About Elon Musk and breaching the bro level.

By now, we are the kings of social media, ready to snipe hashtags and ride bandwagons,
perfecting timing throughout our holistic communication strategies. Nothing we are not
prepared for, everything meticulously listed in excel spreadsheets and evolving power
points. Social media can be so easy. We almost got it figured out, right?

But what is your communication plan, your rhetoric fidelity and your one-hit-wonder-esque
witty comment to shoot you into some currently trending social-responsibility discourse really
worth, when your CEO decides to sh*t all over it and get high on television?
I’m looking at you Elon, the ‘Edgelord’, Musk.

After a line of controversies, Musk is now officially considered a ‘bro’ by internet memelords,
as his smoke session with comedian Joe Rogan seems to be the next logical controversy
after announcing to set Tesla stock at 420$ back in August. However, his shareholders
apparently didn’t think as highly of this little smoke session in the Rogan podcast and made
Tesla drop by 10% the same day on Wall Street. 

The case of Musk is not only interesting for the LULZ, but certainly tells us a lot about the
current state of PR, and specifically about the implications of CEO communications as an
increasingly impactful subfield, that ultimately requires the same level of professionalisation
we have hopefully managed to establish in our daily doings. 
 

Can you feel the Bern yet?

After Edward Bernays pulled the first trick of public relations by relabeling and extending
propaganda techniques, we are currently seeing the PR evolve even further towards a
conception of ‘Public Engagement’. The fundamental changes to media landscape, media
logic and to how discourse works in our society have irrevocably changed the sphere of
corporate communications. In times of social CEOs and leaders, social media is seen as a way to
humanize, and thus personalize, formerly monolithic and faceless organizations (Tsai & Men, 2017). In fact, research finds that responsive and assertive communication by CEOs
leads their followers to perceive them as ‘amicable role models and caring friends’, which in
turn increases trust, advocacy and satisfaction - and ultimately munney!
Linking this with the changes of media logic it seems like a requirement for modern CEOs to
engage in positive and ethical manners with the public, as they are the walking public image
and reputation of their organization, as well as a commonly searched source for
content-starved journalists.

What we have seen in the case of Elon Musk is him breaching the line of an ‘amicable’ friend
into the ‘bro’-sphere, which caused backlash not only in immediate economic reactions, but
may cause even further reputational damages through concerns of Musk breaking the
ethical role-model expectations public figures (and especially CEOs) are subjected to.

In this sense, I believe, that we as professionals need to understand the importance of social
CEOs and be clear and strategic about the approach, seeing it as an integral part of a
strategic communication framework, rather than a personal side activity the CEO interferes
with at free will.
The lines between untrustful ‘bro’ and amicable friend are apparently very fine, and small
missteps might snowball in their effects.
Probably we need to take our CEOs in hand for a while, extend our communicationplan.xls
by another sheet (I know you love it somehow) and walk the long ways of the social
together, making more amicable friends for our CEOs.

How Pepsi handled its PR crisis

Last year, Pepsi encountered one of its biggest public relations crises in years. In April 2017, Pepsi launched its newest ad as part of the ‘Live for Now’ campaign on YouTube. However, this two-and-a-half minute spot was not online for long, since the reactions on social media on this ad were not positive, to say the least… The ad shows supermodel Kendall Jenner leaving her photo shoot in order to join a protest outside on the streets. Thereafter, she ensured peace between the protesters and the cops, by handing a can of Pepsi to a cop… Without further ado, see the ad for yourself.

                                     

What sparked the crisis?

As said before, the reactions on social media weren’t sweet. Twitter exploded. The widespread criticism entailed that the ad was inappropriate, tone deaf and disrespectful. People accused Pepsi of trivializing recent protest movements, such as the Women’s March and the Black Lives Matter movement. Even the daughter of Martin Luther King, Bernice King, responded to the ad. She tweeted: “If only Daddy would have known about the power of #Pepsi.”  

                               

Source: twitter.com/berniceking

Frames that are built on social media by the public can have an important role in defining a certain crisis, and can, subsequently, affect the evolution and impact of that crisis. Those online frames can have far-reaching consequences (Van der Meer, 2016). This seemed to be the case for the Pepsi crisis. The widespread criticism apparently became too much, since Pepsi pulled the ad within 24 hours of releasing it.

Pepsi’s crisis management

Pulling the ad was probably the last thing that Pepsi wanted to do. The production of this ad might have cost a lot, considering, among other things, Kendall Jenner being the highest paid model in 2017. However, it didn’t seem like Pepsi had any other choice… In the press release Pepsi stated the following:

“Pepsi was trying to project a global message of unity, peace and understanding. Clearly we missed the mark, and we apologize. We did not intend to make light of any serious issue. We are removing the content and halting any further rollout. We also apologize for putting Kendall Jenner in this position.”

A quick reaction is essential

Probably the best thing that Pepsi did, was handling the crisis as fast as possible. A quick reaction is essential in times of crisis. Pepsi posted a press release and pulled the ad within 24 hours of releasing it. Since the rise of social media has changed the flow of information, it is crucial for organizations to constantly monitor what is happening online, in order to recognize possible crisis signals as early as possible (Sung, 2014). This is one of the things that Pepsi obviously did do right.

Why Pepsi did the right thing

Furthermore, Pepsi handled this crisis in the right way for multiple reasons. Pepsi accepted the responsibility, admitted the mistake, apologized, and pulled the ad. According to Coombs’ (2007) Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), the crisis response should be in line with the attribution of responsibility for the crisis. The SCCT describes three crisis clusters based on the attribution of responsibility. Pepsi fits within the so-called intentional or preventable cluster, which has very strong attributions of responsibility for the crisis. In case of a preventable crisis, a ‘rebuild’ crisis response strategy should be used, according to the SCCT crisis response strategy guidelines. One of the rebuild crisis response strategies is ‘apology’. With this strategy, the organization takes full responsibility for the crisis and, obviously, apologizes. This is exactly what Pepsi did, with hopes to prevent (any further) reputational damage. The fact that Pepsi also apologized to Kendall Jenner did spark some critique on social media. But in all honesty, what doesn’t nowadays?

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:

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