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Generative AI is everywhere now. You see it in content, campaigns, customer experiences, and even internal workflows. It promises speed, scale, and efficiency, but there’s a harder question sitting underneath all that progress; Do your audiences actually trust it?

Trust in the Age of AI: What Consumers Really Think About AI Generated Content

Today, PR teams aren’t just tracking media coverage and share of voice. They’re also measuring how their brand shows up in AI-generated answers, search summaries, and large language models (LLMs). This new LLM visibility layer is quickly becoming a critical part of PR performance.

15 Must-Have PR KPIs and How to Track Them

See how one platform can power every decision across PR, communications, and marketing.

The Meltwater Blog

Blog Topics: Generative Engine Optimization, Media Intelligence, Media Relations, Social Listening, Consumer Intelligence, Influencer Marketing

Find out how you can leverage Facebook to boost your brand's online presence and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

Facebook Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage Instagram to boost your brand's visual appeal and gain a competitive edge. Explore our category page today!

Instagram Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage LinkedIN to grow your professional network and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

LinkedIn Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage TikTok to elevate your brand with creative content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

TikTok Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage X / Twitter to engage your audience effectively and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

X / Twitter Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage YouTube to create engaging video content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

YouTube Blog | Meltwater

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is transforming how brands show up in AI-powered search. Explore insights, strategies, and best practices to help your content rank and resonate across conversational engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

Explore insights and strategies for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help your brand stay visible and discoverable in AI-powered search.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Blog Collection | Meltwater

Every day billions of conversations take place on social media: tweets, posts, comments, blogs, reviews, podcasts, and much more.
Learn how to use social listening to make sense of all of that data.

On our social listening category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around social listening and social media monitoring. Read more.

Social Listening Blogs | Category

Business Reputation Management: What does it take to add reputation management to your marketing strategy? More importantly, how do you keep your reputation sparkly and shiny? Here’s your all-access guide to online reputation management for the long term.

On our reputation management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around business reputation management. Read more.

Reputation Management Blogs | Category

From your brand's logo to your website, your social media presence to your customer support—these elements combined are what constitutes a brand in the minds of customers. But, there are thousands of other businesses that have a logo, website, social media presence, and website. So, how can you position your business on the market and make it stand out from the competition?
The key to success is branding & brand management!

On our brand management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around brand management. Build your strategy and reach your goals!

Brand Management Blogs | Category

Competitive intelligence and the act of collecting competitive data can be seen as growth drivers for a company. Our guide will help you understand the concept of competitive intelligence (CI) by answering questions such as: What is the definition of competitive intelligence? How is competitive intelligence useful to organizations? What is the goal of competitive intelligence? And more.

On our competitive intelligence category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around competitive intelligence. Learn how to stay ahead.

Competitive Intelligence Blogs | Category

Let’s dive into the customer journey framework and how to optimize the process by creating a customer journey map and using metrics that matter when analyzing the customer journey.

On our customer journey category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Customer Journey Blogs | Category

What Is Data Analytics? [Beginner’s Guide 2023]
How can I grow my business? 
How do customers interact with my newly launched product?
How do I increase the productivity of my employees?
How do I know if my marketing efforts are working?
We have just two words for you...Data analytics!

On our data analytics category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around AI and data analytics. Technical and still easy to understand.

AI & Data Analytics Blogs | Category

Public relations and media relations can add impact to any marketing strategy. It’s an opportunity for brands to grow their reach beyond traditional sales messages. PR helps to shape the image you want people to have of your brand.
So, what is PR and how do you use it? This guide shows you everything you need to know to build a strong public relations foundation.

On our public relations (PR) category page, you find all our blogs covering public relations and communications topics. Step up your PR game.

Public Relations (PR) Blogs | Category

We all know exactly what the roles of sales or accounting are in a company, right? We might even have a slight idea of what the IT guys are doing.
But there is another business discipline, that plays a crucial role in organizations, even more so during the pandemic – internal communications!
But what exactly do we mean by that, what purpose does it serve and what steps can you take to ensure you and your employees will communicate effectively?

On our internal communications category page, you find all our blogs about internal comms topics. Learn about the intranet, internal newsletters, and more.

Internal Communications Blogs | Category

As the internet has taken root in more areas of our lives — everything from entertainment to shopping to paying bills and more — traditional marketing is becoming less impactful. As any marketer knows, you need to focus on where your audience is if you want to reach them. Since the average person spends about seven hours a day online, it’s no surprise that content has maintained its hold on marketers.

