Case Report: When the Twitterverse Turns on You

(Harvard Business Review)

Author: Jana Seijts

Submitted to
Prof. Devpriya Chakravarty

Submitted by
Naman Badami
2016PGP096
Section - H
PGP 2019-21 Term -2 WAC
Situation Analysis
Head of Public Relations for Canadian Jet had to deal with difficult situation at her hand. Their
biggest PR campaign of the year on Twitter #CanJetLuxury was facing heavy backlash from
people. Though some of the tweets were good, more than a few bad ones surfaced within a
few hours from the start of campaign which made it trending in adverse way. Most of them
were about dissatisfaction regarding cancellation, delay of their flights, issues in their workforce
and anonymity of the tweets made it worse as people didn’t verify authenticity before posting
their tweet. Going through the history of such cases with other companies they realised that
that abandoning the contest would alienate the genuine entries which would make them look
arrogant. They even considered launching the case under a new hashtag to divert attention of
people but then it wouldn’t help them to make their campaign trending. One of the options
was to apologize, but they had done nothing wrong as such and were unable to decide exactly
for what they should apologize. Adding to the fuel of problem, their automatic tweets reply
which they had planned to post went online on completely wrong time. Besides a famous
blogger was following the progression of crisis closely. Charlene had to come up with something
quickly as there was a chance of problem escalation which would harm company image further.

Problem Statement
What steps should Charlene take to resolve the PR crisis that Canadian Jet is facing?

Alternatives
1. Wait for some time and if the situation worsens launch the campaign with new hashtag
to divert people attention and cool down the situation.
2. Find a way to make the contest less anonymous (like selfies or pictures with a tweet) so
that people avoid tweeting without verifying the details.
3. Issue a public apology for the bad experience people had to face and call the contest off
after announcing the winner among existing tweets.
4. Address the negative responses individually through a social media and assure them
that their issues would be resolved without fail.

Criteria for Evaluation

1. Genuine entries should not be neglected and acknowledged.
2. It should not affect the image and reputation of the company.
3. Negative comments should be addressed effectively to restore the faith of people.

1
Evaluation of Alternatives

1. Relaunching the campaign with a new hashtag and additional rules

The main advantage of such step would be that people refrain from posting bad
comments without verifying the details as they usually care about their social media
image. Besides, this would help company to address genuine issues more effectively
which would further increase the customer satisfaction. One of the drawbacks of this
would be that company would no longer be able to leverage upon their trending
campaign and it wouldn’t be as successful as they thought it would be.

2. Issue a public apology for the bad experience caused and call the contest off
announcing the winner among the tweets
Issuing a public apology would display that company do care about their customer
which would help to regain their faith in it. Besides as the winner would be announced,
genuine entries would have their fair share and they would not feel neglected. though
there is a possibility that by issuing an apology, people would believe that company
actually did something wrong which would increase their dissatisfaction.

3. Address the negative responses individually through a social media by assuring them
that their issues would be resolved without fail
By addressing each negative comment individually would show commitment of the
company towards their customer of servicing them to best possible extent which would
further establish trust in their mind. At the same time acknowledging the positive
comments would help to cool down the situation as more and more people would
refrain from posting bad comments by seeing company’s effort. the only constraint of
the mentioned step is that the process is quite cumbersome, and an external agency
might be required to handle the whole operation which might would have major cost
implication to company.

2
Recommendation and Action Plan
It is recommended that some new rules should be implemented which would restrict
anonymity of tweets and make people verify details before posting any bad comments. At the
same time bad comments should be addressed individually and issues should be resolved
effectively. A dedicated team of Canadian Jet and Wrigley & Walters should be formed which
would address the issues of customers timely to avoid further spread. Small perks can also be
provided to the customer if his grievances are found to be genuine to reinforce their trust. The
implementation of these steps would filter out the genuine entries while curbing the bad ones.
Even after taking all these steps If situation further escalates, then a new campaign should be
launched with a new hashtag and the existing one should be called off after announcing the
winner among the tweets received. This will reward the genuine entries and maintain their
faith in the company.

Contingency Plan
If the existing plan doesn’t work out, then an internal competition among staff members can be
designed and the winner should be rewarded with paid holiday and family trip to their favourite
destination for sharing their best experiences with Canadian Jet on Twitter. This may induce
positive experience among customers after seeing their employees sharing their best
experience and would improve the company image. Also, it would invoke goodwill among
employees.