Turn crises into opportunities in the microblog era: Ogilvy PR

The first part of the paper, which is titled “2012 Crisis Management in the Microblog Era”, highlights 10 crises in three categories—public credibility, personal and brand—and shows that eight out of the 10 crises originated with microblogs and spread to traditional media.

The second part, based on research into 50 top brands, finds that the official Weibo account has become the most influential public relations response channel in the microblog era.

Almost every crisis involved key opinion leaders (KOLs), who have become an important driver of the spread of a crisis.

The key findings about crisis management in the microblog era include:

• If the brand responds within eight hours, the crisis duration (average, six days) and negative buzz (average, 65.17 per cent) will be the lowest. If the first response time is over 24 hours after a crisis outbreak, there will be an obvious extension of the crisis duration, which can go up to 19 days.
• Direct responses from senior brand executives within 24 hours can reduce the largest proportion of negative buzz. When the suitability of the response tone increases by 1 per cent, the proportion of negative buzz decreases by 0.5 per cent.
• Brands that operated their own official microblog accounts before the crisis were able to reduce their response time by about 12 hours, decrease their crisis duration by an average of two days and reduce the overall proportion of negative buzz.
• When KOLs are involved in spreading information, the average buzz volume increases by 37 times and the average duration extends by six days.

The white paper points out three principles in the microblog era: care, communication and control. A company should show it cares about the public’s interests or problems, consolidate communication channels to ensure timely and accurate communication, and respond quickly to maintain some control of the crisis development.

To help brands, companies and agencies better leverage social-media platforms in times of crisis, the paper suggests they should:

• Have a crisis management system in place and prepare for different scenarios, which is the only way to  respond in time when crises break out and minimise the negative impact.
• Provice relevant training to corporate spokespeople as microblogs have become a major communications platform.
• Set up an official microblog account as early as possible, and integrate all owned social media resources into the crisis-management system.
• Look into building relationships with the KOLs and maintain healthy interactions with them.
• Take a crisis as a decisive test for the brand and the company; realize that opportunities lie only in the truth.