#LenovoGate
In this day and age there is no excuse for large companies to not have an emergency social media plan. Like those break in case of emergency that you see littered throughout offices. Where or What is your company’s emergency social media plan?
Just a couple months ago Lenovo Canada must have wished they had one. They had a laptop for a too good to be true price. Was this a price error? A bait and switch? Who cared the Internetz remarked and off they went buying $300 laptops.
A day later, Lenovo began to cancel the laptops. This caused massed confusion as you could still order the laptop for dirt cheap prices. Finally they took down the page and all orders were canceled. I really didn’t know what on earth was going on at the HQ of Lenovo Canada but an image of chickens with their head chopped off comes to mind. Everybody needs an emergency social media plan. Where was Lenovo’s emergency plan when this happened? With this in mind I would like to offer a brief framework on an emergency plan.
Acting Quick
Time is of the essence when something goes wrong. I remember reading a stat that in the Afghanistan War if they can get a casualty to a hospital in under two hours of the injury there is a 90% chance of survival.
When something went wrong at Lenovo the need to act as quick as humanly possible is imperative. Taking down the page to buy that laptop, communicating to customers, heck even shutting down Lenovo Canada’s website something needs to be done. Sticking your head in the sand and hopping it would go away is NOT an acceptable excuse.
Bad!!! Don’t do this!
What I would’ve done in Lenovo’s case is take down the page for the cheap laptop, if that couldn’t have been done, I would’ve taken down the entire Lenovo Canada site. Yes the entire site, as the bad PR is too much. For some god unknown reason if that couldn’t have been done I would’ve begun to communicate that the price is a pricing error and that Lenovo will be canceling ALL orders. I would’ve done everything I could to set expectations as low or none at all in honoring the prices that were mentioned on the site as it is easier to exceed low expectations than high expectations.
During the Crisis
Whatever messaging is developed, one should continue to re iterate it on a frequency that matched the reach, 1:Many (once a day), 1:1 (as it arises). In Lenovo’s example they should have continued to message it was a pricing error. Engage with customers, empathize with their frustration, use meme’s, anything to keep the message out there. Also a willingness should be developed to disengage from irrational people (aka the person who ordered 50 laptops).
After the Crisis
A lot of this will be dependent on “Head Office’s” response. In Lenovo’s case they gave $100 off for any laptop as a make good gesture. They should take that message and begin to run with it. Deal with the detractors with that message and see if anything else can be done for small moments to delight customers.
This phase should be mainly about getting off crisis mode and beginning to get back on marketing message with social media. After a while the crisis should die off and you will be back to business as usual.
After Action Report
Something which I hope that I stress in this blog is that failure isn’t a bad thing. In crisis mode the best decisions are not necessarily made. When it becomes business as usual then would be a great time to learn about what decisions made, were they good or bad decisions? Why or why not? Add any learnings into your Social Media emergency manual.
As of writing this Lenovo’s twitter handle had not made a single tweet since May 28th! The damage they had received by sticking their head in the sand was too much for them to resume their social media campaigns. It is imperative that companies begin to develop an emergency plan. Don’t let what happened to Lenovo Canada happen to your company.