Caribbean Digital Expo: Crisis Communications 2.0

Caribbean Digital Expo 2011
Photo credit: Caribbean Ideas/CDX 2011

Finally, Caribbean professionals had a chance to discuss social media in their own backyard!

The Caribbean Digital Expo was hosted by Caribbean Ideas on Nov 22 in Port of Spain, Trinidad. Aimed at providing a Caribbean-centric forum for discussions around social media and other forms of digital media, the conference looked at digital media as the future of marketing and communications across the Caribbean.

While there were many examples and discussions of how brands are using social media, the panel discussion on crisis communications and social media was timely, especially as many social media proposals stall in the board room amid fears of negativity and fallout in such a wide, open and very public forum. The idea of reputational risk building and growing faster than the blink of an eye does indeed instill terror in the hearts of executives, but as with anything else in business, there has to be a strategy and a clear road map for practitioners to follow in order to manage issues and prevent or successfully defuse crises.

Thus even when pitching a social media proposal, one must be prepared to also discuss the flip side of social media – issues and crisis management. Being prepared from the get-go is the only way to meet any negative reactions or events head on.

Thus it is important to be aware of what adverse impact may affect your brand online. Alec J Rosen’s presentation was quite comprehensive in outlining the steps in managing crises online.

In order to stay ahead of the curve, scan the cybersphere, and assess the impact of social media activity on your organisation and go through the various scenarios which may impact organisational reputation online.

Preparing social media mitigation tools, both online and offline, for example a dark site for activation in the face of a crisis, an 800-number for crisis management and feedback, cross functional teams within the organization, and an ongoing cultivation of friends and allies who will prove to be exceptional brand evangelists in the turning tide.

Scanning the social media landscape for issues
and in order to manage crises
Photo credit: ActiveMetrics

Identifying the crises, whether they be sudden crises, or slow to develop crises is also important.

The response, whereby there are not only regular updates but conversations. Thus meetings with the crisis team and internet searches. The importance of being searchable will prove to be very important during a crisis, in order to monitor what is being said, where and by whom.  This is when you can activate one’s crisis management plan, and I love how Judette Coward-Puglisi of Mango MediaCaribbean, mentioned “holding tweets” in addition to the more traditional holding statements. Traditional crisis response tools such as press releases can and should be augmented by tweets, Facebook updates and I would suggest as well well-crafted video responses. Having a clear online response balances the negative reactions which will ultimately live online.

Rosen also pointed out that communication must be proactive. It must be open, it must reach and influence the various audiences, it must be multi-channel, and of course, it must be factual and clearly on message.

And of course, the E word that everyone loves to hate but which is so important in every aspect of communications – evaluation.  One must evaluate the outcomes and review key learnings which will influence the crisis management plan going forward.

This was the most useful part of the expo for me. Much of it also seemed to indicate that organisations still think social media is a "nice thing to have" as a lot of the questions/comments seemed to suggest. But great start!

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Why Corporate Doesn't Get It - Diversity and Marketing

Who came up with this?
An entire room of people approved this and thought this was cool?
Did they test this concept with a cross section of the population? 
Did noone think this was a bit...off?
Are they completely and utterly daft?

I am sure you have seen a poster or an ad which made you ask a variation of one of the aforementioned questions. I have. While the target market for a product or brand may have specific characteristics, does that exclude consideration of the wider issues within the society, from cultural differences, ethnic variance and gender or sexual orientation, among others?


I thought this was an amazing presentation on diversity and cross cultural communication from a corporate perspective, from Sacha Joseph-Matthews, Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Eberhardt School of Business at the University of the Pacific (and yes, she is Trinidadian). 

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Can Banks be Social?

HSBC as part of the skyline - China

I read an article yesterday about global financial services provider, HSBC's plans to implement a Facebook-type interface for customers.


...Britain's biggest bank is planning to create a new online platform catering for customers' non-financial needs. One industry source said: 'They want to set up their own version of Facebook.' - PR Week


Is this a step in the right direction? Financial services is one of those sectors which still have not really "gotten" social media. A lot of this has to do with the nature of the industry, which is highly regulated. During one discussion I had with a PR executive in a FTSE-100 listed financial services organisation, this was clear:


We’re not quite sure what we can do with these parameters cause as a company selling financial products, you can’t be seen as giving advice and therefore, there is a fine line. If we’re responding to somebody, are we advising them or are we just giving them information? 

In the case of HSBC, they are avoiding this proverbial fine line and hoping to use this interface for non-financial services and information, which they hope will differentiate them from their competitors.


‘Moving away from direct sales, we will build a distinct digital offering centred on customer’s future needs financial and non-financial. We will simply ask our customers to share their needs, and we will then feedback where possible to help people fulfil them [...]The social media strategy will be instrumental in not only raising awareness, but also in building the primary platform(s) for which customers will engage with the campaign. It will attract new customers while further engaging existing ones. - PR Week

HSBC is looking for agency support for this strategy at the moment, but is there any hope for success? If the company is looking to engage customers outside the parameters of what financial companies can and cannot communicate vis a vis industry regulations, then it is a good start. However, as the author of the article commented


The odds are certainly against it. There is very little historical evidence for any consumer appetite to mix financial and social activity. The dynamics of the relationship between banks and their customers are almost entirely functional and based on rational criteria.

