CHAPTER 13
THREE MILE ISLAND: THE GM BANKRUPTCY CRISIS
The most remarkable day of my professional career took place on June 1, 2009, in conference room C-11 on the 30th floor of tower 300 of Detroit’s Renaissance Center, overlooking the Detroit River and the skyline of Windsor, Ontario. A team of about a dozen communications people were clustered around the table, with boxes of crackers, granola bars, and cookies scattered about the room and bags of Starburst and peanut M&Ms lying around the table. The team had spent most of the past 48 hours there, breaking only for four hours’ sleep before arriving at six o’clock that morning.
Down the hall, in D-11, a virtually identical conference room, a similarly sized team had been preparing the communications plan around the largest corporate Chapter 11 filing in U.S. business history. They’d worked in seclusion, their plan known only to General Motors’ leadership and communications hierarchy, a few people within the Obama administration, and a small handful of legal and bankruptcy consultants.
Communicating to the world about what was happening to GM that day had taken weeks of preparation, scenario planning, and strategizing. SEC and federal reporting requirements had been taken into account. Lawyers, consultants, economists, and representatives of the president’s automotive task force had vetted every word in the press release. Nothing had been left to chance; it was as meticulously scheduled and orchestrated as possible, with the plan listing events and activities right down to the minute.
The careful planning, cautious and legally approved wording, and meticulous attention to detail that had gone into the plan built in D-11 made what was happening back in C-11 all the more remarkable. Because in C-11, the dozen or so of us in the room were preparing to first convey and then discuss GM’s actions within the social Web—the antithesis of the planned, organized, and controlled world of the financial experts and lawyers. It is uncontrolled, chaotic, and virtually impossible to plan for, at least in any kind of detail.
The financial counselors, bankruptcy counselors, and lawyers knew this—and there was considerable nervousness about how the day would play out. One of the bankruptcy consultants candidly and pointedly told the social media team that our activity, our very existence, was “the biggest risk” General Motors faced on filing day. But due to an extraordinary show of faith by General Motors’ leadership—and a realization that direct communication with (not to, but with) consumers was the only way GM could go forward—we had an imprimatur from Fritz Henderson, then CEO. Steve Harris, then head of communications for GM, mandated that the social media team be given as much leeway and freedom to respond as possible, trusting in the judgment and instincts that the team developed in more than two years of engaging online.
In the 18 hours that followed before we signed off a little before two o’clock the next morning, the social media team took part in nearly 900 conversations online (nearly 2,500 by the end of that week!), among corporate and personal Twitter accounts, the corporate GM page on Facebook, and various blogs posting articles on the situation. We’d not only managed to survive the day without making a “mistake” online but also actually started to receive credit within social networks for how the company was handling the day in the social Web. An Associated Press reporter covering the company that day noted on Twitter that “in the old days, a company would be hiding in a cave on a day like today.”1 By the end of the week, online influencers across the social Web were lauding the team and the company’s efforts to use the social Web to keep people informed and to respond to concerns or criticism. As Pete Blackshaw, executive vice president at Nielsen Online, cofounder of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), and columnist for Ad Age, put it on Twitter:
“TIP OF THE DAY: Eager to ramp up social media skills? Review & digest how @gmblogs managed feedback yesterday.”2
How did this happen? In the middle of the biggest Chapter 11 filing in business history—one complete with a very unpopular government intervention on the heels of the even less popular TARP assistance to Wall Street—how did General Motors not only stay active and involved in social media but also actually win favor and public credit that week? What did we do?
The answers aren’t just academic, and this chapter isn’t meant to be “the behind the scenes at GM’s bankruptcy” tell-all. In reviewing what we did at GM during the biggest crisis of our existence (and one of the biggest crises any organization might ever face), it is possible to take some core lessons away about how your company or organization ought to react should you ever be faced with a crisis of similar proportions—a Three Mile Island–level meltdown. (Here’s hoping you never are faced with one. While managing GM’s social media presence through the bankruptcy and recovery was certainly a once-in-a-lifetime experience that gave me 10 years or more of learning in just 18 months, I don’t wish anything like this on my worst enemy.)