Here's a closer look at what content marketing is and why it matters more than ever in our digital-first economy.

On our content marketing category page, you find blogs about content marketing topics. Learn about strategies, KPIs, tips, and more. Make your content king!

Content Marketing Blogs | Category

The rise of the influencer marketing space – today a $10 billion industry, growing 50% per year – is one of the clearest examples of how social media is transforming traditional marketing. These days having a business website, presence on social, PR coverage, and your own content isn’t enough to compete.
We'll dive into the intricacies of influencer marketing to help ensure that you're equipped with the insights needed to be successful in this space.

On our influencer marketing category page, you find blogs about influencer marketing topics. Build your strategy, find influencers, and measure results.

Influencer Marketing Blogs | Category

Have you just launched a new product or service that you want to get the word out about? Maybe you want to share with consumers why it is awesome and how it is so much better than the one your competitors offer.

Well, then, there is one thing you can't do without...Marketing!

On our marketing category page, you find blogs about marketing topics. Learn about all the different angles and types of marketing and improve your results.

Marketing Blogs | Category

In this guide, we want to give you a peek into the definition of social media management, the daily schedule of a social media manager, social media platforms to promote your business, and the do’s & don’ts of social media management.
Are you ready to begin the journey of becoming a social media superstar?

On our social media management category page, you find blogs about social media management topics. Build and manage your online community.

Social Media Management Blogs | Category

Building a following and using social media platforms to reach a wider audience requires a well-planned social media marketing strategy. In this guide, we’ll be looking at why social media marketing is so essential and how you can make it work for your business.

On our social media marketing category page, you find blogs about social media marketing topics. Learn how to get the highest paid social ROI!

Social Media Marketing Blogs | Category

In the fast-evolving realm of digital marketing and public relations, utilizing the right tools is crucial for success. Our interdisciplinary category showcases all the pertinent tools for digital marketing & PR. These tools help in enhancing your online presence and effectively reaching target groups, whether through reputation management, influencer marketing, or social media management.

On our digital marketing and PR tools category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Digital Marketing & PR Tools Blogs | Category

Using social listening to participate in the ongoing conversation about your brand or industry on social media is the best way to address reviews, whether positive or negative. And remember, the Meltwater's media intelligence platform monitors forums and review sites.

No small business owner likes it when their business gets a bad review. Criticisms posted to Facebook, Google, or Yelp can sting. They can feel personal. What’s more, they can damage your business’ online reputation—causing potential customers to think twice about giving you their hard-earned money.

Still, negative reviews happen, despite your best efforts to make every customer happy. When you see a bad review, don’t panic. Instead, follow these five basic rules.

What to Do When You Get a Negative Review

First, acknowledge it. Ignoring online reviews doesn’t do any good. It might just encourage the reviewer to troll you even harder. Plus, other customers who see the review may wonder why you haven’t taken the time to help the customer with the complaint. The bottom line: Unaddressed reviews look bad.

Keep calm. If it looks bad to leave negative reviews unanswered, it looks even worse to fly off the handle and respond to a customer in rage. No matter how unreasonable you think the customer is being, remember: People are watching. They want to see how you respond. Take some time to cool off, and don’t reply until you’re able to do so without any anger or hostility.

Offer a solution. A negative review presents you with an opportunity to show real customer service skills—and if you can do so effectively, it might end up enhancing, rather than detracting from, your brand. Try to think of some ways to make things right with the customer who’s complaining. Go above and beyond, because again—people are watching!

Flip the script. Negative reviews also provide a great chance for you to reiterate what makes your company great. Saying something like “We’ve been in business for 10 years, and maintain 99 percent satisfaction scores from our clients” can be a great way to emphasize that your reputation is for excellence and that you’re committed to impressing your clientele.

Ask to take the conversation offline. Arrange to speak with the customer privately, over email or phone, to make things right—rather than airing your dirty laundry for all the world to see. If you can turn that unhappy customer into a happy one, you might even ask for them to revise their review accordingly.

Now, there’s just no pleasing some customers—so if you follow these tips and still can’t get through to them, don’t beat yourself up about it. Just focus on providing great service to your other customers, and hopefully winning some positive reviews to offset the bad ones.

This article originally appeared in The Red Ink.

This article was written by Amanda Clark from Business2Community and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@newscred.com.

