IMC Hawks Blog

Tag: crisis communication

  • Spring Break Travel, Iceland, and Authentic Advertising

    Spring Break Travel, Iceland, and Authentic Advertising

    March begins the season of spring break for college students and faculty. It’s a necessary period to disconnect, reflect, and have some fun in the midst of midterms and difficult coursework, jobs, or internships.

    But just because we might be escaping our day-to-day lives for a week doesn’t mean we escape the myriad ways that advertising and integrated marketing communication impacts us and our decisions. One huge way IMC impacts us: how do we decide where to go?

    Travel agents, tourism bureaus, hotels, airlines, and other stakeholders create vibrant campaigns. Few have had to deal with a crisis as large as a volcanic eruption.

    Inspired by Iceland

    Eyjafjallajokull-fimmvorduhals-eruption-iceland11
    Eyjafjallajökull erupting. Via adventures.is

    In 2010, Eyjafjallajökull (an Icelandic volcano) erupted and caused historic disruptions, including ash fall that shut down flights across Europe for almost a week.

    Tourism to Iceland fell by 30%. Inspired by Iceland was a campaign that involved the whole country. The president of the country at the time, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, stopped the entire country in its tracks (schools, workplaces and more) to ask for citizens to submit positive stories–which they did.

    The campaign chronicled its success in this video:

    The huge catalogue of positive Iceland experiences included celebrity testimonials. Webcams provided live footage of some of the most tourist-attracting natural wonders. The results of the campaign included more than £137 million in extra tourism revenue and more than 22 million stories shared.

    That last part is pretty amazing, because Iceland’s population is fewer than 350,000 people.

    The Brooklyn Brothers, the campaign’s creators, shared a case study on their website with more details.

    What Other Travel Experiences Can Take from Inspired By Iceland

    The award-winning campaign was effective because the agency running it knew its target audience: socially conscious millennials wary of traditional advertising ploys. The Brooklyn Brothers successfully gathered authenticity and storytelling.

    What would be more likely to get you to travel to a destination: a generic, high-production-value slideshow of landscapes with a peppy but robotic disembodied narrator telling you to Visit XYZ? Or a series of pictures of black sand beaches and a story from Olaf, a real Icelander, telling you about his afternoon on Iceland’s south coast? What is more authentic–a curated video or a live webcam broadcast?

    If you picked the second answer for any of those, you’re part of the target audience for Inspired by Iceland.

    Authenticity in marketing is now more important than ever, Business.com writes. That’s counterintuitive for some brands, which strive to carefully curate a perfect facade. Consumers’ desire for authenticity also makes it difficult for brands that lack a clear contribution to “the greater good”–without that corporate social responsibility, authenticity just means admitting that a brand wants a profit.

    The travel and tourism industry has always been about selling experiences, not goods. The next time you start googling destinations, consider what experiences you’re being sold–and whether they’re true-to-life or inauthentic ones.

    –Nikki Kroushl

  • Dogfish Disaster Averted

    As we have gravitated towards becoming a society submerged in technology, in recent years, outlets of social media have become essential marketing tools for many companies and organizations.Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Vine are few forms of social media utilized by most. While social media can strongly influence consumer behaviors and increase consumer awareness it can also be detrimental to a company’s image. In some cases social media can be the cause of a PR crisis. Crisis management is the process by which an organization deals with this major event that threatens to harm the organization.

    The American Red Cross is a prime example of an organization who exemplifies strong crisis management skills. This honorable humanitarian organization managed to dodge-a-bullet back in 2011 when an intern fired off a personal tweet on the company’s twitter account. The tweet read “Ryan found two more 4 bottle packs of Dogfish Head’s Midas Touch beer…when we drink we do it right #gettingslizzerd”.

    red cross

    This uniquely unorthodox and unprofessional tweet received a lot of negative attention from the general public. In this particular circumstance social media proved to be the cause of the crisis. When responding to the tweet the Red Cross avoided disaster by acknowledging that the tweet went out, deleting it, and explaining with humor that is was a mistake. This is an example of crisis management where the Red Cross turned a potentially harmful tweet in to an opportunity for engagement.

    Thankfully, the Red Cross realized the potential of social media and understood the power that it has to bring down a major organization. Now, other companies can look at this experience and utilize it to learn for themselves. After understanding the Red Cross’s response it is easy to break down their post-crisis steps and keep them in mind for other emergency situations. First, they were able to assess the situation. They realized the crisis was a major problem but they came to the conclusion that they could handle it which brought them to their second step, adapting their message. They considered their stakeholders and created a strong message to appeal to them. Lastly, they were able to analyze and learn from the situation post-crisis. Although this could have led to a horrific downfall for one of the greatest humanitarian organizations, everyone was able to benefit, understand, and learn from this experience.

    red cross 2

    -Parker Farfour, Caitlin Ford, Alex Corrigan, Kaitlin Batson

  • Crisis Averted? A Quick Lesson in Crisis Communication from Toyota

    2010 has not been the best of years for Japanese automaker, Toyota. Once known for its reliability and safety, Toyota’s brand image has taken a major hit due to several recalls over the past year. At the beginning of 2010 the car manufacturer was forced to recall millions of vehicles due to a sticking accelerator pedal that led to accidents, and even deaths in severe cases. Just last week, Toyota announced another recall on over 1 million Toyota and Lexus models due to faulty brake master cylinder seals and fuel pumps. The defective seals could cause break fluid to leak onto the break pads, causing them to deteriorate and become spongy, thus making them less effective and even dangerous.

    First, their cars accelerated on their own, now their cars can’t stop? Yikes! These two major recalls don’t exactly speak to Toyota’s image of being reliable and safe. Because of this, the automaker has had to step up and do some major crisis communication. Luckily, Toyota gained some valuable experience with their first major recall, making last week’s recall seem minor in comparison.

    Unlike the first recall of the year, where Toyota supposedly knew about the flawed accelerator long before they decided to alert the public, this time the company quickly addressed the defective seals and issued a voluntary recall. In any crisis it is important for a company to make the public aware of the issue before it is leaked to the media. If this is done properly, the company can save face. If they try to hide the issue it may appear as if they do not care about the safety of consumers, which has the potential to create even bigger problems.

    The way the crisis is addressed by the company also has a major impact on how well it is received by the public. Toyota’s January recall is a prime example of what not to do when handling a crisis. Their lackluster crisis communication left a lot to be desired, but with October’s recall the company has done a much better job. Recall information is readily available on Toyota’s website, however, what is more noticeable are Toyota’s “Safety First” advertisements at the top of the recall page. Because of all of the issues plaguing the Japanese carmaker, their crisis communication team has gone in to overdrive in attempt to repair the brand’s tarnished image, hence the reason all of the Toyota commercials you see today are centered around safety and reliability.

    All in all, Toyota has done a much better job handling its second major recall of the year, but issuing two major recalls does not do wonders for the brand’s image. Thanks to some help from their crisis communication team, we have seen the company recover a little, but it is still going to feel the effects from the issues it has faced this year. We’ll have to wait and see how good their PR is in the upcoming months to see if they can regain their position as one of the top auto brands in America.

    Sarah McIntosh, Sean O’Connell, Eliza Wadson, Jocelyn Walson