Today’s post is a continuation: What should Nestlé do now? It’s easy to say what they should’ve done – but now that they had this mess on their hands, what is the way forward?

I’ve got 4 steps for them, that if they do, I believe could turn this around for them.

1. The Focus: Change Perception

I said yesterday that it no longer matters what the facts are. The whole sitution was sparked by a Greenpeace video that claimed Nestlé were using a certain oil from a certain supplier that was destroying rainforests.

Whether this is true or not is irrelevant.

Because whether or not Nestlé do or don’t use that oil, people now only perceive that 1] they do use the oil, and also that 2] Nestlé are covering up, doing Social Media badly, and only care about profits.

Ask yourself: how do you know, for sure, that Nestlé buy this certain palm oil? But that doesn’t matter – because you perceive that they do, and we believe that if the crowd perceives it, then it’s probably right.

Of course, many people don’t even know about the palm oil part of the story. They just know that Nestlé have been tragically managing their Facebook page.

Hence their focus now should not be to change the facts. Their focus must be to change perceptions. A hard job.

2. The Concept: Match Spreadability With Spreadability

The protesting against Nestlé is viral. I’ve been discussing the qualities of ‘viral’ in a series of studies on Spreadability vs Reach. Direct reach is what broadcast media is all about – the number of eyeballs they can get their message directly in front of.

Spreadability, however, is not about direct reach, but about the ability for a message to spread organically from eyeball to eyeball, based on the nature of the message (exemplified in this case study on the Rage Against The Machine vs X-Factor).

The campaign against Nestlé, and subsequent anti-sentiment, is spreadability. Nestlés poor response was to issue a press release – a direct reach tactic – that simply does not match the power and the spreadbility of the campaign against them.

The solution for Nestlé lies in creating a spreadable campaign to match the spreadable campaign against them.

3. The Change: Fully Embrace Social Authenticity

Nestlé have two options.

They could ignore it all. Most people don’t know what’s happened online, and it will blow over in a number of days. That’s the nature of Social Media. But Nestlé will not able to get away with it a second time, because Social Media will have grown.

The better option is to embrace it all. Nestlé must realise that the three parts in this terror, 1] the video, 2] their poor handling and 3] the public backlash, all stem from an inherent Social disconnection on Nestlés part, both ethically and relationally. Nestlé are in denial.

Nestlé, in the face of this total Social disconnect, denial and inauthenticity, must fully change and embrace Social Authenticity. This is not a fake authenticity. This must be a full, repentant and sincere turn around.

Only fully embracing Social Authenticity will change the perceptions about them.

Only fully embracing Social Authenticity will create the necessary spreadability to match the spreading protest against them.

Ask yourself: if Nestlé issued an unprecedented style of apology, and took an unprecedented level of action, wouldn’t you take notice?

4. The Execution: A Campaign Of Transparency

To embrace Social Authenticity, Nestlé must do what people believe it is not doing: be transparent.

Being transparent means being open about its practises, and also open about what people think about it – the second of which they lost through censoring the comments. My campaign woud be thus:

First: I would suggest they create a nestlereviews.com website, similar to ASOSreviews.com. This website shows the sentiment that people have about them. This act would show the sincere change in Nestlé, and highlight that they are no longer censoring, but want to know what people are saying, and provide that info back to the public – even to their own detriment. A bold move that demands attention. They then set a goal to shift this sentiment.

Second: They need to become personal and not corporate by filming videos of themselves openly apologising and stating their change – with no excuses or further waffle. This shows that they are no longer trying to hide.

Third: A campaign to change their ethics, over a period of time. On the back of the first two suggestions, this would be the place for Nestlé to educate people on how they aren’t as bad as people to perceive to be. The point is that no one is wiling to listen at the moment, so the first steps must be carried out to earn people’s attention again.

Cost Factor:

• A nestlereviews.com would cost them no more than £30,000.
• A smart Social Media consultancy to assist them for a little while – let’s be generous and allocate £80,000.
• Posting regular videos (firstly the apologies) and then updates on their progress (which they have already in their press releases) – no more than £20,000.
• Changing their policies on palm oil: already happening.
• Apologising: swallowing a lot of pride.
• Total: £150,000. Social Authenticity doesn’t cost much. It just takes reality.

Conclusion

I’m not saying Nestlé are or are not ethical. I don’t know. I do expect people think they are worse than they are due to the hype. But the point remains that if they are indeed ethical, no believes they are. So they must shift perception before they can educate.

Only an exceptionally strong move by Nestlé can turn this around – hence my plan above. If they did this, with sincerity, it could be a turning point in their organisation. But it won’t happen overnight. They have years of bad vibe to shift.

I expect some of this is controversial. With all the anti-Nestlé sentiment, a suggestion that Nestlé can resolve this probably seems blasphemous. But for me, this only illustrates all the more that what they face is a highly emotive and spreadable protest that can only be addressed through an equally spreadable and compelling campaign.

