Let’s first explore the Susan G. Komen Foundation incident

We learned from Zappos  that the first 24 hours are critical for crisis communications. Unfortunately, after Susan G. Komen pulled funds from Planned Parenthood amid their involvement in their polarizing stance on abortion, The Komen Foundation was nowhere to be found. The silence was deafening.

Seeing a large gap in their funding, Planned Parenthood immediately took action, asking supporters to donate to fulfill the gap left by Komen’s withdrawal, and seemingly was the impetuous for public awareness and attention to the issue. The groundswell began to bubble as the American public took their voices to social channels.

When Komen finally crafted a response to the outrage, they failed to make a distinction between traditional and social media, approaching the two audiences as one-in-the-same.  Komen began tweeting to followers with blanket statements linking back to their press release.  Their position came across as defensive, impersonal, and ultimately hurt more than helped.

Some implications of the crisis were as follows:

• 1.3M+ tweets referencing Susan G. Komen Foundation and Planned Parenthood
• 20 posts per minute on the corporate page of the Komen Foundation
• 10,000 comments on the Komen Facebook page
• The ratio of negative to positive Komen tweets immediately following the incident was averaging 80 to 1
• Top Komen officials were forced to resign
• Komen back-peddled on their decision and reinstated funding after deteriorating the brand
• A new campaign emerged to refocus efforts around women’s health under the hashtag #takebackthepink
• Planned Parenthood raised nearly $3 million dollars

A seemingly innocuous amount of contributed funds (0.2% to be exact) turned into a black mark that will forever haunt, arguably American’s most beloved non-profit, ultimately because they were not prepared for the implications of their decision.

Now let’s turn our attention toward SOPA

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) were introduced to enable the government to monitor online trafficking of copyrighted information and reduce piracy. Similar to Komen’s decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood, SOPA/PIPA proved to be a polarizing topic.  The public began publically sharing their opinions about government encroachment on privacy and openness of the web.

Soon, big names like Google and Wikipedia began “censoring” the Internet in retaliation of the bill and to drum up support. Traditional media largely avoided covering the topic, rather the hotspots for driving conversation came from non-traditional media such as blogs and communities.

The results are astounding:

• 3.9 million tweets were SOPA-related on January 18, 2012
• More than 162 million users saw Wikipedia’s blackout page, and 8 million used the page to look up their representative’s contact information
• More than 7 million people signed Google’s petition to congress
• The Flikr community darkened 324,445 photos in protest
• Online activity on Tumblr drove offline behavior with 87,834 phone calls to US Representatives
• Senators opposing the bill went from 5 to 35 in the course of a week

With a little enablement from Silicon Valley, attention and a voice was given to the public to affect the future of our country.

What can we learn from Komen & SOPA/PIPA?

With enough passionate supporters, the ability of grassroots efforts today to drive impactful change is immense. As business leaders, we should not underestimate the power and the voice of a community. With a broader set of tools and technology, the barriers to sharing information are much lower.  Be prepared for a crisis, ensuring outlined processes allow you to quickly communicate with the world. If there’s one thing we can learn from both Zappos and Komen it’s that the first hours of a crisis are critical for informing public opinion and a lack of response only deteriorates brand equity. Lastly, a one-size-fits all approach doesn’t work when addressing audiences. When speaking to individuals it’s best to speak to them as just that – individuals.

As Senator Wyden commented, “What has happened in the last few weeks will permanently change the way citizens communicate with their government.” And as we’ve seen over the past few years, the same is true of organizations who are on the Social Engagement Journey.

What do you think? Weigh-in with your comments below.

An Ant’s Eye Point-of-View is curated and written by Senior Social Business Consultants: Kristy Bolsinger, Geoff Knox, Ali McCourt, Laura Feeney, Anthony Garcia and Sam Eder. Ideas and reactions are welcome in the comments section.

I remember when my children turned from two years of age to three (Erin and Lauren are 12 and 9 today).  I think my most vivid memory of the difference between two and three was the shift from “pick me up” to “put me down.”  If you’ve had kids, you know what I mean – the two year old is constantly at your legs, reaching for the sky and saying “up…up.”  And then, somehow, at three it changes.  You’ve got your youngster in your arms and you feel them throw their arms straight up, arch their back, straighten their legs and say “down…down.”  It’s a magical time as they’ve built the tools, confidence and environment that enables them to explore, grow, learn, and fully experience the world, while at the same time, knowing they have a family to support them.

It’s been no less than magical to be a part of this journey at Ant’s Eye View the past 3 years.  We’ve built the kind of family that is uniquely capable of both “up” (what do you think about this?) and “down” (I got this, let me take it on).  Our family has grown, nearly thirty Ants (we announced one more this week — welcome David J. Neff!), three offices and hundreds of personal and professional relationships across the industry and with our clients.  It’s incredible to walk through this journey and experience this level of blending of personal relationships, client relationships, partner relationships and co-worker relationships.