There are a number of things I think we got right from a social media perspective during the Chapter 11 crisis—but none was more critical to our success than the foundation laid before the crisis reached its head.
Give the Social Media Team Seats at the Table—and Keep Them Informed Throughout the Crisis
Contrary to what some might think, we did not know as an organization that bankruptcy was imminent. Maybe some in leadership had a sense (there are other books written by people closer to the top than I that might give you a better sense of that), but as an organization, we didn’t know it was definitely coming until only a week before. But once it was clear that Chapter 11 was coming and we were going to have to deal with it, the communications plan included social media from the outset—which was a critical difference maker. A great deal of the credit for our social media success that week rests with two people who aren’t even remotely involved in social media for GM—Randy Arickx and Renee Rashid-Merem, who led financial communications and had the foresight to make sure the social media team was looped into all the planning for the big announcement.
One of the members of my team, Annalisa Bluhm, was embedded with the financial communications team; she learned just what they learned, as they learned it, and brought that knowledge back to the rest of our group. This knowledge—as well as Annalisa’s sense from having been on our team of what language would come off as “corporatespeak” and needed to be “translated” for social Web audiences and made more casual—was vital as we developed our social media program. Nothing caught us off guard; no developments took place in secret without the social media team’s being aware of them. Renee and her team treated Annalisa like an equal and a peer and made sure that she understood everything that was going on, at levels beyond what the rest of us picked up. It’s safe to say that for a month or so, Annalisa was as much an expert on what was happening to GM as almost anyone in the company, or at least certainly within communications.
Additionally, as the overall communications plan for the filing was developed and prepared, social media was given a seat at the table as well. As the director of social media, I was in the room with the rest of the communications leadership, our bankruptcy consultants, and occasionally business leaders as we talked through the timing of what would happen and how we were going to communicate it to various audiences. Demonstrating the value of a strong executive champion once more, our SVP of communications, Steve Harris, pushed to ensure that social media be considered in our plan and included in the overall communications strategy. (Steve’s support was vital, as some of the bankruptcy consultants were unsure about our participation. Given the very structured and prescribed nature of what companies filing for Chapter 11 protection are allowed to say by the SEC—and the timing of what GM was to say being directed by the U.S. Treasury Department—one of the lead consultants on the project told my team pointedly that social media was the biggest risk the company was taking on June 1. That same consultant, it should be noted, acknowledged shortly afterward that social media also represented the biggest reward that week.)
Finally, the week before the bankruptcy, my team was given a crash course in bankruptcy law and regulation by our bankruptcy consultants, Alix Partners. In a multi-hour session the Wednesday morning before the filing, bankruptcy experts drilled us on various elements of bankruptcy law—what Chapter 11 filings meant, the differences between Chapters 11 and 7, the nature of Section 363 of the U.S. bankruptcy code and the nuances of how an accelerated 363 process would work for GM, and what the answers were to most of the questions we could anticipate in the aftermath of the filing. I can’t say that we became experts on bankruptcy law, but we probably learned more about it than the overwhelming majority of the people who were going to be asking us questions did. We were prepared to answer knowledgeably and honestly—and one of the Alix team members was assigned to be on call to our team that day (in addition to all of his other duties) so that if we got any question we didn’t feel we comfortably knew the answer to, we could instant-message him to get an immediate response that we could then turn around to the person in the social Web who’d asked it.
We were as prepared to face questions about bankruptcy and what it meant for GM as anyone in the company—because we recognized that people would be asking online, because we owed people answers (the U.S. and Canadian taxpayers were, after all, becoming our temporary owners), and because failing to respond or answer during the crisis would greatly hamper any social media efforts the company embarked on in the future. (If we weren’t going to be out there answering questions and providing information when people really wanted us, how could we ask them to pay attention to anything we wanted them to know later on?) We distilled complicated legal filings into conversational, 140-character bites. When the release crossed the wires, we were ready to go and were sending tweets and Facebook posts at virtually the same moment explaining the information in the release to social Web audiences. We were ready.
