Tesco and Waitrose have both promised changes in the wake of the horsemeat contamination. Tesco stands out for communicating with its customers clearly and directly through the crisis.

But one supermarket stands out for different reasons: its CEO’s media appearances. The Iceland CEO, Malcolm Walker, appeared on the Andrew Marr Show on 17th February and Panorama on the 18th. Both interviews caused controversy.

He made some valid points in both interviews, but they were overlooked in favour of his more headline-worthy remarks. What can other spokespeople learn from these interviews?

Don’t blame someone else

“…supermarkets are visible because they’re on the high street, but supermarkets shouldn’t be blamed. British supermarkets have got a fantastic reputation for food safety and go to enormous lengths to protect their brand. If we’re going to blame someone, let’s start with local authorities, because there’s a whole  side to this industry which is invisible, that’s the catering industry, schools, hospitals, it’s a massive business for cheap food and local authorities award contracts based purely on one thing- price. So if you’re looking to blame somebody who’s driving down food quality, it’s invisible, it’s schools, it’s hospitals, it’s prisons, it’s local authorities who are driving this down.”

Then later in the interview…

“The real culprits in this it’s the catering industry, these dodgy cutting houses and backstreet manufacturers have been supplying products to the catering industry and a lot of that is bought by local authorities for schools and hospitals – that’s where the problem really lies.”

Malcolm Walker , BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, 17th February

Then, on Panorama:

CEO: “I know exactly what’s in our products.”

CEO: “78% beef. B.E.E.F Beef – that’s what’s in our burgers.”

BBC Reporter: “But the Irish say there is .1% H.O.R.S.E horse.”

CEO: “Well, that’s the Irish innit?”

The Chairman of the Local Government Authority and the Local Authorities Caterers Association objected to the portrayal, but it was only when the Food Safety Authority of Ireland objected to Mr Walker’s words that Iceland issue a statement:

“Iceland and our chief executive, Malcolm Walker, are deeply sorry for any offence caused by his TV interview last night.

His comments were not intended to be disrespectful to the Irish people, including our many Irish customers, colleagues and suppliers, or to the Irish food safety authorities. We hold all of these in the very highest regard.”

I’m not saying that you have to accept blame yourself, when you believe that you are not at fault, but understand that if you go out and blame others, you’re making your own brand a target. Resulting in headlines like this telegraph.co.uk one:

Don’t get sweary

CEO: “A supermarket will sell 10,000 products, they can’t test everything…if I turned up at the Kellogg’s factory and said ‘I’ve come to test your cornflakes’, they’d tell me to piss off wouldn’t they?”

Panorama 18th February

Don’t mention the pets (or hedgehogs)

Panorama – After saying that they constantly test their own brand products (great message), he continued:

“Did we test for horse? No, but we haven’t tested for dog or cat either. I mean, there might be dog or cat. You can’t test for everything.”

BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, 17th February, CEO:

“Supermarkets carry out an enormous range of testing procedures on every product that bares their name, and okay you can say that we haven’t been testing for horse, well, why would we? We don’t test for hedgehog either.”

This may seem like a clever way to get out of a tricky situation. Why would they think of testing for it? It’s as ridiculous to think that horse would be in a beef burger as thinking that any other non-bovine species would.

What I, (and I’m sure many others) heard, was. “We have no clue what goes into this food. You could be eating Fido and Snowball II.” That doesn’t make me want to run out and buy a ready meal.

Don’t minimise people’s concerns

In the Marr interview, Malcolm Walker distinguished horsemeat from horse DNA.

BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, 17th February, CEO:

“We’re talking about two different things here, we’re talking about horsemeat, or flesh, and contamination. Anybody who’s passing off horsemeat, horse carcases cut up and sold into the industry- that is not going to the supermarket business, but because it’s out there in the supply chain and in some of the factories, you’re getting minute amounts of contamination.”

You can understand why, he wanted to make clear that certain products may have been contaminated from being produced in a factory that had been unwittingly processing horsemeat, rather than there being great chunks of Black Beauty in your lasagne. But, it’s still something that unsettles people, and makes them question their trust in your word.

The Panorama interview just made things worse.

BBC: “Horsemeat has been a really big issue.”

CEO: “Well, you’re making it a big issue.”

BBC: “It’s not a big issue?”

CEO: “I don’t…not as much as you’re making it.”

Again, what I think the CEO is trying to say is, “Calm down dear, it’s only a microscopic amount of DNA, don’t be so precious.” Just because a person buys a ready meal rather than cooking a meal from scratch (using locally sourced, organic produce, natch), it doesn’t mean they’d be happy to eat road kill. They still have standards, and expect that the brand their buying from does, too.

Playing down the importance of the issue won’t help rebuild trust in the brand.

Don’t insult your customers (or your own products)

Here’s where things get murky. Walker gave Eddie Mair a good explanation of how food quality works in supermarkets, he said most supermarkets have premium, standard and economy ranges – but that Iceland did not have an economy range. He then explained Iceland’s food production process (the brand has its own meat-cutting house and the majority of its ready meals come from its own factory).

When Mair asked him if he would eat “other supermarket’s” economy ready meals, he said that personally he would not, because “they won’t contain much meat”. The Sun reported the statement, pointing out that Iceland sold eight burgers for £1 (in other words, the Iceland boss was casting aspersions on his own products).

When asked what he would say to British consumers he said: “Don’t panic. British supermarkets have got the best food safety standards in the world.”