Here are a few memories that mark this journey for me:

• In the fall of 2008, some of us  (including co-founder Jake McKee) met, quite literally in a cave at the Gundlach Bundschu Winery in Sonoma. I had departed Microsoft after 16 years and we were considering the possibility of Ant’s Eye View.
• In February of 2009, we launched Ant’s Eye View, not with fanfare, but with pragmatism.  Jake and I had clients to work with and let’s face it, we wanted to do real work that would put our clients first and build our reputation the old fashioned way – one project at a time.
• A special thanks belongs to Rod Brooks and the team at PEMCO Insurance who put their trust in us early to help them build their social strategy.  They truly helped us launch what we have in motion still today. Thanks, Rod!
• In March of 2009, within a 48hr period I got two phone calls that set the stage for the year to come.  One from Dustin Johnson, my chief of staff at Microsoft, and the other from Sean McDonald, then responsible for building the social media operation at Dell.  These are the types of phone calls where you remember exactly where you were when you got them.  They were joining our young team.
• A few weeks later, the four of us were at SXSW in Austin.  Around Sean McDonald’s kitchen table, on a small, portable white board, we set out to define our business priorities.
• By June, we were gathering our families together in the mountains outside Seattle to revisit our plans and make our first significant decisions about how we would grow.  We decided we would lead with proven practitioners – those who had led real change with social in “companies our moms have heard of.”  And, we would take an enterprise point of view – knowing early on that social would effect everything the enterprise does, not just how it markets.

In the months ahead the journey only picked up steam and I’ll do a great injustice in even trying to cover every moment so instead let me just express some thanks.

• Thank you to everyone who has joined our team here at Ant’s Eye View.  It’s never lost on me that you fulfill the promises I make every day.  Your partnership, talent and trust have been humbling and inspiring.
• Thank you to our clients who have truly been our partners in this process.  Along the way we have had the opportunity to work with incredible brands, including leaders in Financial Services, Insurance, Enterprise Software, Consumer Software, Networking, Consumer Packaged Goods, Hardware, Telecom, Professional Services firms, Retailers, Travel, Restaurants, Capital Equipment and Advertising.
• Thank you to our partners, advisors and industry peers for your support, encouragement and collaboration.
• And, thank you to our families – who have also had the courage and conviction to support us in our entrepreneurial pursuits.

Last  summer, at our all hands meeting in Austin, I spent time talking with the team about moments I refer to as “stopping to smell the roses moment.”  It can be easy to be caught up in the myth that there is a destination at the end of this journey, when in fact, it is the journey that is the best part. I can’t wait to see what we look like at years four and even five…but let’s face it, I can’t wait to see what we’ll do just in the weeks ahead.  A peek at my calendar tells me I’ll be spending my time in the Silicon Valley, connecting again with Ants and clients who inspire me.  Sounds like fun!

Fully engaged employees will be more productive. They will have greater retention. They will work not just with the organization – but FOR it. A highly engaged employee base can be your greatest pool of advocates when empowered and activated.

Internal Employee Engagement

Recruiting, on-boarding, training, performance management…we could go on. These are all highly costly activities that your business must participate in. Highly engaged employees are more likely to remain a part of your organization longer leading to a decrease in costs nearly across the board. Engaged employees are more likely to advocate for you as an employer. Engaged employees are more likely to maintain an active and participatory role in their own professional development. Engaged employees are more likely to invest back in your company. Here are some interesting articles we’ve seen on this topic:

• A recent post on GreenBiz.com looks at 5 different companies and their employee engagement strategies and breaks it down to core themes: 1) Encourage a public commitment, 2) Define a shared vision, 3) Provide personalized data, 4) Expand a corporate initiative, and 5) Nurture a new method. There are some great ideas here from admirable companies like Google and Saatchi & Saatchi.
• Compliance, Sourcing and Engagement are center to how Charles Van Heerden see’s Human Resources interacting and engaging using social media in ‘How To Build Employee Engagement Using Social Media‘.
• TheSocialWorkplace outlines a 5 Step Roadmap to Internal Social Media - which include 1) Assess, 2) Alignment for Design, 3) Implement, 4) Ensuring Sustainability, and 5) Measure and Adjust.
• Why Are So Few Internal Social Networks Deemed a Success? Adi Gaskell looks at some research by Information Week and offers some insight in to how you can increase your likelihood for success.

