Carnival PR Crisis

Hiya readers!

This week I’m going to talk about the Carnival Cruise Lines PR Crisis that happened around two weeks ago. If you aren’t aware of the situation basically the cruise ship Triumph left from Texas on Thursday February 7th and on Sunday 10th a fire broke out in the engine of the cruise ships causing the engine to fail. This lead to a five day hellish experience for cruise-goers onboard as the ship was towed by smaller boats over five days to safety and passengers disembarked in Mobile, Alabama.

This obviously is crisis situation for the company with crew members and passengers in such a situation, reports said toilet sewage had over flown and was seeping into carpets and there were food rationing. The company had to deal with overwhelming amounts of calls and queries from concerned family members, customers due to board the cruise at the next stage and not forgetting the members of media with questions.The company used social media to update everyone on a very regular basis and are a good example of how a company should deal with a PR crisis like this one online. I’m going to divide each section of social media up and tell you all what they did on each site.

Twitter:  The company updated most frequently on Twitter, which makes sense as it is easy to give a short quick updates throughout the day on the situation. They were tweeting about all aspects of the situation from who would get to disembark the ship first, how luggage would be removed from the ship and how guests would get home after disembarking. They covered almost every angle on their Twitter possible and it would have been reassuring for family members concerned to have this information available instantly. They made one minor mistake however by attempting humour during the situation by tweeting “Of course the bathrobes for the Carnival Triumph are complimentary”. This was not appropriate during the situation however as no passengers were injured or harmed this minor mistake stayed fairly under the radar.

They did not reply to individuals on their Twitter page which was a good move as it would have been confusing for those trying to read updates and all information required was on their Twitter feed, they didn’t hide anything which was a good move by the company. Here is a small sample of their Twitter feed. (All tweets can be found here: https://twitter.com/CarnivalCruise)

Facebook: They also utilised their Facebook page and updated this page a little less frequently with longer , press release like statements, including statuses of tugboats, statements from company CAO and links to sites where customers affected could reschedule or refund their planned trip onboard Triumph. They stated that they were aware of the suffering of the passengers onboard and that they felt sympathy for the passengers at this time. The initial post on the matter on Facebook was shared 2,038 times and got over 3,000 likes. Here is the first statement released by the company on their Facebook page: (Here is the link for all their Facebook posts: http://www.facebook.com/Carnival)

YouTube: Not the most frequently used tool during a PR crisis but Carnival decided to take this approach and posted the video of their Press Conference on February 12th.After watching the video the speaker seems a little insincere with his apologies and perhaps it should just have been the media that had access to the press conference to report on the matter rather than the public. The video got over 29,000 views on YouTube, if you want to check it out here it is:

Website: Their website was updated twice. One to announced cruises that had been cancelled due to the incident and another announcing the compensation, these were appropriate as the same amount of detail was not required on their website when they were maintaining the social networking sites so regularly. Here is the link to the updates on their site: http://www.carnival.com/Core/FAQ.aspx?faq=update

Overall the company utilised their sites to the best possible standards and used each social networking site for the best purpose it was intended, Twitter for short regular updates, Facebook for more detailed information and their website for the need-to-know information. Although the company used the social networking sites well and handled the situation well on a PR level it is yet to be seen if the company will recover from such a large incident. Hopefully they raise their safety standards and continue to do business.

Thanks for reading!

Cici

HMV PR Crisis.

Another week another blog folks! Everybody is aware of the power of social media today, we are being told over and over again how important it is to have this medium of contact with our customer and  there is plenty of proof of how powerful social media is in everyday business life for a strong ,customer-business relationship. We have also seen how important it is during a PR crisis, and how it can turn people’s opinions around when used correctly.

What happens however when this power is abused? An example of this came about on the last day of January when one companies Twitter became hacked and was taken over for a period of time. The incident occurred when a large number of HMV employees were sacked on January 31st.

HMV is a British entertainment retailer that sells a range of products including CD’s, DVD’s, headphones and many other entertainment products. 

On the 31st of January when it was revealed that staff within the firm had lost their job one fired member of the company overtook their Twitter and tweeted from the companies official Twitter page a total of 7 times. Here are the tweets:(read from bottom to top)

As you can see they fired employee was obviously angry at being sacked, but in fairness the tweets could have been a lot more damaging for the company e.g. if they had released company secrets.