5 Things to Do When Your Business Gets a Bad Review

A lively panel discussion moderated by Meltwater’s Dino Delic at New York City’s Press Lounge in May yielded valuable insights from a handful of business communication leaders. Panellists included Emily Scarlett, communications head at clothing retailer H&M USA; Craig Carroll, founder and executive director at the Observatory on Corporate Reputation (The OCR); and Christel Ghattas, a corporate communicator at the media and entertainment provider Discovery, Inc. The discussion centred on best practices around risk and crisis management, as panellists spoke to issues introduced by Delic and answered questions from the audience.

The panel agreed that the best way to manage a crisis is to be open and authentic, and quickly explain what can and will be done to rectify a situation. Adhering to the company’s professed values is important. Even so, there will be some occasions where the best response is not to issue a statement at all, but to work quietly behind the scenes to resolve the issue. This includes scenarios where the perceived offence is negligible and the company has it in its control to apply a remedy.

Several of the discussion topics and the conclusions they inspired follow.

Authenticity is key to navigating a crisis, so tell the same story everywhere you operate.

Companies using the same name around the world can’t afford to be chameleons. Letting people know what your brand stands for earns you goodwill and trust and provides you with signposts on how to operate in times of challenge. If you profess to be all about people, decision-making should always put people first. Tell a consistent story. One panellist said her company prioritized moving from social media channels operating independently in multiple countries to a model ensuring greater consistency and control of the narrative. “There are so many moving parts, but our employee in India should have a good idea what our employee in Sweden will be saying.”

Everyone owns reputation management, so familiarize employees with your corporate values from day one.

The CEO is typically the face of the company and may be flanked by internal communication leaders in times of crisis, but every company with public-facing employees has an opportunity to demonstrate the company’s values in its day-to-day operations. The panellists agreed that there’s strength in numbers. Employee engagement is almost inevitable in the age of social media, so communicate regularly with employees about expectations and positive behavior. A solid grounding in the corporate values goes a long way toward investing trust in your workforce.

Use every available resource to gather and act on your information.

Panellists agreed that effective crisis management depends on allowing cooler heads to prevail. This means getting people on the line who know what actually happened, gathering the facts, and coordinating with your team to go public. Fulltime 24/7 monitoring of social and traditional channels allows you to follow any unexpected turns in messaging, along with their context. The more tools you have to work with, the better. One panellist remarked, “They say it takes 20 years to build a reputation and three seconds to lose it, and that’s a fact.” Another panellist notes that people’s memories are short today, and sometimes we can over-respond to a reputation issue. “We’re more invested in our reputations than all of our stakeholders are. Sometimes we can over-respond a little bit.”

Given its immediacy, social media can be your greatest ally in a time of crisis.

Waking up and finding your company in the spotlight for an incriminating photo could ruin most PR pros’ weekends. Rather than watch the situation spiral out of control, one panellist spoke of using social media to track down the photograph’s source. Buried beneath 500 tweets she found her answer. Social media not only allowed her to communicate that the company was looking into the matter, it later enabled her to explain the story behind the photo, part of an exposé the company was preparing for broadcast. Everything happened in a matter of hours. As one audience member observed, “Social media isn’t always the devil. It can also be really powerful from an advocacy standpoint.”

Media monitoring not only identifies vulnerabilities, it often guides you toward solutions.

To learn what you’re doing wrong, just look to Twitter. One panellist recalled how criticism of their fitting-room mirrors was a frequent topic of conversation. The solution was easy enough, but it took social media to bring it to the company’s attention. “Rather than perceive the criticism as solely a knock on the brand,” she said, “we looked at this as an opportunity to show our customers that we were listening and were willing to make things better for them.”

Look to create real value with your media reporting, and report in real time.

Finding ways to extract value out of your information-gathering practices and using the information in real time can keep a small issue from blowing up into a crisis. “Real-time insights that can affect decision-making are more valuable than a beautiful report afterwards explaining how well you did,” said one panellist. Another panellist warned against overreacting and over-communicating. While intuition often plays a key role here, the best decisions are typically grounded in facts and supporting data.

For further insight into risk and reputation management, you can download our ebook on the topic.

Risk and Reputation Management the Hot Topic at Press Lounge Gathering

On social media, a single incident can quickly create a crisis and be detrimental to a brand – not just in terms of perception but also in sales – which will be remembered for years.