External Employee Engagement

The US economy continues to improve and organizations are looking for new ways to innovate and recover – they will continue to look inwards for ways to gain inertia and make progress. Employee activation is a dramatically untapped resource in the majority of organizations. What other group of people are as knowledgeable about your organization as your employees? What other group is as tapped into your marketplace as employees? And what other group of people is as excited about your product and potential as your employees? (HOPEFULLY no one!) Some of the most recent finds on this topic from around the web:

• One of the first places many CMO’s thoughts go to when talking about enabling employees to engage with customers online is one of CAUTION. Yes, yes there are some really dramatic stories floating around out there about employee blunders in social media. But let’s remember that these are the minority. While we’re not suggesting that it is a good idea to get all of your employees out there and engaging in social channels without appropriate governance – it’s not something you want to avoid completely either.
• Your employees have “skin in the game” as John Bell puts it in his post titled 8 Questions to Answer Before Activating Employees as Advocates. He lays out 8 questions for you to ask yourself that will help you plan out how you can develop your “super advocate” from the inside.
• Start by activating your employees that are already and work on improving literacy for the rest is the tack that Shel Holtz suggests in a post on SocialMediaToday awhile back. This post looks at a Forrester study that points out that among staff who already use social media that almost half of them would actually recommend the company’s products/services. Hello opportunity.

An Ant’s Eye Point-of-View is curated and written by Senior Social Business Consultants: Kristy Bolsinger, Geoff Knox, Ali McCourt, Laura Feeney, Anthony Garcia and Sam Eder. Ideas and reactions are welcome in the comments section.

Too often the process is still needed, but the energy behind the adoption and adherence of the process has relaxed. Usually the energy of the process shows up in the form of a individual who is very passionate about the process or more importantly the outcome. When this person relaxes, others tend to relax too.

How many times have you known that you have an expense report to submit, but delay in getting it done. Why? Ignorance? Probably not. No one is harassing you to get the expense report submitted. Bingo (no one is watching)! Some tension is necessary until processes are second nature. Often the tension is governance. Governance is a critical element of managing processes to ensure compliance.

At Ant’s Eye View, we work with top brands moving across the Social Engagement Journey. In the journey, there is process design and process implementation. After some period of continued activity in stages 2 and 3, process atrophy can settle in if you don’t have the right governance in place. Hoping for process outcomes is not enough. Audit and frequent review of operational metrics ensure that process (and more importantly the outcomes) don’t suffer from Social Process Atrophy (getting lax on social outreach service levels, infrequent content generation). Governance is a necessary audit function. Your governance model might be in need of a tune-up.

From our observation, the Zappos crisis response plan seemed to be solid at first.  Passwords were reset. Content was quickly produced and posted. The message that credit card information was not impacted was clearly articulated.  Customers were being notified of the breach with clear directions of what to do to protect accounts. But, as the news rolled out across the country on Monday, January 16 customer reaction on Facebook and Twitter started to turn negative.

What’s interesting, in our opinion, was that negative comments were not about the data breach itself, but rather the company’s reaction.  The New York Times tech blog captured the zeitgeist in this quote from a Zappos customer “That’s it? That’s how you respond to a security exposure that may require me to change my password on a large number of other sites to protect myself? That’s how little you think of your customers, just drop this glib little note and wash your hands of the whole affair? You have a legal and moral obligation to protect my information.”

The first 24 hours of the response captured a few missteps out of character for a social business like Zappos and can provide some helpful lessons for e-commerce brands:

1.    Changing the standard form of communications with customers.

One of the biggest successes of Zappos’s business model is ability/desire to interact with customers seamlessly across multiple channels. During the first 24 hours of this crisis, Zappos went the opposite direction, shutting off phones due to high volume and relying on their blog post and email as their support channel. With email slowdowns and blocking international access to Zappos.com properties, a large number of customers were kept out of the loop.

2.    Key information was not discoverable.

The main logic behind using a blog post to respond to a crisis is to lend an authentic voice and sense of credibility to a company’s message. Deliberate or not, the Zappos blog post about the security breach is not discoverable via their normal blog channel.  Instead, you needed a link sent via email or posted on other properties to view the key content about the response.

Moreover, the only public version of their message to customers comes as a “Here is the email that our customers will be receiving” section of that note to employees. The result is a sense that Zappos is ashamed of their response or not truly committed to helping their customers understand the situation.

3.    A (large) blind spot in their response strategy.

While Twitter was a responsive channel across the entire first 24 hour period of this crisis, Facebook seemed to be handled by an entirely different team. They missed obvious opportunities such as posting Hsieh’s letter as a note for people who could not access Zappos.com. More impactful perhaps was an seven-hour quiet period wherein Zappos did not respond to customer posts on Facebook. While it is a well-established practice to have a looser response time policy for Facebook than Twitter, seven hours is a long time to go silent during a crisis.

