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:
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
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