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March 01, 2007
Preparing for bad (and good) buzz
Yum Brands has closed a number of restaurants run by the franchisee who had rats running wild in a combo Taco Bell/KFC restaurant, as seen in newscasts and newspapers around the country. The New York City inspector who'd given the restaurant a passing grade is in trouble, too.
When I originally posted about this six days ago, none of the video footage had yet made it to YouTube. Now there are at least 27 videos on YouTube with approximately 660,000 cumulative views. Because of social media, stories like this will have stronger and longer legs, as they say in the news biz. Trackbacks, word of mouth and Google keep buzz-worthy stories alive longer.
That's why being prepared and reacting quickly to unfortunate (and good) buzz is key. On the TacoBell website, under the "latest news" tab (the site's Flash-based navigation prevents direct-linking) Yum Brands president Emil Brolick apologizes to customers in a short video and says, "Frankly, we're embarrassed."
Good move and good use of video, even if his response could use a bit more detail about future plans. Yum should also post the video to YouTube, where the rats are still running a bit wild.
It took at least five days for a public response from Yum, though. That's a long time, figuratively, when it comes to word-of-mouth and its spread among social media.
Now is the time for Yum (and other big brands) to prepare for the already arrived social media future.
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Ben, many companies have crisis communications plans in place, to help them respond quickly and in ways to try to prevent or minimize public relations damage. I'd venture to say that many of those plans do not yet have provision for dealing with and through social media, but that will change over time. Marketing and public relations advisors should be pushing for it to be sooner rather than later.
Ben, when I read this post earlier, I could swear it contained a bit of screed about "marketing orientation" of the "flash-based" Yum site. Do I not recall correctly? And if I do recall correctly, why the redaction?
Eliot -- I'd lamented "Flash-driven promotional tools" as websites in the original post about Yum Brands' vermin outbreak: (http://www.churchofthecustomer.com/blog/2007/02/rats_at_taco_be.html)
Whatever vehicle a company chooses for a response to "bad buzz"--two elements of the response are more important than the vehicle: speed; gotta respond as fast as possible and second; humble honesty, just admit fault and explain how it will be corrected. Consumers can be pretty forgiving if the feel like the company recognizes the problem and is very honest about it. (Even if rats are involved!)
Jeff
Hello...I'm an IMC student at Northwestern and just wanted to mention that YUM VP Jonathan Blum came and spoke with our class on the topic of crisis communications. It was only a few months after this rat fiasco so he explained to us the ins and outs of YUM's response.
This crisis was a lot more complicated, than say, the JetBlue flight delays. There, it was the case of a company failing to deliver to its customers.
The rats in YUM's restaurant though necessitated a response from government health departments and the like that made their response delayed and ever-more complicated. Add to that, YUM had to consider the local franchisees interests and response time was made even slower.
Corporate America should definitely learn WOM plays a major role in crisis communications. More to the point, good, proactive WOM can help put out fires when they do come. I think YUM does little, if any.
Andy Sernovitz is teaching our WOM, a colleague of yours I'm sure. Our class is blogging WOM. Check us out: http://gaspedal.typepad.com/nuwom/
