not fake at all, but the board seen above in my screen shot was put there as a joke by Mike Street. You see, there is a way to add other Pinterest users as collaborators to your boards and when you do, that board will appear on their profile too. This can be used with great effect if you are doing it to an inactive account, like a celebrity for example, they will not notice they have been added. So the Obama account was not paying attention that Mike added it as collaborator, making us believe that Obama had created a board named #BroPin. Lauren has written about that security flaw here – How to hijack popular brands on Pinterest for free publicity.

Although I don’t recommend that you do this on Pinterest, I must admit I was fooled. Well played!

Your Facebook page is a litmus test of your brand’s health

Since I started blogging in early 2004, I’ve heard over and over again how brands have lost control of their reputation. Power has shifted away from brands and towards customers, employees and other individuals. With new publishing platforms, ordinary citizens have gotten the possibility to voice their opinions and influence businesses and organizations trough social media. Nowhere is this more evident today than on brand pages on Facebook.

Due to the sheer volume of individuals that are present on Facebook, any people that have a bone to pick with a brand will almost automatically gravitate towards the Facebook page of that company simply because of the amount of exposure that comment can get. Sure, you can still influence by writing blog posts and using other channels, but writing on the wall on a Facebook page is more direct, you feel like you are talking directly to the brand and its customers, right on its turf.

If you visit the Facebook page of a brand and it is nothing but a steady stream of negative comments, it will probably influence how you view this brand (see also my post about Chiquita on Facebook). Take a look at General Motors for example. I’ve written two blog posts about how Saab fans have turned the GM page into a big mess, while GM have done nothing. But GM have other problems on Facebook. People are complaining about everything from problems with cars to bad service. They are complaining about working conditions and the fact that GM killed off the Pontiac brand.

When GM wishes everyone a nice holiday, “fans” are responding with all sorts of negative comments, mostly about the decision by GM to cut Christmas bonuses for retirees. This post has 106 comments, at least half are probably negative.

It has now been more than two weeks since the first outburst of criticism from angry Saab fans and finally we are starting to see some activity from GM. There aren’t as many Saab photos posted as it was a week or two ago, but they keep coming. But maybe this incident pushed GM into taking a bit more care of their page than they previously did. Representatives from GM Customer Service have now responded to a few posts by fans and even the admin of the GM page has responded a few times.

A brand should not let critics run their Facebook page. If you are the subject of a smear campaign, like GM with the Saab story, you can’t comment on everything but you need to find a balance where you let critics comment but you don’t surrender the entire conversation to your opponents. As a brand, listen to the opinion and try actively to solve the issue.

Facebook has become an important driver of corporate reputation. If you don’t think that your Facebook page reflects reality, then you should do something about it. If you don’t, we are left to believe that this is how the world views your brand.

Facebook brand pages under attack from activists – Chiquita next in line

The last few days have proven once again that open social media spaces such as Facebook pages and corporate blogs are becoming targets for disgruntled consumers or activists all over the globe. My recent posts covered how fans of Saab fill the Facebook wall of GM with negative comments and pictures. A week earlier, US appliance store Lowe’s Facebook page got more than 9,000 comments from people aggressively debating whether the company was right to pull its ads from the reality show All American Muslim.

Nescafé and #nescafail
The latest example comes from Hungary, where the local Facebook page of Nescafé came under siege. The company arranged a competition which asked people to send an idea for a project. Janos Szolnoki asked for some help from the community on the popular website 9gag in order to win the contest and win $5000, so he could help his little brother who is disabled. He gained an incredible 47,000 likes to his entry, but Nescafé still didn’t pick his entry for the final round (actually in line with the contest rules, but still…). This angered the online community that started tweeting with the hashtags #nescafail and #scumbagcafe. A Facebook page called Occupy Unfair Nescafé was launched and the local Hungarian Nescafé Facebook page was swamped with comments. Nescafé eventually responded, and did so quite well in my view.

More about this story here and here.

Chiquita delete negative comments
Yet another Facebook page that is under fire is the page of Chiquita. The company has announced it is boycotting oil from Canada’s oilsands, which has led to a counter-attack from Canadians arguing their oil is “ethical” in comparison to the oil from countries like Iran and Saudia Arabia. A campaign called Chiquita Conflict is using websites, Twitter and more to fight against the decision by the banana brand. Two Ministers of the Canadian Parliament have even tweeted about the reverse boycott.

A part of the campaign is to comment on the Chiquita Facebook page, which does not let anyone post on the wall, you can only comment on updates by the brand itself. Comments criticizing the company are being deleted after only a few minutes. Here are some exampels I managed to catch.

Negative comments to this post:

These comments were soon deleted:

Then a new negative comment was posted, but then later deleted:

Chiquita may not convince Canadians to buy more bananas, but by being extremely clear what they expect from visitors to the page, they at least have guidelines to lean against when they delete comments. Chiquita maintain tight control over the Facebook page. I’m not saying it is the perfect solution – what they gain in control, they lose in interactivity. But at least their page doesn’t look like GM’s.

From the Chiquita Banana Page Rules:

“We love it when our fans leave comments, photos, videos and links about Chiquita brands and products. Administrators will review page content to ensure that there are no offensive, inappropriate, or unrelated items and will moderate or remove content that is not in compliance with our terms and conditions.“

Facebook pages have become the new battleground for brand activism and brands will face more challenges as more consumers are realizing the power a few thousand comments can have on Facebook. Brands must pay attention and make sure they have their house (and guidelines) in order before disaster strikes. There’s no need to panic if you are well prepared, even if you become the subject of a social media crisis.

Hat tip to Markus Welin about Nescafé: http://twitter.com/#!/markuswelin

Update: One problem with monitoring negative comments is that the Facebook page administrator sleeps at night, but (some) activists are awake. And they take advantage of that fact. These comments have been up on the Chiquita page for 6-10 hours: