Early in 2011, the “Arab Spring” uprisings made headlines around the world, using social media to share information without government interference. Twitter was a key platform through which this was accomplished and the spike in the use of hashtags such as #Cairo and #ArabSpring showed its impact. Using these hashtags allowed sympathisers around the world to demonstrate their support for the uprising and provided real-time encouragement to the revolutionaries.
Importantly though, while social media platforms like Twitter can play a vital role in the propagation of real-time unfiltered information during time likes this, it is also a popular communication channel via which businesses attempt to promote products and engage customers. On February 3, these two different uses converged with unfortunate results. Early that day, fashion designer Kenneth Cole decided to hitch his wagon to a heavily-trending topic to promote his new clothing collection. He did this by tweeting “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo -KC”.
What Happened Next…
Within minutes, the tweet went viral and a wave of negative coverage followed close behind. The comment was condemned for being – at best – in poor taste and – at worst – totally offensive. The condemnation took many forms; for example, a spoof ‘KennethColePR’ twitter account was created, with posters competing to outdo each with parodies of the tweet. A crisis management PR strategy was rapidly enacted with Cole apologizing 2 hours later via Facebook, but the reputational damage was already done.
So, What Should Have Happened?
For any company where social media is an important element of their communications strategy, the temptation to jump on a trending topic to generate coverage will always be great. When handled sensitively, this approach could deliver positive benefits, but before embarking upon this course it is important to understand the tone and context around the topic that you plan to hijack and to incorporate your tactic into a broader media communications strategy, to ensure that you maintain control of the conversation.
In this case, it certainly appears that this wasn’t done, although an oddly similar episode in September 2013 suggests that this was not an isolated mishap, but rather a conscious action seemingly based on the old saw that “any news is good news”. If this is true, it highlights even more strongly the need for full understanding of what you are jumping into via accurate monitoring and analysis of media coverage, otherwise any short-term upswing in attention could be more than wiped out by the subsequent negative coverage.
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Last month (April 2016), Alaska Airlines announced their intention to purchase rival carrier Virgin America for $2.6B—roughly a $1B premium over Virgin America’s market capitalization just a few days earlier. The $1B difference is primarily attributed to ‘goodwill’ – related to the strong brand that Virgin America has built in the US since launching in 2007. “Goodwill” is defined by Investopedia as:
“an intangible asset that arises as a result of the acquisition of one company by another for a premium value. The value of a company’s brand name, solid customer base, good customer relations, good employee relations and any patents or proprietary technology represent goodwill.”[1]
Essentially, “goodwill” is to a business what reputation is to a person.
The Challenge: Effectively Managing Your Brand Reputation During an Acquisition
While Alaska Airlines is highly profitable and the acquisition is expected to be accretive in the first year, maintaining goodwill during this transition is vital for long-term client retention and the value of the business.
Just days after the announcement, articles began to appear that highlight this challenge. For example, an article on Skift (a travel media intelligence company) makes the case that Alaska is not proactively managing customer perceptions, a quote from Chris Nurko, Global Chairman of Futurebrand, is telling. “What is interesting is the voice of the customers, those who are flying Virgin: Alaska needs to reach out to them. From what I’ve heard and I’ve read, they don’t seem to be doing that.” Nurko notes that Virgin America is reaching out to its’ customer base, but Alaska has remained silent so far and that this is unsettling to Virgin’s loyal customers (he is one).
So, What Could Alaska Airlines Be Doing?
Corporate communications—effectively managed—can play a large role in maintaining “goodwill” during an acquisition. A timely, well-managed communications outreach strategy during an acquisition has the power to win over a customer base, while simultaneously maintaining the value of the company.
While there are many examples of communications strategies successfully deployed during financial transactions, those that can be described as ‘best practice’ share a few common elements:
1. Seven-day-a-week media monitoring of channels – print, broadcast, and online – to facilitate real-time alerts on hot, breaking news
2. The ability to profile and deferentially score content from “sources of interest” within the overall coverage, to ensure that thought leader commentary is properly managed towards the positive
3. Comprehensive media measurement and reporting on all media types, to ensure that the communications team maintains a broad strategic view of the media landscape and kept them from being surprised by breaking news
4. As a consumer-oriented company, regular social media impact reports can provide insight into customer engagement levels and tone, as well as highlighting the ‘social momentum’ of any negative stories
5. A ‘rapid response’ monitoring capability, to enable the communications team to redirect the focus of analysis and monitoring quickly. Output from this enables the communications team to continuously adjust their focus and strategy, ensuring they are always able to respond rapidly to fast-moving issues.