What can you take from all of this, should your organization ever face a catastrophe and need to deal with it online? Communications and business leadership have to keep the social media team as informed as anyone in the company and keep social media front-of-mind as the communications plan around the situation is developed. The world is going to be asking questions and conversing on Twitter and on blogs about what’s happening to you, whether your organization is there or not. Being out and trying to provide as much accurate information as possible allows you to inform the conversation rather than leaving it to the speculation of others and frankly can win you points with an audience for your forthrightness. But this only works if your social media people are informed and have the latest information to share.
You’re not always going to have a week’s advance notice that a crisis is coming nor the luxury of that much time to get your social team up to speed. In many cases, you may have a matter of minutes. But recognize that many of the people affected by whatever’s happening to your organization—not to mention many in the traditional media—will be watching online to try to get information as quickly as possible. Social media provides you the opportunity to share bursts of information as you get it, without going through the formality of a press release or a news conference.
Of course, there will always be some things you can’t talk about—whether for regulatory reasons, to respect the privacy of those affected or involved, or because your lawyers warn that giving specifics could expose the company to legal consequences. This is understandable, and almost no one would argue that the existence of the social Web means that companies or organizations give up the right to keep some things private. But the more proactive you’ve been in providing information, and the more candid and open you’ve been in your interactions, the more likely an audience is to accept those moments when you really can’t discuss things or reveal information.
Assemble a SWAT Team, and Make Social Media Its Responsibility During the Crisis
Admittedly, in most circumstances it isn’t realistic to expect that an entire group of people in your organization are going to be able to devote all of their time to being present on the social Web. But then again, we’re not talking about most circumstances; we’re talking about a crisis in which your organization’s existence is threatened or someone’s life is on the line. If ever a situation called for extraordinary measures, this would be it, wouldn’t you think?
During the first week of GM’s bankruptcy, we had a SWAT team battened down in a room together. Twelve communications professionals from across the company were pulled from whatever their “day jobs” were and were specifically assigned blogs, Twitter search terms, or Facebook pages (GM’s page, pages for Chevrolet, Buick, etc.). We wanted to make sure that as few questions or comments went unanswered as possible that week. Underlying this desire was our core belief: in a crisis of such magnitude, you cannot overcommunicate. Ordinarily, we wouldn’t be trying to blanket Twitter, be on every blog possible, cover multiple Facebook pages, and write posts for our own blog. But during this crisis, we didn’t want to rely on thinking that “most people will see it if we put it here” or take any chances that anyone could have a conversation anywhere on the social Web that week about what was happening to General Motors without hearing from us and interacting with us or someone who’d heard from us.
If something this big is happening to your organization, make sure that there’s at least someone in the organization who’s working social media full-time during the crisis, hitting as many channels as possible. You want to be in as many conversations as you can. This may seem scary, to be so exposed during your moment of ultimate weakness, but keep in mind that the people in your organization are not the only ones impacted by what’s happening. Outside audiences, including those using social networks, will want and need as much information as they can get, and part of your responsibility when jobs and lives are on the line is to be as forthcoming as possible.
There’s one other benefit to being so active online during the crisis: search engine results. Your organization and the crisis are going to get Googled as the crisis rages. Your activity should increase the likelihood that at least something authored by you—or influenced by a conversation you had—pops up in a Google search related to your crisis. All those conversations that take place online about what’s happening to your organization will show up in Google and Bing results (and remember, Google is forever); you want your perspective as widely represented as possible.
Listen More than You Talk, Answer More than You Promote, and, Above All, Provide Value
Another reason I think our social media efforts were so well received during the bankruptcy was that I set the tone for the team early on, even before the actual filing, that we would be active listeners online—in fact, that we’d do more interacting with people than pushing our information out. People would be more interested in having their questions answered, I reasoned, than in hearing what we wanted to say or trying to distill a complicated legal filing. Not only that, but also as taxpayers, people on social networks were absolutely involved in what was happening to GM and deserved as many candid answers as we could offer. Using what we’d learned through the bankruptcy education the week before to guide us on what we were and were not allowed to say, the team determined that no matter how ugly or angry the conversations got, we were going to ride it out, take our lumps, and answer as much as we could.