While a company can try to improve its brand reputation through content and branding campaigns, the brand perception is ultimately shaped by the opinions and experiences of consumers. Marketers must, therefore, be extra vigilant to protect their brand when a crisis strikes, not only during but also once the crisis period has passed.

Before deciding your course of action in terms of crisis communication, it is essential to measure the impact of the crisis on the reputation of your brand, in order to be able to respond effectively. It is therefore essential to measure:

What is being said about your brand during this crisis on social networks

Perceptions of the brand during and after the crisis

Top Tip: For insights on how to navigate a world drowning in Fake News, access of free, on-demand Webinar on How to Protect Your Reputation in a Fake News World and learn more about brand reputation measurement.

In a crisis situation, it is therefore very important to react quickly and pay attention to every detail. A crisis watch is essential in order to alert us to the feeling of our customers, to guide our communication strategies and to enable us to identify new media to target.

So we can start by including a watch on both the press and social networks. Even if your brand does not have a great presence on social media, these are often the place where the crises are discussed, so it is important to stay informed of what is said.

How many messages and articles related to your crisis have been published? How much of your crisis does it occupy compared to your usual media coverage? What days did the message peaks take place?

The case of H&M Mexico is a good example. The brand experienced a global crisis in early 2018 when it put on sale a  designer sweatshirt disagreeing with the brand’s diversity values. Meltwater’s social media monitoring tool to analyze the coverage of this crisis at a local level allowed them to follow what the journalists said and react accordingly.

In times of crisis, your negative hedge will be much larger than usual. The challenge will be to return this rate of negative mentions to a normal rate. It is therefore essential to monitor your brand’s sentiment score throughout crisis management.

Following the evolution of sentiment over time will allow you to identify and manage peaks of negative mentions, which you can explore to identify relays and key topics related to your crisis. You will also be able to follow the impact of your crisis communication on your web mentions day by day.

The keywords contain clues as to how people perceive your brand during and after a crisis. Use  a social media monitoring tool  to quickly gather branding information so you can do it:

Identify the key topics: What are the common concerns raised? Do people associate your brand with the crisis?

Related Hashtags: It is not uncommon for customers to band together by labeling their complaints under a derogatory hashtag. Keep track of these hashtags over time for more information beyond brand endorsements or customer messages on social media pages about your brand.

In order to address the most appropriate response, it is important to understand what the media and the general public feel about your crisis situation.

What are the most common topics? Distinguish the impact of press and of social media because the content broadcast on these two channels can be very different.

This indicator will then be interesting to follow during your crisis management, to make sure that your answer is correctly integrated by your community, and to adjust if necessary.

Who are the main broadcasters of your crisis? Are they detractors or ambassadors?

By identifying media and influencers about your business, you can prioritize your communication. Determine the best way to show appreciation to the heroes and positive spokespeople during the duration of the crisis.

Which social media publications related to your crisis have the most impact (engagement, sharing, etc.)?

You will be able to identify influencers who are relaying your crisis, and opinions that arouse the most consensus in relation to your situation.

Does your crisis have a very local, national or international reach?

Because every content can be critical in times of crisis, it’s important to have a news feed updated at your fingertips in real-time.

Identify the impact of the crisis on business and customers

Of all the measures that companies need to focus on, the customer response to a crisis is ultimately the most important.

The feedback that customer relations teams receive in terms of calls or emails is the most direct feedback on the potential impact of a crisis on the current financial results.

Depending on the type of business, customers may be the best public to filter the noise they hear. If they ask questions, you will have a clear point of reference as to the extent of the problem you may be facing.

For consumer brands, customer engagement can be measured simply by the decision not to buy a product, so tracking sales in real-time is essential.

The conclusion to be drawn here is that the measures must be adapted to the type of business and relationship with the customer.

It is also important to monitor the impact of your crisis communication on the perception of the brand after the crisis has been minimised.

If your brand has completely recovered from the crisis and customers have forgiven and forgotten.

Whether it is appropriate to launch new content or branding campaign, or if your PR team is facing the crisis again.

Evaluate the “consequences” taking into account the time needed for the discussions related to the crisis to stabilise or diminish.

If the crisis is among the most important web search keywords related to your brand.

As for the case of Wonder Woman with ThinkThin, with their promotional operation co-branded. Unfortunately for thinkThin, it’s their brand name that has caused a disagreement with the audience’s expectations of the film. Presumably, if their bars had been named thinkHealthy, there would have been no near-crisis.