The hacker revealed herself on her personal page, her name is Poppy Rose and in the tweets she said she would apologise for the tweets however she felt someone had to speak out on the issue. Here are some of the tweets she made after the incident:

HMV eventually regained control of the Twitter page and deleted the tweets immediately, although as we know anything on the internet is never really permanently deleted! They then issued a number of tweets stating that there had been job loses but that the company was still business as usual. Here are the tweets the company made once they had control again:

They made two minor mistakes in these tweets, one was including a hashtag that had been used in one of the hacker’s tweets ,#hmvxfactorfiring, this allowed people to click on the hashtag and see what people who had read the previous hackers tweets to see all the feedback and backlash to them. The other mistake they made was saying that yes people had been fired, but not in their stores, perhaps somehow suggest that the fired staff had not been had important as store staff.

The hacking of the HMV Twitter page raises a number of questions over the security and passwords systems that the company were lacking once. Once they had fired the employee that was usually in charge of social media had been let go passwords should obviously have been changed. This was an easily prevented situation. It also makes me think what security measures companies have in place in regards their social media sites. I hope after this situation that companies whose social media sites are not efficiently protected put systems in place to prevent situations like this happening again. The employee responsible, as I’ve said, could have done a lot more damage to the company.

Thanks for reading!

Cici

Horsemeat Scandal:Burger King

Back again! I was really interested in finding out how Tesco handled the horsemeat scandal last week  and I hope you were too because this week I’m going to look at how another company involved in the scandal handled the situation. The company I choose to examine this week is Burger King. The global company, which has 35 in Ireland and over 500 in the United Kingdom handled the situation quite differently, in the respect of social media, to Tesco.

It was released that Burger King in the UK and Ireland had been selling meat which was supplied from Silvercrest, the Monaghan based company which had been using untraced Polish meat that had contained horse DNA.  At first Burger King denied that their products had been affected by the horsemeat scandal but they then admitted they had in fact been selling burgers from Silvercrest. Burger King stated:

“Four samples recently taken from the Silvercrest plant have shown the presence of very small traces of equine DNA.”

Firstly we’ll talk about their Facebook. Burger King did not make any posts on it’s UK site over the course of the crisis, it did not make a comment on the matter on its US Facebook page either and the company doesn’t even run an Irish Facebook page, this is probably due to the fact that it holds a relatively small number of stores in Ireland in comparison to other countries.

Next, to Twitter. It was sort of the same scenario as above, no mention of the issue on their global Twitter page . There was a Burger King UK site on Twitter, however it is either unofficial or unmaintained as it only had 362 followers and 1 tweet (https://twitter.com/BurgerKing_UK) and once again no Irish page.

Their website was the only place where they had information on the matter available for their customers, and it was once again not mentioned anywhere on their Global site, http://www.bk.com/. Their UK site contained Press Releases on the matter in “Press Releases and Statements” section under the “Our Company “ heading of the site.  (http://www.burgerking.co.uk/press-releases-and-statements )

They issued four statements on the issue, the first is one telling customers they are aware of the issue and their food is not affected by the FSAI findings:

The next two statements stated that they were carrying out tests on their products as a precautionary measure and these statements can be found here:

                http://www.burgerking.co.uk/press-releases-and-statements?pressid=59`

                http://www.burgerking.co.uk/press-releases-and-statements?pressid=58

The final statement said that they has ended their relationship with Silvercrest and had changed suppliers. Here is the last and final statement released on the matter:

To conclude Burger King took an old school approach and did not issue any statement on social media sites or did not make any contact with the consumer via social networking sites. In today’s age of Social Media it was unusual to not make any statement on a social media site during a crisis. This would generally be seen as a bad move in the PR world although on this occasion it worked for the company as the issue did not reach the US market therefore global sales were not affected.

 Keeping to the old school method of releasing press releases and talking to the English and Irish media about the matter worked for them on this occasion. Perhaps proof that you don’t always need to rely on social media during a crisis.

Thanks for reading!

Cici

Horsemeat Scandal:Tesco

Okay folks, thanks for stopping by! This week I’m going to talk about the still unfolding story of the horsemeat scandal. This story began in mid-January and just keeps growing and growing, with more and more stories coming out each week since. It arose when the Irish Food Safety Authority released the results of DNA testing on various meat producers in the country. The tests found that meat which had been supplied to the likes of Tesco,Aldi, Lidl, Dunnes, and Iceland contained a large percentage of horsemeat, some contained as much as 80% horsemeat. 