When the week was over and we looked back on it, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of the tweets and posts we’d done were in response to someone’s inquiry or post, rather than being proactive GM information. Granted, we certainly spent a lot of time making sure that the information we needed to push out went out; we had taken the bankruptcy filing and press release, for example, and had broken it into 140-character bits suitable for Twitter; we’d made the content as social-friendly as we could.
But this was mostly within the first 20 minutes or so. Once the basic information was out there, we spent most of the next 20 hours answering people’s questions.
• Would their warranties be covered for brands being discontinued? (Yes. All valid warranties would be honored by any GM dealer.)
• What would happen if their dealer was being closed down? (When the list of dealer closings was finalized, we would make it public as quickly as possible and help people identify the closest remaining dealership to them.)
• When did we expect that we might get the loans paid back? (We didn’t want to make promises we couldn’t keep, but our deepest wish and fullest intent was to pay back the loans as soon as possible. No one wanted the government out of the auto business more than GM and the government.)
• Would the plant in their hometown be closing? (In cases where a plant closing was already announced, we would confirm. As for the remaining plants and their fates, we were not privy to the list of unannounced closing plants at that time—so we legitimately answered by saying, “We don’t know yet, but if or when we hear anything confirmed, we will let you know.”)
• Would their uncle or brother-in-law who worked at a plant somewhere be able to keep his job? (It wasn’t fair for us to speculate on people’s jobs online before they’d had a chance to talk to their local union leadership, so we respectfully weren’t going to talk publicly about specific job losses until employee communications had talked with all plants and people had had the chance to hear their fates from the company or union rather than learning about it from the Internet.)
• How could we be online that day and not be ashamed to show our faces? (Because we felt it was more honorable than not showing our faces and not answering questions. It was an unpleasant and humbling experience, but we felt we had an obligation to be there and openly communicating that week.)
• Did we really think the government intervention was necessary? (While no one was more disappointed than we were, the government intervention was the last remaining option to prevent the company’s collapse. Further, the ramifications of a GM dissolution or auto industry collapse would be far more costly and have longer reaching effects than the administration’s actions—so unfortunately, yes, the intervention was necessary.)
• Why did we get government assistance when other companies hadn’t—why couldn’t we go through bankruptcy like everyone else? (The domestic auto industry and its related industries—suppliers, dealerships, etc.—provided millions of jobs and contributed billions of dollars to the U.S. economy; by some estimates, a collapse would cost nearly three million jobs and more than $150 billion in tax revenues to the U.S. economy over three years. We believed that the government intervention was not about saving General Motors, that it was an action to protect the U.S. economy and GDP, which is what made this situation different from a typical bankruptcy.)
• What would happen to their existing GM stock—was it worth anything anymore? (Unfortunately, with the Chapter 11 filing, the existing stock in General Motors Corporation no longer had value, and we were very sorry to have to tell them that news.)
All these questions and more came in rapid-fire from all corners and from people expecting rather immediate answers. And we tried to not only answer everything we saw but also see as much as possible. When we did respond, we did everything we could to remove the “spin” from our answers. There were “key messages,” sure—but most of the items on the talking points document we all had were the unvarnished answers to the questions we expected most often. When we gave answers that somewhat defended the company or the government’s intervention, we genuinely believed the answer to be true; it wasn’t a PR message as much as the facts as we understood and/or believed them (especially as they pertained to the economic impact of a domestic auto-industry failure).
It ended up being so important that we weren’t trying to protect our reputation, working on positioning, or “bridging back” to a core set of messages; we were simply trying to get people the answers they needed most at a time of uncertainty and when misinformation and opinion masquerading as fact were rampant. Our job that week was simply to be as reliable a source of the most accurate, unfiltered, and “un-spun” information as people needed us to be. There would be time for reputational repair after the immediate crisis had passed.
