A Sea Change

As I have frequently written in my blog posts, social media represents a sea change in the way corporations and other business entities communicate with the public, especially in a crisis. Therefore it should be no surprise that according to a recent article in PRWeek, social media was a key channel for Carnival Cruise Lines in its crisis communications response to the fire aboard its Splendor cruise ship earlier this month. In addition to proactively distributing news updates to conventional media, Carnival also communicated updates by posting them on carnival.com, Facebook, Twitter and carnival-news.com. Jennifer de la Cruz, director of public relations for Carnival, told PRWeek that, "Our key messages . . . focused on providing assurances that everyone was safe, the status of the situation on board and any updates to the plan for returning the ship to port and, of paramount importance, communicating our apologies and acknowledging the difficult environment on board."

The day before the Splendor was towed into San Diego, the ship's cruise director, John Heald, made a post about the conditions aboard ship on his popular personal blog. Heald's blog post was picked up by major media outlets such as USA Today, which commented:

The ship's famously saucy cruise director, John Heald, has just posted a lengthy, startlingly candid account of the first few minutes of the crisis on his personal blog, which is widely followed by cruise fans. . . . In an account that mixes both seriousness and Heald's trademark humor, the longtime Carnival staffer goes on to explain both the severity of the situation that he witnessed on the ship's bridge and the crew's heroic response.

My colleague, Chris Gidez, was interviewed by PRWeek about Carnival's crisis communications response and provided the following analysis:

Chris Gidez, head of US crisis/issues management group for Hill & Knowlton, calls the early blog post by Heald "brilliant. The first rule in crisis management is to regain control of the agenda and conversation." [Gidez] says that's especially important in a situation like this, where passengers are now starting to talk to media and no doubt will share their own detailed accounts online. "The cruise community is very engaged and active online. There will probably be video shared too, and it will likely go viral," says Gidez. "While we can expect to hear stories of long lines, no air conditioning, rude crew members, etc., there will be just as many who applaud the performance of the line."

Monitoring Social Media

In an earlier post, "What We've Got Here Is Failure to Communicate," I cited the following social media statistics: there are 200 million blogs; 73% of active online users have read a blog; 44% of those online get news at least a few times a week through posts from social networking sites, automatic updates, and emails; and 26% of Twitter users get their news from tweets. Since social media has overtaken pornography as the number one activity on the internet, these statistics represent just the tip of the social media iceberg.

Also consider the following:

• One out of eight couples married in the United States in 2009 met via social media
• YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world
• More video was uploaded to YouTube in the last two months of 2009 than if ABC, NBC, and CBS had been airing content 24/7/365 since 1948, the first year ABC broadcast television
• Seventy percent of eighteen to thirty-four year olds have watched television on the web
• Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the United States
• With 500 million users, if Facebook were a country, it would be the world's largest after China and India, numbers one and two, respectively
• 60 million status updates happen on Facebook daily
• More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook daily
• Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears have more Twitter followers than the combined populations of Sweden, Israel, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway, and Panama
• Eighty percent of Twitter usage is on mobile devices
• Fifty-four percent of bloggers post content or tweet daily
• Thirty-four percent of bloggers post opinions about products and brands

Given this sheer volume of internet traffic, tracking social media for what is being said about you, your client, or your company is a daunting prospect. Nevertheless, a number of companies are trying to track social media, and one of the more ambitious tracking operations is being conducted by Gatorade.

In April, the company established the Gatorade Mission Control Center in its Chicago headquarters, a war room for monitoring the Gatorade brand in real-time across social media. Using software from IBM and Radian6, four staffers monitor social media posts 24 hours a day for mentions of Gatorade. The monitoring is not passive; the four staffers often jump into conversations occurring on Facebook or Twitter. As reported in the Wall Street Journal:

Gatorade staffers monitor social-media posts 24 hours a day in the glitzy hub, hoping what they see and learn will help the company more effectively promote its new G-series of drinks, which launched last spring. Whenever someone uses Twitter to say they're drinking a Gatorade or mentions the brand on Facebook or in other social media, it pops up on a screen in Mission Control. On Saturday, the staff jumped into a Facebook conversation to correct a poster who said Gatorade has high-fructose corn syrup. "It's like we're a person in their social circle now," says Chief Marketing Officer Sarah Robb O'Hagan . . .

The ability to track social media conversations in real time may not sell more Gatorade, but it has tremendous potential for use in crisis communications:

[F]ew [companies] have staff monitoring blog and other posts alongside those tracking online-ad traffic, producing a consolidated picture of the brand's Internet image. Gatorade hopes such coordination will help head off potential crises like a brouhaha last year over PepsiCo's slow response to consumer complaints that an Apple iPhone application for its Amp energy drink was sexist.

You can see pictures of Mission Control in action here.