The mainstream media and social media condemned the film for about a week, and by the time it was released in June 2017, we found almost no mention of this ill-conceived partnership.

And although they did not cancel the campaign, neither brand promoted it on social media. Wonder Woman has become a huge blockbuster and neither brand has been boycotted.

Rebuilding your brand’s reputation after a crisis requires tact and good timing. It is therefore essential to write a crisis report in which you will analyze and mention the plan implemented to minimize the crisis. This will help you to:

Identify influencers who have stood up for your brand and who could become your spokespeople in your post-crisis campaign.

Detect key complaints that should be addressed in official communications

Determine whether your brand should continue as usual or better communicate by taking corrective action, based on the volume of crisis-related discussions, conversation keywords, and sentiment about your brand.

If you’d like to learn more about how social media monitoring tools can help you determine a crisis and keep your brand image up to scratch; request a free demo of the Meltwater tool.

How to Measure the Impact of a Crisis on Your Brand Image

Sure, it’s difficult to foresee disasters that could occur in your F&B business but given the legal and financial ramifications of not having a crisis management plan in place, it would be wise to hit the ground running and start brainstorming.


Without such a plan, you could be putting your business’ reputation on the line with little means of recovery. A crisis can also strike any company anytime, anywhere. To really survive? Advanced planning will always be the key. After all, in the age of Social Media, posts and photos will go viral before you know it.


Before brainstorming, consider some of the most common mistakes in crisis management:  

These may seem like mistakes you’re unlikely to make but without proper planning, all it takes is one member of the company — from management to service line — to slip-up or get too nervous for these very mistakes to occur. So instead of putting your business reputation on the line, we’ve prepared a step-by-step guide to help you along the process. It’s time to get your crisis management plan started before any unprecedented crises hit!

Before you even start to conceptualise a crisis management plan, it’s important to understand what are some possible risks that your business faces in the F&B industry. Work with members of leadership and key stakeholders to begin listing all relevant threats and vulnerabilities that could impact the company.

Within the F&B industry, some of these risks might include food contamination, manufacturing delays, product recalls, public relations blunders, social media gaffes or even other more universal situations like cyber attacks (especially if you run an online store), data breaches and so much more.

A good to place to start is with a list of issues that have triggered negative feedback in the past and start assessing the likelihood of them occurring again.

Step 2: Have A Crisis & Strategy Team In Place

While a crisis can’t be predicted, having a crisis management strategy could reduce the negative impact on your business. Ensure protocols are set in place and various people within the company have been appointed to handle different aspects of the crisis, should one occur.

For example, a plan for a social media hiccup would involve your digital team preparing and delivering a unified statement across all social media platforms, while your customer service team is briefed on how to handle incoming calls and queries.

Meanwhile, a crisis plan for food contamination and product recalls may require help from the quality control team to investigate the source of contamination and the logistics team to determine how to fix the problem. In addition, service staff should also be aware of how to respond if a customer were to question them. After which, Customer Service, Sales, and Communications teams should work together to answer customer questions and maintain the company’s reputation.

Always ensure the spokesperson (likely to be the CEO) who will address the audience provides a consistent voice, is well trained to answer media questions and participate in interviews. Beyond that, it’s also crucial to ensure that relevant team members are informed to pause and check all ads, and halt social media postings or promotions during the crisis. In more serious situations, company websites should be blacked out as well.

Step 3: Craft A Detailed Plan For Each Situation

Depending on the possible threats, each situation would require a detailed play-by-play plan on what would happen. When crafting this plan, it helps if you answer the standard 5 Why and 1 How questions.


For instance, with regards to public relations guidelines, think about who will talk on behalf of your organisation, what they will say, when and how often they will address the public, why they would speak and where they will communicate this information. Having all of this in place would make managing a crisis far more seamless instead of having a knee-jerk reaction on what to do and who will do it when the situation unfolds.

It’s also important to have certain statements drafted and pre-approved. With the lightning speed that social media moves at, it can hurt your brand to wait for stakeholders to approve statements. Instead, putting out a statement that acknowledges you’re aware of the problem without saying too much will go a long way to putting your audience at ease. Don’t forget the longer you take to get out your initial response, the more fuel it provides your detractors.