Having had the experience in trying to mix financial and social activity for a customer base, I agree it is often challenging but certainly not impossible. Relationships do not have to be strictly "functional" or based on the necessary logistics. Customer engagement is just as important in such an area as in any other, especially when it comes to developing the overall face and brand of the organisation. And as the brief says, the company wants to gauge customers' needs. One cannot assume that they don't have other needs besides dollars and cents. Who knows what they may want! The jump off point may be a bit ambitious - a whole new interface built from scratch - but the rationale is indeed commendable.

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Social Media Pre-Nups and the Question of Social Media Ownership

Are brand-associated social media channels
trade secrets?

I have been following with great interest the debate about who owns social media followers. First, we have the case of Laura Kuenssberg who left her job as chief political correspondent at the BBC and moved on to rival, ITV on its business desk, taking over 60,000 Twitter followers with her. And it was as simple as changing her Twitter name and moving from @BBCLauraK to @ITVLauraK.

And most recently, there is the case of PhoneDog versus NoahKravitz in a battle to the death over 17,000 Twitter followers that the company asserts were “stolen” from them, when Kravitz, upon leaving the company, changed his screen name from @PhoneDog_Noah to @noahkravitz.

One may argue that the question is who has ownership of your voice but it is also a wider issue of how one chooses to brand oneself within the social media space and how this ultimately affects the entire question of who owns what.

Both Kuenssberg and Kravitz built massive Twitter followings using their employers’ names as an extension of their brand. And while social media is about humanising a brand and having real people, with their own tone, passion and je ne sais quoi, one also has to question whether most followers are subscribing to the person or to the brand. 

@ITVLauraK - Laura Kuenssberg's Twitter page

In Kuenssberg’s case, were followers really that interested in business news from ITV or did they specifically follow her because she “represented” BBC’s politics desk? There is a very murky grey area around the whole issue and one that many organisations may now wish to address in a more formal way.

When leaving a job, you are obliged to relinquish tangible and intangible ownership of perks to the position – personal computers, mobile phones, vehicles, representation. Now one also has to consider the protection of social media capital. Is a Twitter password, really a “trade secret”? If the company’s brand is clearly stated and it is not just an employee lending professional opinion from a personal account, what steps should be taken? The Drum cites the opinion of attorney, Steve Kuncewicz:

“… the best thing for a business would be to include a clause in their employment contracts requiring that anyone who tweets on their behalf should do so using a username that incorporates a brand (as ITV and PhoneDog did) - this way they can look to take action under Twitter's terms of use to force that user to close down the account for the unauthorised use of or suggestion of a continuing connection with that brand when they leave. Trying to work in any kind of clause which confers ownership of the existing following of a high-profile employee joining the business will be difficult if not impossible, so starting as you mean to go on is the best way of keeping hold of followers in this kind of situation, along with including a clause which prohibits the employee from making an announcement on their work-profile that they're leaving in an effort to move followers to their new account.”

So, while subscribers ultimately have a choice between the person and the brand, it still comes back to the need for brands to have a clear and strong social media policy – a social media pre-nup, as it were – about, among other things, who gets the “assets” when the marriage is over.

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Caribbean Digital Expo

My first post since I gave the blog a much needed overhaul! It's like Christmas over here!

So having just finished a year-long tour of duty as a postgrad student/expat in London, I am excited to be heading back to work soon. And I will be hitting the ground running. There are many exciting plans ahead and excited people make me excited as well. To sweeten the pot, I was silently hoping my boss and I shared the same vision and passion, and he would surprise me by signing us up for the Caribbean Digital Expo which would be on the second day of my new job. I came home and heard all the buzz around it and wondered how I would make it work.

Gold star to my boss! I will be there and I am excited that such a conference is finally taking place in Trinidad and Tobago. With speakers from amazing organisations such as Facebook and RIM/Blackberry, as well as case studies from local companies, it should be a fantastic day of networking, exchanging of ideas and experiences and brainstorming.

Here is my former boss, who will be one of the presenters, and who also was as excited about digital in our last roles, as my new boss. Like Danielle, I don't think any part of my life is un-social. Business has to not transform people, but it is clear that people and technology have also transformed the way we do business!

Thank God for progress! 

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A is for Apple (Not the Fruit)

Earlier this year, I read an article about a recent study that showed kids between the ages of 2-5 are more likley to be skilled in in the ins and outs of a smartphone, than they are with the ins and outs of tying their shoes, which in past generations was a learning/development milestone.  So when I saw this image this morning, I chuckled. Signs of the times!! How ancient our childhood joys must now seem!

The 2011 method for teaching kids their ABCs?

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