The lesson to learn from the first 24 hours of the Zappos crisis response is that a crisis communication plan is not complete without integrating social engagement. Zappos seemed to be caught flat-footed and unprepared to engage with their customers across multiple channels. This exacerbated the frustration of customers who had not received an email from the company or were stymied by the bottleneck created by the volume of users resetting their passwords. The end result was a smudge on Zappos’s impeccable heritage of online customer service.

Conducting crisis communications across multiple channels is no small feat but the foundation of a successful response can (and should) be set in advance:

1. Build a crisis response team (with representatives from Corporate Communications, Legal, Public Relations, Customer Support and Marketing to engage online and coordinate between channels)
2. Create a proactive and reactive crisis communications plan that includes an escalation policy for negative comments on social media sites
3. Conduct crisis response simulations to test teams and processes

An Ant’s Eye Point-of-View is curated and written by Senior Social Business Consultants: Kristy Bolsinger, Joann Jen, Geoff Knox, Ali McCourt, Laura Feeney, Anthony Garcia and Sam Eder. Ideas and reactions are welcome in the comments section.

From our observation, the Zappos crisis response plan seemed to be solid at first.  Passwords were reset. Content was quickly produced and posted. The message that credit card information was not impacted was clearly articulated.  Customers were being notified of the breach with clear directions of what to do to protect accounts. But, as the news rolled out across the country on Monday, January 16 customer reaction on Facebook and Twitter started to turn negative.

What’s interesting, in our opinion, was that negative comments were not about the data breach itself, but rather the company’s reaction.  The New York Times tech blog captured the zeitgeist in this quote from a Zappos customer “That’s it? That’s how you respond to a security exposure that may require me to change my password on a large number of other sites to protect myself? That’s how little you think of your customers, just drop this glib little note and wash your hands of the whole affair? You have a legal and moral obligation to protect my information.”

The first 24 hours of the response captured a few missteps out of character for a social business like Zappos and can provide some helpful lessons for e-commerce brands:

1.    Changing the standard form of communications with customers.

One of the biggest successes of Zappos’s business model is ability/desire to interact with customers seamlessly across multiple channels. During the first 24 hours of this crisis, Zappos went the opposite direction, shutting off phones due to high volume and relying on their blog post and email as their support channel. With email slowdowns and blocking international access to Zappos.com properties, a large number of customers were kept out of the loop.

2.    Key information was not discoverable.

The main logic behind using a blog post to respond to a crisis is to lend an authentic voice and sense of credibility to a company’s message. Deliberate or not, the Zappos blog post about the security breach is not discoverable via their normal blog channel.  Instead, you needed a link sent via email or posted on other properties to view the key content about the response.

Moreover, the only public version of their message to customers comes as a “Here is the email that our customers will be receiving” section of that note to employees. The result is a sense that Zappos is ashamed of their response or not truly committed to helping their customers understand the situation.

3.    A (large) blind spot in their response strategy.

While Twitter was a responsive channel across the entire first 24 hour period of this crisis, Facebook seemed to be handled by an entirely different team. They missed obvious opportunities such as posting Hsieh’s letter as a note for people who could not access Zappos.com. More impactful perhaps was an seven-hour quiet period wherein Zappos did not respond to customer posts on Facebook. While it is a well-established practice to have a looser response time policy for Facebook than Twitter, seven hours is a long time to go silent during a crisis.

The lesson to learn from the first 24 hours of the Zappos crisis response is that a crisis communication plan is not complete without integrating social engagement. Zappos seemed to be caught flat-footed and unprepared to engage with their customers across multiple channels. This exacerbated the frustration of customers who had not received an email from the company or were stymied by the bottleneck created by the volume of users resetting their passwords. The end result was a smudge on Zappos’s impeccable heritage of online customer service.

Conducting crisis communications across multiple channels is no small feat but the foundation of a successful response can (and should) be set in advance:

1. Build a crisis response team (with representatives from Corporate Communications, Legal, Public Relations, Customer Support and Marketing to engage online and coordinate between channels)
2. Create a proactive and reactive crisis communications plan that includes an escalation policy for negative comments on social media sites
3. Conduct crisis response simulations to test teams and processes

An Ant’s Eye Point-of-View is curated and written by Senior Social Business Consultants: Kristy Bolsinger, Joann Jen, Geoff Knox, Ali McCourt, Laura Feeney, Anthony Garcia and Sam Eder. Ideas and reactions are welcome in the comments section.

Adventure is worthwhile in itself. – Amelia Earhart

As we reflect on an amazing 2011, we’re incredibly excited about the adventures ahead for Ant’s Eye View, and for our clients. Our thought is that by continuing to be customer- and talent-focused, we can become trusted, strategic advisers to our clients.

