A camera, two disgruntled wage-slave employees and a video-sharing social media website do not make for a happy story. Instead, the combination is a social media cautionary tale, one fraught with real risk for a corporation.
To wit: In 2009, two North Carolina employees of an international pizza delivery chain filmed themselves defiling customer food orders, all with a nauseating running commentary. They even extolled their previous exploits, explaining how they had done much worse to the pizzas and sandwiches in the past. Then they shared their video with friends, who promptly posted the gross-out film to the popular social media site YouTube. There, the video quickly became a must-see. Soon people were commenting about it on Twitter. Then bloggers weighed in, complete with links back to the video. In a matter of days, an Internet sensation was born.
Unfortunately, the company only learned of the public relations disaster after an enterprising blogger called corporate officials for a comment. By then, thousands of people in the blogosphere vowed never to eat the chain's food again—and national media caught wind of the scandal, further fanning flames by linking news stories to the original video and conducting man-on-the-street interviews with the public, which invariably ended with disgusted consumers vowing to boycott.
The Risks of Unchecked Employee Use of Social Media
The pizza debacle showcases the power of social media—it can be a dialogue builder or it can destroy a brand. Today as internet media, social media changes the entire the entire risk management landscape as risk managers can no longer confine their worries to faulty distribution channels, a misguided human resources practice or an environmental disaster. Now they must also look to websites, blogs, forums, mobile devices, and audio and video-sharing sites.
That's underscored by the results of Aon's 2009/10 Australasian Risk Management Benchmarking Survey, which named "risk to brand and image" as the No. 1 concern among survey respondents. According to Jason Disborough, chief commercial officer for Aon Risk Services Australia, brand and image is an "effect" risk; it's the impact when an event has an effect on the brand and the way the brand is perceived. Risk consultants and insurance brokers can provide pre-loss services—such as crisis management media strategies and business continuity planning, he says. "But clients are telling us brand and image is a key risk and they need tangible solutions to help them protect this aspect of their business."
A proactive business stance against adverse social media
To that end, in Australia, Aon has formed a strategic alliance with SR7, a social media reputation management and risk mitigation organization. According to Disborough, the new Aon solution fills an immediate need. "Social media is evolving so quickly on a worldwide basis. The service is a unique offering that is entirely geared around protecting a company's brand from adverse social media."
It involves proactively assessing social media risk for clients, as well as looking at ways to mitigate and anticipate risks in the social media space. This approach helps ensure that brand equity and corporate image are controlled by the corporation—instead of by disgruntled customers or anonymous bloggers. And it centers on three ongoing phases: assessment, strategic development, and engagement and implementation.
Phase I: Resource Assessment
The first step is a situational analysis that provides a deep and simultaneously broad assessment of the social media landscape, followed by a brand audit.
As a best practice, businesses need to understand what consumers are saying about their brand, products and services, how and where they're making comments, and what potential responses can be developed. Given that the Internet is "open for business" 24 hours a day, the assessment needs to be undertaken by dedicated resources—individuals who can monitor sites continually for social media risk.