Was it crazy to not only be online that week but also let the audience dictate most of the terms and tones of the conversations? Perhaps. But we genuinely believed that in a crisis of that magnitude, answering as many questions as possible and being extremely visible about letting people know we were listening was vital. It wasn’t as if we could hide from what was happening to us, and we knew people were going to be angry. The only way to make them angrier, we reasoned, was to make them think we were sitting smugly in some office tower oblivious to the furor our company was generating. So out we went.
Amazingly, people reacted quite well to what we did. While there were certainly folks upset with what was happening, we got sympathetic responses from most everyone we engaged—people seemed impressed that we were out there and taking every criticism or angry barb, not dodging anything. We even started seeing “hang in there, guys—we’re rooting for you” tweets by the end of the afternoon!
What can you take from this for your organization? While you’re working on pushing as much information out there as possible, don’t forget about that whole listening and interacting element to social media. Maybe you don’t need to swing your balance as close to 80/20 as we did, regarding how many of your online posts are “push” as opposed to responsive—but also you shouldn’t be any lower than 50/50. Not only does it give you a better chance to provide the information most relevant to an audience (based on the fact that they’re the ones asking for it), but you actually can mitigate some of the anger or frustration at your organization by just being out there and listening to what people have to say. (Key in this, of course, is being genuinely sympathetic to people’s dissatisfaction with what’s happening—BP, for example, would have struck just as discordant a note in the social Web as was struck in the traditional media when its then CEO seemed less than sympathetic to or understanding of the frustration that so many had with the company.) Get out, hear what people are concerned about, address it, and take whatever lumps you have to if you have them coming.
On that front, the individuals who are your online faces during a crisis of this magnitude should be reinforced and thanked often—because in many cases, they personally take the brunt of anger or frustration that’s aimed for the company. During the weeks leading up to the bankruptcy, my team endured insults, derision, rudeness, and even the occasional threat. Unfortunately, the anonymity of the Internet makes brave people out of some cowards. And can you imagine having to have been representing BP online during the Gulf spill crisis or on Toyota’s team during its recall crisis—what it must be like to have to personally bear the brunt of anger that isn’t your fault at all? Make sure you’re checking in on your people regularly, giving them breaks when they need it, trying to offer a perk or two here and there. Incessant negativity or threats can drain even the most positive people. And of course, have your organizational security team’s number on speed dial in case anyone online gets out of hand and any of your people feel legitimately unsafe or threatened. If your organization isn’t large enough to have its own security department, be connected with your local law enforcement agency just in case.
Let Others Help You
As General Motors’ bankruptcy plan was being announced, I did something unorthodox and that would likely have gotten me in trouble had my bosses known. I sent many of the details of what we would be doing from a social media standpoint—omitting any of the legal or SEC language that hadn’t been released yet, of course!—to a handful of social media influencers I knew well and trusted: the fact that we had a small squadron of people ready to spend the week answering to people online; the fact that we intended to do more listening than talking; the blog posts that we intended to put up … all of it. There’s no point in divulging to whom I sent it because it’s not material.
I wasn’t trying to turn any of these bloggers and influencers into advocates for General Motors. Not only would that have been ethically suspect had I imposed upon professional relationships or friendships to ask for advocacy, but also it would have been a very challenging position to take at that point for anyone with a broad audience! No, the point of tipping off social media influencers to our whole plan was that I knew the fact that we were planning on being not only active in social media but also proactive during that week was going to be of interest to anyone who studies or observes social media. I knew that the story would be hard to resist—and that any good blogger includes lots of links in her posts. I was counting on the bloggers’ news sense to point people back to us.
Sure enough, as the story broke on Monday morning, the posts began to appear pointing out that GM had an active social media program going on during the bankruptcy, pointing to the opportunity to learn from how it went (either well or badly!), and most important, pointing audiences back to GM’s FastLane blog, our Facebook page, and our Twitter feed—just as I’d hoped.