More importantly, what do you say? Would you go with this plan if you were Nestlé?

The latest Social Media disaster happened last week as Nestlé got literally slammed on Facebook. Here’s how it happened, what lessons we can glean, and what Nestlé should’ve done:

1. A Social Media presence doesn’t inherently fix your offline problems and perceived questionable ethics.

It began with a Greenpeace campaign attacking Nestlé who are pupportedly purchasing palm oil from companies that destroy rainforests. Greenpeace created a video (which is sitting on their homepage) that rebranded the popular Nestlé chocolate bar brand, Kit Kat, into ‘Killer’, with the slogan ‘give the orang-utan a break.’

Nestlé asked YouTube to pull the video under copyright infringement, but the video had already gone viral. The summary in this comment by alecast gives an excellent and succinct order of events.

Takeaway: Be prepared for Social Media to amplify offline opinion.

2. People don’t mind if you don’t get it right, but they do mind if you get it wrong.

Mass protest then began on Nestlé’s Facebook page, which as you can imagine, quickly became swamped with not only outrage against their use of this palm oil, but also their pulling of the video.

As the Facebook hate piled in, Nestlé updated their Facebook page to reflect the sentiment of ‘we’re still learning’. As much as people say that it’s ok to get it wrong, in the Social Media mob’s eyes, it isn’t.

Takeaway: Like Eurostar, if you don’t have all the answers, people don’t care about your reasons. Have the answers ready.

3. Do Not Censor

Censoring the video in the first place is what exacerbated this war. People started making the Killer logo their profile picture, at which point Nestlé repeated the intial mistake by issuing the following update on Facebook:

please don’t post using an altered version of any of our logos as your profile pic – they will be deleted.

The Streisland effect is used to describe the phenomenon when censorship causes something to become even more widespread. Don’t do it. And especially don’t do it twice. The net is at such a place that whatever you delete is pretty retrievable – and even if it isn’t – the whole thing with mass protest is that it is based in perception far more than reality. Censoring fuels this emotion.

Takeaway: Had Nestlé not censored, this would not have reached this size. Don’t censor.

4. Old Media Does Not Understand Social Crisis Management

Old Media thinks that removing a comment because the user’s profile picture is infringing and damaging your brand is the way to go.

Old Media is stupid. Old Media doesn’t consider that digital and social means will make two profile pictures spring up in the place of every deleted one. And Old Media doesn’t understand that text is more powerful than images when it comes to Google search and Facebook comments.

Even worse is telling users you will delete their comments – as if that will make people stop. If they were so concerned about their brand, they should’ve deleted the comments without telling anyone.

Takeaway: Social Crisis Management never takes the form of censorship or editing. It takes the form of creating new solutions.

5. Do Not Retaliate

The biggest mistake Nestlé made was by the person running the Facebook page who appeared to take every criticism personally. Just scan through this screenshot on this post.

Retaliation also invokes the Streisland effect.

Takeaway: Nestlé should’ve not responded to anything. Nothing they could say would make it right anyway, so rather say nothing.

6. The Truth Doesn’t Matter: Perception Does

Nestlé issues a press release on Wednesday, “assur[ing] you than Nestlé does not buy palm oil from the Sinar Mas Group”

It’s irrelevant – whether true or false.

When you get it wrong be censoring and retaliating, you reinforce the perception that you are trying to cover your tracks.

Takeaway: Don’t focus on facts, focus on perception.

7. Respond With The Same Weight

A press release does not combat screaming hatred against a brand. You must match fire with fire. The only way Nestlé can turn this around is to carry out something that has the same weight as the criticisms and viral nature that attacked it.

Takeaway: You cannot respond with traditional methods. You must match viral protest with viral solutions.

Conclusion

All of this, in my opinion, was Nestlés terribly misguided attempts at managing crisis through censorship of reach. Crisis management of spreadability is totally different.

When creating a Crisis Management process, you must never censor. You must create. Simply because spreadability requires us to create new media, as you cannot censor what has already been spread!

You can read a great summary from start to finish of what happened here.

Do you have any more points to add?

P.S. I’ll be talking about this on Thursday 25th March at WOM UK if you’re in London.

So there’s lots of buzz right now about Eurostar’s mass travel delays following a train failure mid-Channel Tunnel, and the subsequent issues surrounding the handling of their Social Media presence by self-called ‘Conversation Agency’ We Are Social.

I am not intending to repeat much of what’s already been said, nor lay out the background of the situation, which is neatly summarised at TechCrunch. You can read what I have found to the best articles on the theme of this being a Communications problem as opposed to a Social Media problem at BrandRepublic, Digital Stuffing and at Rob Fenwick’s blog, with thanks to Mack Pack for pointing me there with his good summarising post. My aim is to discuss the flawed view of the majority that is held towards Social Media.