As 2011 began, we started to advise our clients along the Social Engagement Journey and guiding companies as they transform their business through social customer engagement. Our goal was to encourage our clients to look beyond tools and technology, and instead focus on the customer. We applied our experience as practitioners, our enterprise-wide point-of-view and proven methodology for strategy to make the case for change.

This really resonated with our clients and the industry. Along the way, our clients asked us big, new questions:

• How does social customer engagement change the way we think about enterprise collaboration across our organization?
• How can we distribute social and digital competency across a global enterprise with thousands of marketers, multiple business units and dozens of markets?
• How do we break down the operational seams and build shared objectives between our marketing organization and services organization?
• How do we reorganize our global marketing organization across traditional and digital marketing functions?
• How do we build a more agile and customer-focused process to support our awareness, activation and engagement objectives?
• How do we effectively drive our success and measure the impact of our investments?

It turns out that having a sharp set of skills on social is only a part of the puzzle. In order to endure, you have to assemble the right talent, a proven methodology and a vision and culture that creates a partnership between the organization and the clients your serve.

Over the course of 2011, we’ve:

• We’ve expanded our client engagements beyond our traditional strength in technology and financial services to include food and beverage, hospitality, quick service restaurant, luxury retail and professional services giving us the opportunity to work across a wide variety of sectors. Through this process, we’ve learned that by expanding the breadth of our experience we bring greater depth to our work.
• We’ve grown our services portfolio beyond core social strategy, listening and analytics to include readiness, organizational design and marketing process developed by guiding one of the world’s largest technology firms through an overall marketing organization re-design,
• We’ve also built playbooks, helping massively-matrixed organizations make sense of social engagement planning and execution, and how both fit into a company’s culture, policies, systems and processes. This includes projects with several leading technology brands, one of the Big Four accounting firms, one of the world’s largest telecommunications and mobile providers, one of the world’s largest CPG companies, and an upscale department store with more than 100 retail locations.
• And, perhaps most importantly, we’ve continued to add great new talent to our team. In 2011 alone, we added thirteen new practitioners and we’ve also moved to three new offices in our respective communities. And today, we’re excited to announce that Len Devanna has joined our Silicon Valley office, joining us from EMC Corp. as vice president, social business strategy. He brings 17-years of digital and social media marketing experience driving social strategy change across a global workforce of 45,000 employees.

I’m incredibly proud of what we accomplished over the past year.  The intersection of our work, our people and our client relationships have given us an unique opportunity to learn, grow and develop as a business while setting the stage for the year ahead.  2012 brings an ongoing opportunity to build upon what we accomplished in 2011 and proactively seek out what adventures the future holds. Our experience has taught us much in the past year and we couldn’t be more excited to kick off 2012. Stay tuned for an announcement in early spring!

Adventure is worthwhile in itself. – Amelia Earhart

As we reflect on an amazing 2011, we’re incredibly excited about the adventures ahead for Ant’s Eye View, and for our clients. Our thought is that by continuing to be customer- and talent-focused, we can become trusted, strategic advisers to our clients.

As 2011 began, we started to advise our clients along the Social Engagement Journey and guiding companies as they transform their business through social customer engagement. Our goal was to encourage our clients to look beyond tools and technology, and instead focus on the customer. We applied our experience as practitioners, our enterprise-wide point-of-view and proven methodology for strategy to make the case for change.

This really resonated with our clients and the industry. Along the way, our clients asked us big, new questions:

• How does social customer engagement change the way we think about enterprise collaboration across our organization?
• How can we distribute social and digital competency across a global enterprise with thousands of marketers, multiple business units and dozens of markets?
• How do we break down the operational seams and build shared objectives between our marketing organization and services organization?
• How do we reorganize our global marketing organization across traditional and digital marketing functions?
• How do we build a more agile and customer-focused process to support our awareness, activation and engagement objectives?
• How do we effectively drive our success and measure the impact of our investments?

It turns out that having a sharp set of skills on social is only a part of the puzzle. In order to endure, you have to assemble the right talent, a proven methodology and a vision and culture that creates a partnership between the organization and the clients your serve.