Great message – it’s a shame it got lost amid the gaffs.

The post Five ways to alienate your customers appeared first on Carrot Communications.

IKEA Australia

Spotted on Google Plus, it just goes to show that even regional newspaper ads from the other side of the world can become social media hits. IKEA Australia is celebrating Valentine’s Day by allowing the owner of this newspaper coupon one free cot if their baby is born on 14th November.

I think IKEA are on to a good thing here, after all, not many people are going to think: “Oh, I’d like a free cot, let’s have sex on the 14th in order to get this smashing deal!” The odds are stacked in IKEA’s favour. It netted some good coverage, for not that much expense. (Plus, let’s face it, most people would lose the coupon in nine months anyway…)

Litter Genie

I had to include this. Dedicated to mad cat people everywhere.

This joyously bizarre video was made to promote American cat lit sanitizer brand, Litter Genie. As I say over at PR Examples, the video is proving to be a social media hit (it now has more than 100,000 views).

Domino’s

What’s more romantic than proposing on Valentine’s Day? How about proposing via pizza? Domino’s UK gave customers the opportunity to collaborate with their local store on popping the question via peperoni.

Truly, what girl (or guy, it is the 21st century after all) could refuse…

Meanwhile, over in Japan, Domino’s spent the day selling a special heart shaped pizza. (Come on, pizza can to be romantic!)

O2

Mobile operator – and Twitter legend – O2, used the hashtag #O2tweetheart to stream follower’s messages to in store screens across the country during the week before Valentine’s Day. It then selected Tweeters at random to receive prizes ranging from a romantic weekend getaway to £50 Bonus Bond vouchers.

Honourable mention has to go to GÜ, for its year’s supply of desserts for two Twitter competition.

No, of course I’m not jealous…

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SodaStream used its ad ‘Game Changer’ to poke some fun at the two biggest brands in soft drinks. The ad was funny, made a good point, and has been banned (to be replaced by an ad free of rival brand names).

So, SodaStream posted the banned advert on YouTube, where it’s had more than 1.8 million views in 24 hours.

Not the first time…

Any adverts broadcast in the UK need to be approved by trade association Clearcast (which is funded by television companies). So when SodaStream tried to air a similar ad in December 2012, it was rejected for denigrating fizzy drinks companies (who, of course, spend a lot of money on TV ads – which I’m sure had nothing to do with the decision…) SodaStream is still trying to get the decision reversed.

Meanwhile, it launched a print campaign around censorship.

Brewing social media crisis

But there may be a fly in the social media ointment. SodaStream is pushing the environmentally friendly message hard, even sponsoring Climate Week 2013, and the publicity about the original Super Bowl ad being rejected is bringing out both social media friends and foes.

Calls are being made to boycott the brand for political reasons, and a competition has been set up to create a SodaStream Super Bowl ad spoof – hosted on the Boycott SodaStream YouTube channel of course. So far, the channel has had just over 2000 views, a fraction of the views gained in one day by the official banned ad. But it’s an on-going issue for the brand, and although it’s pretty low level at the moment – a few videos here, some tweets there, and a couple of comments on the official Facebook page –the buzz around the banned Super Bowl ad may just give the perfect opportunity for this protest to grow in strength.

The post SodaStream takes the fight to social appeared first on Carrot Communications.

What’s more, humour can be a fantastic icebreaker, and help diffuse many tense situations.

It’s not just abuse or online mockery that brands have to watch out for. Social media and brands’ desire to engage have given customers opportunities to find new ways of asking for freebies. Logically, you’d think it would be fairly easy to say no to a customer that wanted a free product, but just ask Thomas Cook what happens then!

Samsung Canada faced this situation in May 2012, when a customer sent them a picture of a dragon on Facebook and asked for a free Galaxy S3.

The brand said no, but it succeeded in humanising the brand and used humour in the response. The customer was so impressed with the brands reply that he posted the exchange to Reddit, and it went viral, getting Samsung a tonne of good coverage.

Fast Forward to August 2012, and Samsung had not forgotten Shane. Out of the blue they sent him the free phone he requested, and they’d made his dragon drawing into a cover for the phone. Result: one happy customer and yet more positive coverage.

Perhaps the most successful brand response to a social media comment in 2012, was that made by Bodyform to the man that accused the brand of lying about parachuting ladies.

Bodyform responded with a hilarious video revealing the truth of the situation (it’s now had more than 3.6million views on YouTube). Again, this resulted in a massive amount of positive coverage for the brand, and Bodyform managed to engage far more people than its Facebook audience alone.

Lastly, although this doesn’t involve responding to a customer or fan, the Oreo vs. AMC Theatres twitter exchange shows how brands can play off each other to show personality, create engagement and generate buzz on social media.

As Shane Adams (the person behind the AMC Theatres Twitter account) pointed out, all of this activity happened in 24 hours and was the result of the brand trusting the official tweeter enough to create snappy, instant responses without needed to get approval first. The “Not cool, cookie” response alone got almost 2,000 retweets, and achieved coverage in advertising and marketing press.

Brands can achieve great success via social media, but only if they fully participate. Social media has to be about more than reputational firefighting, customer service and churning out news. It’s there to forge connections between people, and if brands want to reach their potential on social media, they need to:

•    Be human
•    Use the appropriate tone
•    Be creative
•    Engage
•    Trust the experience and expertise of the person managing the accounts
•    Be ready to respond in seconds or minutes

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