More into Pepsi’s crisi

  

The advertisement of Pepsi featuring Kendall Jenner that was released last year 2017 for the campaign “Live for Now” in YouTube, sparked a lot of conversations in several media and fields. The reaction of the public towards it was rather critical because the ad had references to the Black Lives Matter and the Women’s March movements. The public criticized the use of serious social issues for a brand profit and the trivialization of the struggle of people.

Source: PR Week

Of course, Public Relations professionals paid attention to it and analyzed the whole process of Pepsi’s handling of the crisis for the sake of knowledge and learning, some from a negative perspective, other from a positive one. For instance, in her reflection, Van Loon (2018) points out that Pepsi dealt properly with the crisis because they reacted fast.

The matter of time of reaction is of great importance in crisis communication because the social media have dramatically speed up the way the information is circulates. Social media in general and Twitter in particular are the first channels in which the event disseminates at a very high speed causing the crisis (Sung & Hwang, 2014). (Sung & Hwang, 2014). The biggest problem for the organization with the early spread is that the event is interpreted and framed by the public and this frame is disseminated together with the event information (Van der Meer, 2016). Obviously, when this frame is negatively valenced, there is a crisis.

Therefore, speed and negative framing of the information disseminated via social media are the main reasons for a company to react as fast as possible, because as soon as there is information from the company, the buzz starts to disappear (Sung & Hwang, 2014). Nevertheless, still today there are signs of not full recovery of Pepsi’s damaged reputation because the purchase consideration is at the lowest since 2015, according to study.

On the other hand, Weergang (2018) considered that the reaction was incorrect because Pepsi firstly reacted in a defensive manner and, afterwards, apologized and pulled the ad. Even though the final strategy followed the appropriate steps by Coombs’s Situational Crisis Communication Theory (2007) that Van Loon stated, those came too late. Again, it is a matter of time, but, from this perspective, the problem is a first bad reaction that could have invalidated the crisis communication strategy.

As the expert Ewald van Rooij, director of Lindblom indicates, it is very important for an organization to have a plan of action in place taking into consideration several possible types of crisis and react according to the appropriate strategy as soon as possible. However, the actions and the people must all be aligned with the strategy. Unfortunately, the defensive first step of Pepsi was not aligned with the following response strategy to apologize and it caused more negative reactions that, apparently, further efforts could not totally solve.

In conclusion, the two main threats to take into account for a proper handling of a crisis are the speed of the social media and the framing of the information by the public but if the alignment of all parts under the same strategy is not correct, the crisis will not properly be solved.

About the author:

Carla Navarro is a Social Sciences traveler, from a not finished BA in Sociology to a nearly finished MA in Communication Science passing by a completed BA in Social and Cultural Anthropology and a MA in Visual Anthropology. She feels that this will be her last stop and will finally put her knowledge into a proper job, although she decided to start a music documentary festival in Amsterdam.

References:

Coombs, W. T. (2007). Protecting organization reputations during a crisis- The development and application of situational crisis communication theory. Corporate reputation review, 10(3), 163-176.

Sung, M., & Hwang, J.-S. (2014). Who drives a crisis? The diffusion of an issue through social networks. Computers in Human Behavior, 36, 246–257.

Van der Meer, T.G.L.A. (2016) Public Frame building: the role of source usage in times of crisis. Communication Research 2016.

Van Loon, K. (2018). How Pepsi handled its PR crisis. Public Relations, Media and the Public. Retrieved from: https://publicrelationsmediathepublic1819s1.blogspot.com/2018/09/how-pepsi-handled-its-pr-crisis.html

Van Rooij, E. (2018). Guest lecture crisis communications [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from: https://canvas.uva.nl/courses/3068/modules

Weergang, I. (2018). A controversial Pepsi ad starring Kendall Jenner. . Public Relations, Media and the Public. Retrieved from: https://publicrelationsmediathepublic1819s1.blogspot.com/2018/09/a-controversial-pepsi-ad-starring.html

Effective crisis communication: Social media versus traditional media

A fellow communication science student, Tyler Pilgrim, recently wrote an interesting blog post: ‘Twitter can be a lifesaver if used correctly’. This blog explains the power of Twitter during times of crisis, such as natural disasters. But maybe even more interesting, at least for PR professionals, is the power of Twitter, or more general social media, for organizations in times of crisis.

In the past decade, the development of information and communication technologies has turned our world, and the world of PR practitioners, upside down. Especially the rise of social media has changed the flow of information, which also affected crisis communication (Sung & Hwang, 2014). This blog describes how PR practitioners should use social media in times of crisis in order to improve the effectiveness of crisis communication, but also why they should not forget the traditional media.

  

The importance of social media

The first, and maybe most important, thing that PR practitioners need to do, is constantly monitor what is happening online in order to recognize possible crisis signals as early as possible. Subsequently, a quick response is essential because the dissemination of information on social media is faster than the speed of light, and than traditional media (Sung & Hwang, 2014). Public frames regarding a crisis, that are built on social media, play an important role in defining a crisis and, subsequently, affect the evolution and impact of that crisis (Van der Meer, 2016). Even though those online frames may not always be accurate; they can have far-reaching consequences, making a quick response crucial. If interested, an example of how far these consequences can reach, read a previous blog of mine.

 The importance of traditional media

Despite the fact that social media gained significant importance for crisis communication, traditional media should not be forgotten.  A study of Sung and Hwang (2014) showed that social media mainly play a role in the initial stage of a crisis. However, once reports regarding a crisis appear in the traditional news media, these are more important than social media and ‘set the agenda’. The traditional news media are still powerful agenda-setters and opinion leaders (Sung & Hwang, 2014).