Over the course of 2011, we’ve:

• We’ve expanded our client engagements beyond our traditional strength in technology and financial services to include food and beverage, hospitality, quick service restaurant, luxury retail and professional services giving us the opportunity to work across a wide variety of sectors. Through this process, we’ve learned that by expanding the breadth of our experience we bring greater depth to our work.
• We’ve grown our services portfolio beyond core social strategy, listening and analytics to include readiness, organizational design and marketing process developed by guiding one of the world’s largest technology firms through an overall marketing organization re-design,
• We’ve also built playbooks, helping massively-matrixed organizations make sense of social engagement planning and execution, and how both fit into a company’s culture, policies, systems and processes. This includes projects with several leading technology brands, one of the Big Four accounting firms, one of the world’s largest telecommunications and mobile providers, one of the world’s largest CPG companies, and an upscale department store with more than 100 retail locations.
• And, perhaps most importantly, we’ve continued to add great new talent to our team. In 2011 alone, we added thirteen new practitioners and we’ve also moved to three new offices in our respective communities. And today, we’re excited to announce that Len Devanna has joined our Silicon Valley office, joining us from EMC Corp. as vice president, social business strategy. He brings 17-years of digital and social media marketing experience driving social strategy change across a global workforce of 45,000 employees.

I’m incredibly proud of what we accomplished over the past year.  The intersection of our work, our people and our client relationships have given us an unique opportunity to learn, grow and develop as a business while setting the stage for the year ahead.  2012 brings an ongoing opportunity to build upon what we accomplished in 2011 and proactively seek out what adventures the future holds. Our experience has taught us much in the past year and we couldn’t be more excited to kick off 2012. Stay tuned for an announcement in early spring!

For some companies who found themselves in social media hot water, new beginnings could not come fast enough. But not all #fails in 2011 led to negative outcomes. A few quick thinking and savvy organizations took potential disasters and came out ahead … all thanks to the power of social media.

With a hat tip to the Japanese proverb, “Fall 7 Times, Get Up 8” here are good examples of social media comebacks from 2011:

Verizon: “Verizon Wireless realizes $2 fee a bad call, drops it”

In the last week of 2011, Verizon created a stir when it was announced that a new “convenience fee” would be added to customers paying their bills by credit card. From a business perspective, the move was aimed at reducing credit card processing costs. From a customer perspective, this was another large company increasing fees. The response was loud and immediate. A petition on Change.org called for Verizon to drop the fee and gained over 150,000 signatures. The angry tweets and customer reaction blog posts mounted more pressure on Verizon to respond.

24 hours later, Verizon CEO came out with a statement that “in response to customer feedback” it was no longer going forward with the fee as planned. It was a plain and clear explanation that the input that Verizon received in their forums and social media channels motivated a reversal of their business decision.

This quick action and response remedied the potential for a larger uproar of Verizon customers adamantly against the service fee. Social media helped identify the immediacy of this problem to Verizon before any negative consequences or loss of subscribers could take place.  By getting rid of the service fee in an immediate fashion, Verizon maintained its credibility going into the crisis and could then promote its other fee-free payment options in their statement.

Red Cross: “Red Cross’ Rogue Beer Tweet Brings in Donations”

It was a mistweet when Gloria Huang, apparent fan of Delaware craft brewery Dogfish Head and social media specialist for the American Red Cross, tweeted the above post to the wrong account late one night. The Red Cross took a compassionate approach and used the embarrassing tweet to humanize its image with this clever anthropomorphic retort: “We’ve deleted the rogue tweet but rest assured the Red Cross is sober and we’ve confiscated the keys.”

Concurrently, Dogfish Head was flattered to have received inadvertent public praise for their product, and they reciprocated by encouraging all their fans to donate blood (a ‘pint’) to the Red Cross.

So, it’s still not OK to tweet while drinking, or #gettingslizzerd, but owning up to mistakes and keeping an open dialog with your audience will help get through compromising situations. Afterwards the Red Cross capsulated the experience with a post on their blog titled: “Twitter Faux Pas”

Bronx Zoo: Bronx Zoo’s Missing Cobra Spawns @BronxZoosCobra Twitter Account

What do you do when a dangerous animal goes missing and a parody account is making your organization look incompetent? As tense of a situation this was for the Bronx Zoo, they stayed cool, played along and then leveraged the attention to their favor. We all recall the clever and comical “@BronxZoosCobra” twitter account that entertained hundreds of thousands on Twitter with tales of karaoke, being at Opening Day for the Yankees, and chided the pursuit by the Bronx Zoo. The social media account was not operated by zoo and as the twitter account exploded in popularity, the humor came at the expense of the Bronx Zoo.

There was genuine fear but the lightheartedness was well received by the public and the Bronx Zoo took it in stride.

When the snake was eventually found, the twitter account remained active and became a new voice to attract visitors to the zoo. The Bronx Zoo held a contest to name the once-fugitive snake, now back in the reptile house. Using social media, the contest drew in over 60,000 visitors to their website where they voted on a name.

Businesses also appreciated the attention this meme had generated and jumped into the conversation with unusual but humorous offers, like a vodka endorsement deal.

Take what social media sends your way and work with it to find potential avenues for added engagement, even in a misstep. The Bronx Zoo got through the ordeal but also embraced the exposure in social media to add a new dimension to their online presence.