None of those influencers acted on GM’s behalf that week; none of them were taking our PR line and handing it to their audiences. Actually, in simply reporting on a good story, they were doing one better; they were pointing people directly back to us, where we had the chance to effectively make our perspective heard. The number of people following GM on Twitter literally doubled in one day on the first day of the bankruptcy—and while much of that should be attributed to what was happening, I’d wager that at least some of those new followers found us (and knew which accounts were really ours as opposed to fake or satirical ones) through those posts by the super-influencers.
I’m certainly not advocating that you send your social media crisis communications plan out to a group of big-time influencers. That was a huge roll of the dice that could easily have worked against what my team and I were trying to do. But the general principle behind the idea remains solid: how you handle a Three Mile Island crisis in social media is going to be very interesting to the social media pundit crowd. In fact, they’ll be writing about it and tweeting about what you do (or don’t do) whether you engage them or not. So make use of it—do a coordinated outreach to some super-influencers explaining what you’re doing. Don’t necessarily expect them to become advocates for your organization or company, but in mentioning that you’re active, they’re going to point people to you, which is exactly what you want—people coming to your feeds for information or to ask questions as opposed to getting answers without you. And, if you’re doing a good job with your social efforts, these influencers might even praise your social media initiative—which will go a long way in helping you with the next piece of this puzzle.
Follow Up—Over and Over Again
Forgotten in almost every crisis, but especially one of this magnitude, is the fact that weathering the crisis is only the first step in the job for your company or organization. When the immediate crisis passes, you’ve got the daunting job of repairing your reputation. Social media can be an integral part of that reputation repair—if you use it wisely.
Whether it’s fair or not, one of the realities of the modern media environment is that audiences are cynical. There will be a significant portion of the audience—both online and off—that receives your communications efforts during the crisis with more than a healthy dose of cynicism or disbelief. It won’t matter how sincere or candid or genuine you try to be; a big portion of the audience is going to think that you’re “just” doing damage control or, in situations brought on by the business and not outside actors, that the only reason you’re sorry is that you got caught. No matter how effective your immediate crisis management plan is, this part of the audience in particular is still waiting for signs that nothing’s changed or that no lessons have been learned. Even the portions of the audience that want to back you up or support you still need tangible signs that their faith is well placed, that you’re going to reward their support by getting things right in the future.
So once the immediate crisis has passed, you need to demonstrate change to the audience and reinforce any trust or benefit of the doubt that you might have earned during the crisis. If a mistake on the organization’s part led to the crisis, you not only have say that things have changed; you also have to show it. Give people a reason to believe in you once again—and make sure that everyone who questioned you or reached out to you during the crisis has the chance to see it.
At GM, one of the first things we wanted to do after the company emerged from Chapter 11 protection was to focus attention back on our products. For the better part of 18 months, people had focused on our financial state rather than our cars and trucks when talking about GM, and we knew that in order to demonstrate that we had a strong future in front of us, we had to get people looking once again at the product. So the communications team began developing a “product showcase” for the media, which would involve bringing 100 media members to Detroit to show them not only our 2009 portfolio but products in the pipeline for the next three or four years as well, hoping that the unprecedented access would raise excitement about our prospects. It was a great idea and the right thing to do, but there was another step we could take.
Several members of the communications team—some of them on the social media team, some not—had the idea that if we really wanted to show change and get people talking, we ought to bring in “regular people” instead of just the media, and instead of having them write stories in traditional publications about what was coming from GM, our guests should use the tools of social media, such as Facebook, their blogs, and Twitter, to talk about what they were seeing.
Fortunately for us, we had a good selection of potential guests to choose from for the program. We had been keeping records of people we’d had extended conversations with in social networks or online during the bankruptcy and emergence. Some were supportive, and others decidedly not fans of GM. But we picked 100 of them—as equally blended a mix of supporters, neutrals, and cynics as we could manage, some the editors of widely read blogs, others college students or moms with a couple hundred followers on Twitter—from that list and invited them to Detroit the day before the media got their shot at the behind-the-scenes showcase.