With a communications strategy focused on protecting the goodwill of the Virgin America brand and a “best practices” media monitoring strategy, there is every reason to expect Alaska Airlines to successfully navigate this transaction, which is expected to close in 2017.
[1] http://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/goodwill.asp
[2] https://skift.com/2016/04/12/the-death-of-virgin-americas-brand-and-the-aftermath-of-the-alaska-airlines-sale/
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Over the years, we have all seen markets respond to rapidly changing environments with a quick solution that solves the problem at hand, but not as completely as we’d like. More time is needed for a complete solution to be developed.
Shortly after 9/11, I recall waiting in long lines at the airport – sometimes upwards of 2 hours – so that the hastily-implemented extra TSA screeners could do their job. We all saw a very real need (airline safety) being met by a quick solution (thorough screening) that was often frustrating and time-consuming. It took years until the Trusted Traveler programs were put into place, new passenger queue areas were built, and agents were trained to be more effective and polite for the worst of the security delays to abate.
The PR Quick Fix
In public relations and communications, we faced our own major crisis when the Internet took over: anyone could instantly access any content from virtually any publication, any opinionated person could be a publisher via their own blog, and social media made the worst of those people into both critics and amplifiers of bad news. We in the communications industry had to do something – fast – to get our arms around what was being said, and how our messages were resonating. So what did we do?
We turned to our friend, “technology”, to solve the problem quickly.
Powerful software was developed to deliver automated content scraping via rich Boolean keyword searches. Sentiment software extracted words that reflected opinions and emotions. Coupled with beautiful graphs bolted on the front end, this approach gave us a glimpse into all that content whizzing by at the speed of electrons. It was far from perfect, but it worked.
From Automated Tools to Curated Media Analysis
But now there has been more time to understand the rich complexity and interaction of content, the Internet, and social communications. Many senior communications professionals are finding that automated tools can only go so far in addressing their needs for insightful and actionable media analysis, particularly for large, complex brands with broad coverage across many outlets. They thirst for knowledge beyond the keywords. They hunger for relevant, insightful media analysis from mass-volume, multi-channel coverage.
Automated PR software applications cannot accurately and comprehensively interpret; they will only do what you tell them to do in the most literal terms. Even with the best search terms, first-generation tools will pick up irrelevant content (false positives) or exclude important content (false negatives). They struggle to determine comparative relevance. And just forget about subtle things like sarcasm, double meanings, or context. For example, is “He is the Tiger Woods of X” a compliment or an insult? For golf, that would very likely be a compliment, but used in the context of being a good husband? Probably not.
One approach that has been gaining increased acceptance is media analytics based on advanced technology, yet augmented by highly trained, specialized human analysts that wield sophisticated analytics tools.
Many organizations are finding that a human deeply analyzing a statistically relevant subset of coverage from the most important outlets, social media influencers, and channels allows them unprecedented quantitative insight into what is working, what is not, and how they are performing versus their peers. Human discretion also accounts for those subtle nuances that software applications cannot reliably pick up.
Organizations are discovering that as they understand the problem – and their goals – better, they are employing solutions that achieve the original goals, yet do them more effectively, gracefully, and usefully. Humans leveraging technology can understand and analyze content like no computer can, and they can be flexible as situations change quickly. They solve the original problem, but in a better, easier way.
…just like a shorter security line at the airport – who wouldn’t like that?
Eric Koefoot is a Managing Partner at PublicRelay.
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Originally published on April 1, 2016, this blog was updated on December 12, 2024.