Starbucks: “Starbucks Responds to Blog Post About Intolerance”

Even when something wrong happens offline, the social customer will capture and introduce that mistake to their social networks. When one employee goes rogue, it can negatively impact the entire organization when that event is recounted throughout social media channels.

At a Long Island, NY Starbucks a contentious discussion took place between an employee and manager that appeared to one customer to be an incident of “homophobia”. That customer wrote a detailed open letter to Starbucks denouncing the incident and held Starbucks responsible for allowing such discrimination to go on in their stores. This letter was then subsequently published on the customer’s wife’s blog and attracted the attention of the blogosphere and news outlets.

Instead of enduring a “full-blown PR firestorm”, Starbucks went on the offensive only days after the incident was posted online. Taking a multi-channel approach, Starbucks chose to fully confront the situation to ensure that the incident remained isolated from its corporate image and culture. On its website, Twitter account and through the press, Starbucks clearly laid out its response including steps for “immediate action” and commitment to investigating the incident.

As quickly as social media can hurt organizations by amplifying bad news, Starbucks recognized the value of speed and transparency that would help their cause to clarify their position on discrimination in the workplace.

FedEx: “FedEx’s apology: expertly delivered”

And speaking of speed, FedEx also staved off a PR nightmare when one of their deliverymen was caught on camera hurling a package over a fence with no regard for the contents. The YouTube video went viral attracting 1 million views in 24 hours and presently with nearly 8 million views today. Soon news outlets picked up the brazen act with the FedEx truck and logo clearly captured in the background.

In only 48 hours, FedEx crafted a direct response to the incident and posted a video delivering that message by a senior executive responsible for all US pickup and delivery operations. The message was clear and forthcoming about his feelings of ‘disappointment’ and ‘embarrassment’ of the recorded actions.

For FedEx, the YouTube platform provided the opportunity to offer a personal and intimate appeal from senior leadership in order to restore any consumer confidence lost from the ordeal. The speed of the response also demonstrated a recognition of how quickly negative stories can spiral out of control if left unfettered.

Social media presents challenges and opportunities to articulate your business values, especially in times of crisis. In these examples, immediate adaptation was a necessary skill to overcome unexpected and sudden changing of events. Open communication, internal coordination and transparency were also vital to each organization’s rebound.

For a quick roundup of social media blunders, here are two resources for you to check out:

• The round-up AdAge put together for some of the biggest social media fails.
• Another good round up was put together also by Inc Magazine.

Would your organization be able to proactively respond in the face of a social media crisis? What other rebound examples in 2011 deserve to be mentioned and how did they turn the conversation back in their favor?

An Ant’s Eye Point-of-View is curated and written by Senior Social Business Consultants: Kristy Bolsinger, Joann Jen, Geoff Knox, Ali McCourt,Laura Feeney, Anthony Garcia and Sam Eder. Ideas and reactions are welcome in the comments section.

For some companies who found themselves in social media hot water, new beginnings could not come fast enough. But not all #fails in 2011 led to negative outcomes. A few quick thinking and savvy organizations took potential disasters and came out ahead … all thanks to the power of social media.

With a hat tip to the Japanese proverb, “Fall 7 Times, Get Up 8” here are good examples of social media comebacks from 2011:

Verizon: “Verizon Wireless realizes $2 fee a bad call, drops it”

In the last week of 2011, Verizon created a stir when it was announced that a new “convenience fee” would be added to customers paying their bills by credit card. From a business perspective, the move was aimed at reducing credit card processing costs. From a customer perspective, this was another large company increasing fees. The response was loud and immediate. A petition on Change.org called for Verizon to drop the fee and gained over 150,000 signatures. The angry tweets and customer reaction blog posts mounted more pressure on Verizon to respond.

24 hours later, Verizon CEO came out with a statement that “in response to customer feedback” it was no longer going forward with the fee as planned. It was a plain and clear explanation that the input that Verizon received in their forums and social media channels motivated a reversal of their business decision.

This quick action and response remedied the potential for a larger uproar of Verizon customers adamantly against the service fee. Social media helped identify the immediacy of this problem to Verizon before any negative consequences or loss of subscribers could take place.  By getting rid of the service fee in an immediate fashion, Verizon maintained its credibility going into the crisis and could then promote its other fee-free payment options in their statement.

Red Cross: “Red Cross’ Rogue Beer Tweet Brings in Donations”

It was a mistweet when Gloria Huang, apparent fan of Delaware craft brewery Dogfish Head and social media specialist for the American Red Cross, tweeted the above post to the wrong account late one night. The Red Cross took a compassionate approach and used the embarrassing tweet to humanize its image with this clever anthropomorphic retort: “We’ve deleted the rogue tweet but rest assured the Red Cross is sober and we’ve confiscated the keys.”