Before I begin, I’ll say that this is in no way an attack on We Are Social. They have chronicled their trials and tribulations in the last days on their blog, and as they state, had no agreement in place with Eurostar for crisis management. The reason why I’m tackling this case study is because it’s current, and because it reveals what the majority mindset is.

So here are the flaws that Social Media Agencies and their Clients are facing that have been highlighted by the Eurostar situation:

Flaw 1: Conversations, not Communications

We Are Social are a ‘Conversation Agency‘, and if that’s what they are selling, then that’s fine. But the misunderstanding for many is that Social Media is just about conversations, and this is where problems set it in: because it’s not. First of all, Social Media is communications (of which ‘conversation’ is a part), and secondly, not all conversation, nor communication, is verbal, or written, or video, or audio, or links.

The fruition of this thinking means Social Media doesn’t do anything outside of ‘Conversations’ which is often code for ‘soft-sell marketing’. As we have seen, and as many are writing, this Eurostar debacle should illustrate once and for all that Social Media is not just about marketing – and any campaign that does so is an unbalanced and doomed campaign, because people – your users – are always going to ask you about things that are nothing to do with marketing, such as customer support – why? – because it’s a communication platform and that’s how they see it.

Neilsen identified 5 areas of use for Social Media (Customer Service and Support, Insight and Research, Product Development, PR Reputation and Influence, Marketing), all of which require both internal and external communications, which are probably managed by Social Media (you know, email, basecamp, etc.) This means communication infrastructure needs to be built – more on this later.

My other point is that thinking about ‘Conversations’ as a one-size-fits-all is another flawed mindset. Sure, Social Networks are a place for conversation – but users talk with their friends – not incessantly with brands. At Like Minds Immersive: Developing Social Media Strategy I pointed to a lack of profiling one’s actual Social Media audience as hit and miss quicksand. Just because a demographic will have a conversation with others about you doesn’t mean they want to have a conversation with you – perhaps all they want is a discount code? Correct profiling should prevent you from overestimating their participation with you. Also when we look at Social Media as Communications, we can stop thinking that the only lexicon we have is ‘engagement’, ‘conversation’, ‘participation’ and ‘discussion’.

Flaw 2: Little or No Strategy

We Are Social’s plan for Eurostar was a low-level, introductory experiment called ‘Little Break, Big Difference‘ (again they discuss this on their blog.) The site looks quite nice, but when I also consider their Twitter account and Facebook page, I am left feeling that there is little strategy here. I don’t get how this really connects with their audience, or in any way lifts restrictions to provide their audience with previously unrealised value.

This lack of strategy is now common place for Social Media campaigns. For me, I consider a large contribution to this is the lack of strategic frameworks for Social Media programs. Perhaps people are too busy trying to Social Celebrities. Anyway. Very few people seem to make frameworks and models, and most are really not that beneficial but just tactics. I’m sure it’s very arrogant, but I think this is something I do well. I’ve drawn up a number of frameworks that don’t just point out tactics but help you identify what strategic approach you should take.

Basic questions that should be answered by a good strategy:

• What purpose do the Social Media profiles have? Which of the 6 presence types are you using?
• How are your profiles lifting restrictions for your target audience?
• What provision are you making for non-conversation activity?
• What levels of participation is your audience profiled at?

We’ve all said it, but let’s say it again: tactics aren’t strategy. So please, Mr. I-Did-A-Twitter-Course, add some strategy to your understanding of the tools. And this goes for the agencies too!

Flaw 3: Little or No Integration

When it comes to Social Media you’ve got to know that, being a communications platform, people will tweet you for things that a marketing agency can’t resolve. If you view your Social Media activity as purely marketing you are stuffed. Case in point: people still reply to @SkyNews  with questions, even though it clearly states that it’s not there to provide responses and is automated.

Integration goes to your 360 degree management structure – who reports to who – where to go for information – classification of engagement to ensure correct responses and subsequent internal communications – ensuring that each message is systematically resovled.

Look at Eurostar’s Facebook and Twitter accounts and there is apparently none of this. Wall posts with no resolution (as per image above), Tweets with no responses – and if they are being done in private, then why aren’t they being done in public?

Where is the linkup between PR, Marketing, Support, C-Suite and Social Media? Who integrated this? Who thought ahead and considered some worst case scenarios?

When I work with clients at Aaron+Gould, we create guidelines that detail exactly how we execute everything and how we report, including classification of Tweets, Facebook messages, blog posts, scales of urgency and response, complete with the entire procedure for resolution and sample 140 character updates to use. Over time I’ll be sharing a lot of this with you, but if you want some great advice on crisis management and Social Media, read this article from FreshNetworks.