One well-known and recent example in Singapore hails from the popular salted egg chips company, Irvin’s Salted Egg. In December 2018, the brand landed itself in an unfortunate situation and in the middle of a social media storm when a customer posted on Facebook that she found a dead lizard in her packet of chips.

While the company nonetheless apologised with a sincere and heartfelt message, supposedly by the CEO, on Facebook, it did take them about 80+ hours to respond. Some normal marketing posts even went out before the apology. Had they prepared for such a situation, pushing out the apology and taking responsibility would have been much swifter, mitigating more negative sentiments online as the hours ticked away.

Similarly, a local restaurant chain, Aloha Poke, landed itself in a hairy situation when a customer found a big spider at the bottom of her poke bowl delivery order. However, this situation was handled with a lot more grace and in a far quicker manner.

As soon as the customer’s Facebook post went up, the company published an almost immediate apology on their Facebook page to show their regret for the quality lapse and a commitment to do even better moving forward. While it’s unclear whether they were prepared for these type of situations, their speed to delivering a well-crafted response is laudable.

The co-founder also personally reached out to the customer to compensate and take full responsibility, further showcasing that the founders are personally involved in the business. Ultimately, handling a food contamination crisis with such tact and professionalism is one way to soothe any built up negativity.

Step 4: Test & Review The Plan With Everyone Involved

Just as fire drills are conducted in buildings so everyone is aware of what to do and where to go in an emergency, testing your crisis management plan is crucial.

After all, you can’t predict if your plan will work since the possibilities of where a path will take you next are essentially endless. As such, constantly test your plan to ensure you have every potential crisis and loophole covered with everyone involved. Doing this will also help you identify aspects you might have missed earlier, which you can then use to review the current plan.   

While making this plan, do not assume relevant departments or individuals are aware of their roles and responsibilities. Instead, define a clear structure and hand it down from top management onwards or from regional teams to local teams.

Once you have solidified your crisis management plan, the process doesn’t just stop there. Actively listen to conversations taking place online and in the media to understand what topics are being discussed and how they relate to your brand. Consistent monitoring could potentially allow you to pre-empt the looming crisis if you look for it.

To make monitoring easy, the Meltwater Media Monitoring tool provides an easy-to-use platform that allows you to stay on top of conversations surrounding your brand. Essentially you can track media coverage, trends, sentiment, reach, social echo and more in real-time, allowing you to manage marketing and communications activities swiftly in the digital age. For instance, if a high traction site appears on your searches, you can click through directly to the article from the platform to have a more in-depth look during a crisis.

With the Meltwater mobile app, you can also set up Crisis Notification alerts so you stay in-the-know while on the move. Begin by setting up crisis-specific searches to track crisis keywords such as ‘insect in food’. Once this keyword is identified in conversations, push notifications will be triggered, allowing you to stay abreast of potential crises anytime, anywhere.  

Using these tools, you can identify positive, neutral and negative sentiments around the crisis. This would help you to narrow down what to address and which of the numerous action plans to execute.

Crisis management may be growing more complex with the popularity of social media, as news of a crisis can spread with just one post. However, such platforms provide brands with means to act fast and accurately just by listening to the community chatter.

No doubt it’s hard to prepare for every crisis out there that could affect the F&B industry but aim to prepare for the ones you can pre-empt with these steps in mind.

Craft A Crisis Management Plan For The F&B Industry With These 5 Steps

Unexpected market forces mean that well-conceived campaigns can still rub audiences wrong, but have you noticed that some brand snafus are seemingly short-lived controversies, while others turn into crises? After reading these examples of brand blips, it bears reminding ourselves that a brand is ever-evolving in the public eye. And having an agile strategy that includes a media intelligence platform might be the easiest way to stay (or get) out of a crisis.

It might be a side effect of how many of us live online, but brand crises seem to be coming at a faster clip than ever before. Uber is a prominent example of a brand that stumbled, kept stumbling, and has yet to recover.

And while some brands have had a hard time coming up for air, others, seemingly poised for a crash, pull back in the nick of time and keep moving along as if nothing happened. By taking a closer look at how brands recovered, we might learn what makes an “almost crisis” peter off and turn into a mere blip.

Even though we believe tracking brand keywords through your media monitoring and social listening tools and keeping an eye out for early warning signs that trouble is heading your way is the best defense against full-scale crisis, it doesn’t hurt to pick up a tip or two from brands who were caught off guard.