Concurrently, Dogfish Head was flattered to have received inadvertent public praise for their product, and they reciprocated by encouraging all their fans to donate blood (a ‘pint’) to the Red Cross.

So, it’s still not OK to tweet while drinking, or #gettingslizzerd, but owning up to mistakes and keeping an open dialog with your audience will help get through compromising situations. Afterwards the Red Cross capsulated the experience with a post on their blog titled: “Twitter Faux Pas”

Bronx Zoo: Bronx Zoo’s Missing Cobra Spawns @BronxZoosCobra Twitter Account

What do you do when a dangerous animal goes missing and a parody account is making your organization look incompetent? As tense of a situation this was for the Bronx Zoo, they stayed cool, played along and then leveraged the attention to their favor. We all recall the clever and comical “@BronxZoosCobra” twitter account that entertained hundreds of thousands on Twitter with tales of karaoke, being at Opening Day for the Yankees, and chided the pursuit by the Bronx Zoo. The social media account was not operated by zoo and as the twitter account exploded in popularity, the humor came at the expense of the Bronx Zoo.

There was genuine fear but the lightheartedness was well received by the public and the Bronx Zoo took it in stride.

When the snake was eventually found, the twitter account remained active and became a new voice to attract visitors to the zoo. The Bronx Zoo held a contest to name the once-fugitive snake, now back in the reptile house. Using social media, the contest drew in over 60,000 visitors to their website where they voted on a name.

Businesses also appreciated the attention this meme had generated and jumped into the conversation with unusual but humorous offers, like a vodka endorsement deal.

Take what social media sends your way and work with it to find potential avenues for added engagement, even in a misstep. The Bronx Zoo got through the ordeal but also embraced the exposure in social media to add a new dimension to their online presence.

Starbucks: “Starbucks Responds to Blog Post About Intolerance”

Even when something wrong happens offline, the social customer will capture and introduce that mistake to their social networks. When one employee goes rogue, it can negatively impact the entire organization when that event is recounted throughout social media channels.

At a Long Island, NY Starbucks a contentious discussion took place between an employee and manager that appeared to one customer to be an incident of “homophobia”. That customer wrote a detailed open letter to Starbucks denouncing the incident and held Starbucks responsible for allowing such discrimination to go on in their stores. This letter was then subsequently published on the customer’s wife’s blog and attracted the attention of the blogosphere and news outlets.

Instead of enduring a “full-blown PR firestorm”, Starbucks went on the offensive only days after the incident was posted online. Taking a multi-channel approach, Starbucks chose to fully confront the situation to ensure that the incident remained isolated from its corporate image and culture. On its website, Twitter account and through the press, Starbucks clearly laid out its response including steps for “immediate action” and commitment to investigating the incident.

As quickly as social media can hurt organizations by amplifying bad news, Starbucks recognized the value of speed and transparency that would help their cause to clarify their position on discrimination in the workplace.

FedEx: “FedEx’s apology: expertly delivered”

And speaking of speed, FedEx also staved off a PR nightmare when one of their deliverymen was caught on camera hurling a package over a fence with no regard for the contents. The YouTube video went viral attracting 1 million views in 24 hours and presently with nearly 8 million views today. Soon news outlets picked up the brazen act with the FedEx truck and logo clearly captured in the background.

In only 48 hours, FedEx crafted a direct response to the incident and posted a video delivering that message by a senior executive responsible for all US pickup and delivery operations. The message was clear and forthcoming about his feelings of ‘disappointment’ and ‘embarrassment’ of the recorded actions.

For FedEx, the YouTube platform provided the opportunity to offer a personal and intimate appeal from senior leadership in order to restore any consumer confidence lost from the ordeal. The speed of the response also demonstrated a recognition of how quickly negative stories can spiral out of control if left unfettered.

Social media presents challenges and opportunities to articulate your business values, especially in times of crisis. In these examples, immediate adaptation was a necessary skill to overcome unexpected and sudden changing of events. Open communication, internal coordination and transparency were also vital to each organization’s rebound.

For a quick roundup of social media blunders, here are two resources for you to check out:

• The round-up AdAge put together for some of the biggest social media fails.
• Another good round up was put together also by Inc Magazine.

Would your organization be able to proactively respond in the face of a social media crisis? What other rebound examples in 2011 deserve to be mentioned and how did they turn the conversation back in their favor?

An Ant’s Eye Point-of-View is curated and written by Senior Social Business Consultants: Kristy Bolsinger, Joann Jen, Geoff Knox, Ali McCourt,Laura Feeney, Anthony Garcia and Sam Eder. Ideas and reactions are welcome in the comments section.