On April 1, 1996 a full-page advertisement appeared in six major American newspapers[1] announcing that Taco Bell had purchased the Liberty Bell, one of the United States’ most cherished historical symbols. The “justification” for this controversial announcement was that Taco Bell was seeking a way to do its part in helping to reduce the US national debt. The ad went on to explain that while the bell would be renamed the “Taco Liberty Bell”, it would still remain accessible to the public.
An accompanying press release trumpeted Taco Bell’s corporate good-citizenship by comparing the bell’s purchase to the adoption of highways by corporations. Taco Bell suggested that it was only “going one step further by purchasing one of the country’s greatest historic treasures.” In conclusion, the company proudly stated, “Taco Bell’s heritage and imagery have revolved around the symbolism of the bell. Now we’ve got the crown jewel of bells.”
We know now that this was all part of a carefully planned April Fools’ Day corporate prank, deservedly ranked as one of the best of its kind. At the time however, while some people got the joke, others took it seriously and yet others took offense. One example of media coverage from the latter camp is an op-ed piece in the Washington Times of April 5, 1996 in which the writer describes the hoax in heated terms: “To use this sacred symbol as part of some silly game is an affront to generations of proud Americans who have fought and died for this country’s freedom – so proudly represented by the Liberty Bell. Apparently this doesn’t matter to Taco Bell officials – or maybe they just don’t get it.”
How They Managed
Articles like this were by no means rare, so effectively managing the PR aspect of this corporate prank campaign to minimize the risk of brand damage took skill and no small amount of nerve, but Taco Bell was undoubtedly helped by the nature of media coverage in 1996. Although CNN was launched in 1980, the World Wide Web was in its early stages so the news cycle was still driven by print media and mainstream TV/radio and, as such, was less diverse and also slower moving than today.
At lunchtime on April 1, Taco Bell issued a second press release in which they confessed to the hoax, describing it as “The Best Joke of the Day.” The company also announced that it would donate $50,000 for the upkeep of the Liberty Bell. This ensured that Taco Bell maintained control of the story and, although it did not prevent articles like the one cited above, they were very much in the minority and the campaign was an unqualified success.
The Impact
In a subsequent report, Taco Bell’s PR company, Paine & Associates, quantified the benefits of the corporate prank for Taco Bell:
“More than 650 print outlets and 400 broadcast outlets covered the Taco Liberty Bell story, featuring mentions of the “Nothing Ordinary About It” ad campaign. More than 70 million Americans were exposed to the media event, through radio, print and television coverage, including NBC “Nightly News,” “The Today Show,” CBS “This Morning,” CNN and USA Today. Additionally, more than 50 newspapers nationwide utilized a whimsical AP photo of the Taco Bell CEO next to a replica of the Liberty Bell. Free publicity surrounding the Taco Liberty Bell story generated the equivalent of $25 million in advertising for Taco Bell.”
Finally, according to Taco Bell’s marketing department, their sales spiked upwards by over $500,000 during the week of April 1, compared to the week before, an extraordinary ~85x return for a campaign that cost about $300,000.
How Can We Achieve the Same Results Today?
While organizations now may devise campaigns of similar ingenuity and impact, communicators are faced with an added challenge: how does one effectively manage the story within an ensuing fast-moving news cycle to both maximize the upside and minimize the downside? Unlike 1996, the media of today is diverse, massively distributed, and news cycles are often measured in hours. All this means that the methods that Taco Bell used to manage the evolving narrative nearly 30 years ago are no longer enough to guarantee the outcome today.
To manage a story proactively and effectively now, communications professionals must have a near-real time consolidated understanding of media coverage across all relevant channels. Achieving this requires a media intelligence solution that can:
- Gather news from a wide-range of online and broadcast news, as well as social platforms like X and Facebook
- Understand how your news pieces are trending on the web
- Apply a disciplined but flexible approach to scoring for tonality, topic mentions, etc.
- Present the analyzed media content in a format that delivers insight on emerging trends
Armed with such a solution that supports decision-making, modern communications leaders can employ a data-driven approach to the execution of their communications management strategies. The ability to clearly see the tone. context, and outlet power of coverage means that communications teams can see when to intervene and when to stand still. This approach provides the chance to deliver similar positive outcomes to the Taco Bell story for their organizations, without corresponding increased risk of reputational damage of other approaches.