PR practitioners should take into account that traditional media are considered to be more credible information sources than social media are, at least in times of a crisis. Traditional media are (still) proven to be more effective crisis communication tools than social media (Eriksson, 2018).

So, for all PR practitioners: use social media to scan and monitor what is happening online in order to recognize crisis signals as early as possible, but don’t neglect traditional media in the crisis response. Regarding the crisis response and crisis communication, social media should be used as a complement to the traditional media, since the public perceives traditional media as more credible and as the preferred source of information during a crisis (Eriksson, 2018; Van der Meer, 2016).

About the author:

Kim van Loon is a Corporate Communication master’s student at the University of Amsterdam. She works at her own company ‘Van Loon Communicatie’ as a Dutch linguistic, corrector and translator. Topics of interest are: Dutch language, PR, crisis communication. 

Academic sources for this article:

Eriksson, M. (2018). Lessons for Crisis Communication on Social Media: A Systematic Review of What Research Tells the Practice. International Journal of Strategic Communication, 1-26.

Sung, M., & Hwang, J. S. (2014). Who drives a crisis? The diffusion of an issue through social networks. Computers in Human Behavior, 36, 246-257.

Van der Meer, T. G. (2016). Public frame building: the role of source usage in times of crisis. Communication Research, 45(6), 956-981.

PR or not PR? To handle or to shut up? Well, look at Dotan

Dotan is a Dutch singer song-writer that liked to have the control over what he did and stay close to his fans. He didn’t want a PR, what for? He had a strategy. Unfortunately, he dug the grave of his own career not only by doing dirty marketing but mostly by not properly reacting to the exposure of his crimes.

Retrieved from A bit of Music (April 16, 2018)

So, how do you think it turned out for Dotan not having a PR? Well, rumor has it that he will represent the Netherlands in Eurovision, what is kind of the same as being finished.

Let’s rewind. In 2011, Dotan had a debut album and not much media attention, so he started a quite creative marketing and communication strategy to boost his artist persona. Creative not for the originality, but because he literally created at least 140 fake social media accounts of extremely devoted fans. Crass mistake.

Highlights of the case are, for instance, using photos of a dead woman for one of the fake accounts or a post explaining that Dotan helped a dying brother with leukemia achieved to fulfill his last will of meeting him. So nice of him. False! Even Ziggo Dome, where he played the same night of the event, twittered it. Another elucidation of Dotan’s impressive skills for newsworthiness made him go viral on 2017 posting that he was on a plane and, next to him, a girl was listening to his album. Extremely cool if this would happen to you, right? False!

One could even call him a pioneer on self-branding, for making it all about himself (Khamis, Ang, & Welling, 2017) instead about his music. Nevertheless, it didn’t take him too far. De Volkskrant, one of the biggest Dutch newspapers, run an investigation on him and, on the 14^th April 2018, they exposed him long, loud and clear.

Despite the scandal, we know that the most important is not the crisis but how to handle it (Colapinto & Benecchi, 2014), what did Dotan do then? This:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHH7zS0vLOA

After this untruthful ridiculing video, nada. His Facebook, Instagram and Website are empty, only he says hi to some people who says hi to him on Twitter.

What do you think? I see two massive mistakes: one, replying to the crisis with more not-so-true stories and two, shuting up. In 1980 they knew already that silence is too passive and lets the rest take over the control of a crisis (Brummett, 1980 as cited in Coombs, 2010) and I tend to think that communication is always better than silence. However, studies show and we know that users have the power to disseminate the information… what if this information is gone?

No, it didn’t solve it. I wouldn’t say that Dotan’s reputation is saved, it needs healing, a strategy, and, please, don’t let it be Eurovision! I would have made him the bad boy playing with fire. This new face next to the singer song-writer humongous hyper sensibility, would have burned his social media with new fanatic fans, but the real ones.

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About the author:

Carla Navarro is a Social Sciences traveler, from a not finished BA in Sociology to a nearly finished MA in Communication Science passing by a completed BA in Social and Cultural Anthropology and a MA in Visual Anthropology. She feels that this will be her last stop and will finally put her knowledge into a proper job, although she decided to start a music documentary festival in Amsterdam.

References:

A Bit Of Music (2018, April 16). The Dotan Case: can artists actually fake it until they make it on social media? Retrieved from: https://abitofpopmusic.com/2018/04/16/the-dotan-case-can-artists-actually-fake-it-until-they-make-it-on-social-media/

Colapinto, C., & Benecchi, E. (2014). The presentation of celebrity personas in everyday twittering- Managing online reputations throughout a communication crisis. Media, Culture & Society, 36(2), 219-233

Coombs, W. T. (2010). Parameters for crisis communication. The handbook of crisis communication, 17-53.

Khamis, S., Ang, L., & Welling, R. (2017). Self-branding,‘micro-celebrity’and the rise of Social Media Influencers. Celebrity Studies, 8(2), 191-208.

Miserius, M., & van der Noordaa, R. (2018, April 14). De fanatiek fictieve fans van Dotan. De Volkskrant. Retrieved from: https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/de-fanatieke-fictieve-fans-van-dotan~bed4fd67/

Parker, J. (2018, April 14). DOtan Exposed: Musician Accused of Masterminding Fake Fan Accounts. All Things Loud. Retrieved from: https://www.allthingsloud.com/dotan-exposed-musician-accused-masterminding-fake-fan-accounts/

Sung, M., & Hwang, J.-S. (2014). Who drives a crisis? The diffusion of an issue through social networks. Computers in Human Behavior, 36, 246–257