Crisis Type:  1 & 3

Some time around September 2009 Honda saw a surge in its Crosstour Facebook page overflowing with negative comment regarding the looks of the newly launched Honda CUV. It was seems that the consumers were not very kicked abut the design of the car. As per some estimates (guesstimates)  well over 81.7% of the ensuing comments are negative. Honda  on its part played the good boy and removed only few comments (out of thousands) because of "profanity or inappropriate content."

But among all the negative comment with profanity or inappropriate content which got removed they also remove one that expressed a positive opinion.

honda manager crisisi

An overzealous product manager at Honda promotes his own product but fails to disclose his own relationship with the company –and the community caught him. Honda responds by removing his posts due to lack of disclosure and not being a company authorised spokesperson.

Honda Removed its post sighting  2 reasons

1) He did not first state that he is a Honda employee and that his posting is his personal — not Honda’s — opinion. 2) He is not a spokesperson for Honda.

Now the question is – whether Eddie really did something which was really wrong? He’s an employee defending not only his company and that company’s product.

If we look at it closely he was trying to share his opinion posing as a consumer (maybe this backfired). May be he should have disclosed his relationship with the company and the product.

We also need to understand that today every employee who is on Facebook/ Twitter/ LinkedIn suddenly becomes a spokesperson if the company plans to use social media for marketing.

Learning:

  1. Any company which plans to move in social media space should have in place social media policy and guidelines. Its also important to provide training to all employees in the organisation on Do’s and don’ts of social media. (Eddie from my point of view was not wrong….just that he took the social media lightly).
  2. When this crisis occurred they should have asked Eddie to Introduce himself. Put a face, name and role to your presence.
  3. All unofficial people should declare that they work for the organisation but are not official spokesperson.
  4. Everyone has right to say (within logical limits) how they feel about certain things. But if they are connected with it directly or indirectly then they should always add a disclosure.

If you have some interesting ideas to add to this post please share :)

Happy Reading!

M