 It sparked uproar as consumers were shocked and disgusted by the fast that they were unknowingly for an unknown length of time. Since the discovery was made many other tests and reports have been done on the meat industry both in Ireland and England. It has now been discovered that numerous meat producers have been using equestrian meat, meat which has not been traced. Tesco Value products and Findus products were found to contain more than 80% horsemeat, this revelation has only come about in the past week, and with reports stating Findus lasagne contained 100% horsemeat.

Now to take a look at what this blog is mainly about, how the situation was handled on online media! I’m going to specifically focus on how Tesco handled it for this blog. On the 17th of January, one day after the test results had been reported, Tesco issued the following apology on both their website (www.tesco.ie) and on their Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/TescoIreland) :

We apologise.


You have probably read or heard that we have had a serious problem with three frozen beef burger products that we sell in stores in Ireland and the UK.

The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) has told us that a number of products they have recently tested from one of our suppliers contained horsemeat.

While the FSAI has said that the products pose no risk to public health, we appreciate that, like us, our customers will find this absolutely unacceptable.

The products in our stores were; 
- Tesco Everyday Value 8 x Frozen Beef Burgers (397g), 
- Tesco 4 x Frozen Beef Quarter Pounders (454g) and a branded product, 
- FlamehouseFrozen Chargrilled Quarter Pounders.

We have immediately withdrawn from sale all products from the supplier in question, from all our stores and online. 

If you have any of these products in at home, you can take them back to any of our stores at any time and get a full refund. You will not need a receipt and you can just bring back the packaging.

We and our supplier have let you down and we apologise.

If you have any concerns, you can go to any of our customer service desks in-store, ask to speak to your local Store Manager or contact us by leaving a comment below or on our Customer Service hotline: 1850 744 844 and Email: customer.service@tesco.ie

So here’s our promise. We will find out exactly what happened and, when we do, we’ll come back and tell you.

And we will work harder than ever with all our suppliers to make sure this never happens again.

After analysing this statement in my opinion I think it was a good statement. They took responsibility, apologised for the situation and listed the products that were contaminated.

They had this apology up in stores nationwide and here is a picture that I took of the apology in my local store, proving they were making customers aware.

They also released a video of Group Technical Director, Tim Smith, talking about the matter on the 30th of January (find video here: http://www.tescoplc.com/index.asp?pageid=17&newsid=732 ) with another statement:

"Two weeks ago, on 16 January, we issued an unreserved apology to our customers because tests in Ireland found horse DNA in three Tesco frozen beef burger lines.

"We made a commitment to customers to investigate thoroughly and share the findings with them. Since then, we have been working hard to understand what happened and how we can stop it ever happening again.

"We now understand - with as much certainty as possible – what happened. The evidence tells us that our frozen burger supplier, Silvercrest, used meat in our products that did not come from the list of approved suppliers we gave them. Nor was the meat from the UK or Ireland, despite our instruction that only beef from the UK and Ireland should be used in our frozen beef burgers. Consequently we have decided not to take products from that supplier in future.  We took that decision with regret but the breach of trust is simply too great.

"Ultimately Tesco is responsible for the food we sell, so it is not enough just to stop using the supplier.

"We have a well-equipped, expert technical team and world-class checks in place but we will not take anything for granted after this incident.

"It has shown that, in spite of our stringent tests, checks and controls there remained a small possibility that something could go wrong and it did. We want to stop it ever happening again, so we are taking action to reduce that possibility still further.

"To underpin the strong measures already in place, we will now introduce a comprehensive system of DNA testing across our meat products. This will identify any deviation from our high standards. 

"These checks will set a new standard. It will be a significant investment for Tesco, borne by Tesco. We want to leave customers in no doubt that we will do whatever it takes to ensure the quality of their food and that the food they buy is exactly what the label says it is."

The company had the decency to admit responsibility and apologise once again and they stated what they are doing to resolve the problem. They did the right thing by informing their customers quickly after the problem had occurred and they targeted their audience correctly.

Hopefully they won’t find that anymore of their products contain horse DNA but more the meantime that’s all I have to say about their PR strategy, I may return to the topic at a later date if any more occurrences happen.

Thanks for reading!

Cici