Flaw 4: Non Experiential

Question: do you think the user cares that, on the Eurostar Twitter, it says “Official Eurostar Twitter feed. Not Eurostar customer service but trying to help get information out to our customers as received. Thanks for understanding”

Answer: no one cares. In fact, few even read it. People just want answers – like I’ve said three times in this post on the same point now.

There is a real problem with delivering user experience for most Social Media campaigns, like this case above. I find it highly ironic that, seeing as We Are Social believe that, we, the people, are social, then why on earth is there a complete lack of Social Support? The message from We Are Social and Eurostar here is clear: “When it comes to marketing our message to you, we’ll talk and we are social. But when it comes to solving your problems that we marketed you into buying, then sorry, we’re not social anymore.”

So…

That’s my take on it. Like I said in starting, this isn’t an attack on We Are Social – and I really do feel that they have received the unfortunate brunt of what was a problem out of their control. But they had not architected a Social Media strategy correctly, and it is approaches like theirs that continue to muddy the industry and create further ‘conversationalists’ who lack any care for integration that actually benefits organisations and users in the long run.

What I haven’t done is said what I would’ve done. Firstly, because it’s too easy to say it, and secondly, because I think the correct actions fall into place when we change our thinking about Social Media as I have tried to do above.

Thoughts?

Yesterday was the soft launch of Like Minds, a gathering of like minded people around creativity, technology and fresh thinking. The slogan sums it up best: Collaboration over Innovation.

So around midday yesterday, I send the tweet that Like Minds is now open, and ready for registrations to attend our first conference in Exeter on the 16th October. So I’m expecting a nice bunch of in-the-buzz-of-it registrations to come in over the following hours, right? Guess again. Eventbrite, the service we’re using to take all registrations, decides to one of those days that is plagued by intermittent service. It’s not until late last night that the first (get that: first) registration comes through.

That’s pretty bad, right? Guess again.

The beloved feed service Feedburner (the way blogs get into people’s inboxes and RSS readers) also decides to have a day off. So all the momentum I had built through my blog dissipates in one beautiful and inglorious moment. Fortunately some people visited my blog by tweet or by routine – but all my wonderful readers who are signed up the easy way, didn’t get the message.

It all ended ok though because as we all know, Google are great on customer service and this was all resolved last night, right?

Guess again.

Feedburner still hasn’t picked up my feed, meaning this blog post probably won’t make it to more than a precious few. (Of course, you can help out by retweeting this article using the button at the end of the post – thanks!)

Coincidence. Not my favouite word right now.

Yet coincidence is, as I’ve pointed out, much of how marketing apparently works. I wrote about casting your bread on the social media waters and the fact that very often when people tell me how they heard about me it was through a series of events I had never predicted, anticipated, or even planned for. What then do you do when coincidence conspires against you?

These last 48 hours I’ve learnt to think outside of the bin. Forget the luxury of even having a box with which to think outside of – thinking outside of the bin is survival mode – the kind of thinking you need when you are scratching the ground as you are descending into a pit of FAIL.

Here’s my survival kit for thinking outside of the bin, courtesy of ‘coincidence’:

• Fix the problem. Easier said than done. The rule here is that if you can’t fix it immediately, get someone on it, and while they’re trying to figure it out, you can:
• Have a contingency plan. When emotions get the better of you, you need a framework with which to stick to, that you’ve planned in advance. This helps keep your head cool while everyone else is loosing theirs. Failing this:
• Use multiple channels. In the absence of my auto-posting, auto-emailing, auto-feed-reading, auto-marketing system, I’ve become best friends with Facebook walls and events, old Ning profiles and good ol’ texting. Failing this:
• Ask your friends to help. It takes a good dose of humility to ask for help – but if you’re doing business personally, then you understand that friends in business help each other out. So, hopefully you’ve built good relationships with others who can reach some of your audience for you. Hopefully. Failing this:
• Prepare to bounce back. Convert the stress of ‘it isn’t working and what on earth are we going to do?’ into preparation for a huge bounce back. Write a great press release. Make the website better. Write your contingency plan while it’s fresh in your mind. Again: convert stress into preparation. Failing this:
• Watch The Office.

My descent last night actually went one step further. Failing owning the office, I embarked on the most fruitless of excercises: trawling through Google Groups to find a Google employee who could help. Yes, I went to bed late last night.

So anyway, I hope this helps. It’s fresh thinking, that’s for sure.

And one other thing is certain, this is the most peculiar blog post for announcing a new event ever. (Unless someone can find something even more off the wall?) Hopefully Feedburner will have me back up and running soon, but in the meantime, I want to thank you for being a loyal reader who visits my site. As you know, I really appreciate you, even more so today. You’re a like mind

Yours, most truly,
Scott

P.S Don’t forget to click the magic share buttons below – I normally wouldn’t ask, but I really need it!