It worked wonders. Not only were almost all of our guests excited about what they saw, but also they talked about it at high volumes on the social Web. Best of all, they didn’t just talk about the vehicles but also spoke about the levels of access they were given to both upcoming products and GM leadership, as well as how willing we were to take on the tough questions in person. We answered everything. And the main takeaway our guests offered back was that GM really did seem different—that we listened, that we were open to feedback, and that we weren’t the “same old” company that had been described so mercilessly by the press during the countdown to our bankruptcy. The showcase event went an incredibly long way toward rebuilding our reputation and standing inside the online automotive community and won us fans among other online communities that kept the relationship with us going long after that event had ended. (Several of them ended up buying one of our vehicles within the next year!)
There are two lessons for any company in this effort. First, as mentioned, in the aftermath of a crisis, you have to show that you’ve learned from any mistakes you’d made and that the future will hold a very different outcome from the past. In order to demonstrate this to as wide an audience as possible, you have to implement the second lesson: reputational recovery and repair requires follow-up. Lots of it.
As you go through your crisis, as busy as you’ll be, take furious notes as to whom you’re talking with, what their general outlook about you seems to be, and what their specific concerns are, and then follow up with them repeatedly in the weeks and months following the peak of the crisis. Ask them questions—and listen to their answers. Give them follow-up information specifically tailored to what they’ve talked with you about. You’re in a fight for your organizational life, and every customer or potential customer won back through these efforts is a win worth celebrating.
In the aftermath of a crisis, size or amount of influence doesn’t matter. You’re in a position of needing to win people back, one by one if necessary. The beauty of the social Web is that it affords you the ability to have the kind of individually focused conversations that can achieve this for you. We brought a college student with a small blog and a protected Twitter account to the product showcase—because even though she wasn’t a “major influencer” and perhaps had only a couple hundred people within her circle, her opinion was going to matter a great deal to those couple hundred or so. Not only did she end up buying a Chevrolet Equinox the following December; she also talked up our products to her friends in the ensuing year. We wouldn’t have found or “created” a college-aged advocate (and the youth market is critical to GM’s future) if we’d been looking at people in terms of pure numbers. Follow up with everyone you’ve talked with during your crisis after the flood crests, whether or not the person has a huge following or mass influence.
The work of rebuilding General Motors’ reputation is ongoing (and will likely be perpetual). Everyone inside the company is determined to bring the company back and never consider the recovery “done,” so it’s likely that the internal attitude will continue to be “we have more work to do.” Some smart social media programs are hardly the main reason the company’s primed for a successful comeback, but what we did in the social media sphere has been a factor; people routinely tell us so online. Here are a few examples from Twitter:
@cbarger—Congrats on everything your social media team does. I’m partial to Honda but your work ensures I’ll consider GM.
—@KarlSakas3
In my experience as a consumer—GM’s use of social media has certainly warmed my perspective toward the brand.
—@MollyKDaunt4
@cbarger I never had a great impression of GM, but your social media work is really great and changes my perception. #howtowincustomrs
—@davideckoff5
I won’t promise you that you’ll survive a Three Mile Island business crisis on the back of just a smart social media program. But you can help mitigate it, should you ever be faced with one, by using the principles at the heart of GM’s social media initiatives during the Chapter 11 crisis:
• Keep your social media team or people informed and part of all communications planning during the crisis; more than almost anyone else in the organization, they will need fast access to accurate information and will need to know “what’s going on.”
• Make social the only focus for at least one person—preferably a team of people—for the length of the immediate crisis. It’s going to be so important an outlet and tool for you, it will deserve and need dedicated staff.
• Listen more than you talk, answer more than you tell, and focus on providing value and being a resource for accurate information and answers more than positioning your organization or promoting core messages. There will be time after the crisis peaks to repair your reputation, but during the crisis, people want to feel that you’re on their side and that you place their interests above your own.
• Let others help you do the lifting. Proactively reaching out to super-influencers can help point people in your direction and help you reduce the danger of false accounts or imposters making your situation worse.
• Don’t forget that weathering the immediate crisis is only the first step in repairing your reputation—and that you need to do lots of follow-up with as many people as you can with whom you engaged during the worst of the crisis. Sincere follow-up, not simply words, is the key to winning people back over.