Kim Willis on Twitter: "It should be obvious, but having a feminist like #WonderWoman hawking a product called ThinkThin isn't a good look. https://t.co/RnAuJn6F7g… https://t.co/LjCHEKBQH6"

It isn’t an exaggeration to say that Wonder Woman was one of the most anticipated action films of 2017. As consumers discussed the film on social media prior to its premiere, so did brands in conference rooms. Of course, those discussions would inevitably yield cobranded promotions.

Ife B. on Twitter: "People Not Happy With #WonderWoman's #ThinkThin Partnership https://t.co/6SyRx4u0Yv via @TeenVogue << terrible marketing idea"

While it’s certain that a variety of snack bars were competing to have the right to sponsor a campaign around the movie, the honor went to thinkThin. Unfortunately for thinkThin, it’s their brand name that caused a disconnect with audiences’ expectation.

Blunder Woman? Critics are steaming that... - Colorado's  "Everyday"  Show

Everything else being equal, if the bar were named thinkHealthy, (presumably) there wouldn’t have been an almost-crisis. So what ended up happening?

Condemnation rained from mainstream media and social media for a week or so, and by the time the film was released in June 2017, there was little mention of the ill-conceived partnership. Wonder Woman went on to become a huge blockbuster and neither brand was boycott.

Why did it blow over so quickly? Because 2017 was a hard yet empowering year for women. We started the year at the biggest international march in history and finished with large clap backs with the #metoo movement. And while they didn’t call off the campaign, neither brand promoted it on social media. There was no press release and the partnership was a trip to the premiere presumably, that continued, but there was no mea culpa or press release announcement of the winner(s). Without increased promotion of the partnership, it faded from social media, as the public moved on to other pressing issues.

According to Meltwater’s Insight Reports, negative sentiment around the Wonder Woman and thinkThin® partnership’ spiked and disappeared within a week.

Marvel Entertainment on Twitter: "Marvel and @northropgrumman join forces! Come check out the #MarvelNYCC booth tomorrow at 3pm EST.… "

Timed to launch at the NYC Comic-Con, Marvel and Northrop Grumman based their partnership on an existing template: slick, branded superheroes with superpowers that embody their sponsor’s corporate values and culture. In this case, it was a new team of “Northrop Grumman Elite Nexus” superheroes fighting alongside Marvel’s popular Avengers. The goal was to highlight aerospace initiatives, STEM education, and forward-thinking technology by Northrop Grumman. Turns out Northrop Grumman’s reputation as a defense contractor rubbed comic aficionados wrong. Tellingly, one person pointed out that Tony Stark’s company produced weaponry, forcing him to turn his back on it when he realized its affects on humanity. Within 24 hours of the very vocal outcry on Twitter, the activation campaign and relationship was canceled.

Admitting that they didn’t think the partnership through, Marvel pulled out. A quick mea culpa made the almost-crisis immediately dissipate and Marvel went on to enjoy their lauded position at the NYCC.

(((DRAPETOMANIAc))) on Twitter: "Virtually all-white ad, 'See Detroit Like We Do,' raises eyebrows https://t.co/ixzkrCkVyT"

Bedrock Detroit launched a campaign whose aim was to empower their namesake city. The tagline was “See Detroit Like We Do” and included images of urban professionals enjoying a downtown life of dining out, entertainment, and work. The thing is, in planning the shoot and booking models, the campaign forgot an essential aspect of Detroit, its diversity.

Considering the levels of planning and approval these images must have gone through before being placed on posters around the metro-area, it’s a wonder that someone didn’t say, “Hey, if we’re using this tagline, should we make sure it includes different aspects of the population, whether that is skin color, age, family structure, or other socioeconomic factors?”

Dan Gilbert apologizes for controversial graphic on Detroit building

Once the outrage popped up, Bedrock Detroit founder, Dan Gilbert, personally issued an apology and the ad campaign was pulled. Even as the mainstream media covered the issue’s eruption on social media, the general public moved on to other matters. The question that remains is, will Bedrock be more conscientious going forward? Will they show Detroit as “a city that is open, diverse, inclusive?” Hopefully using the data that their community and audience is sharing with them about their campaigns will guide their future campaigns.

According to Meltwater’s Insight Reports, the Bedrock campaign caused tonality (sentiment) to dip negatively for the Detroit realtor, but within two weeks the brand was back in the green.

Using a media monitoring and social listening platform likely assisted these brands in quickly responding to their communities. Considering how quickly decisions were made, it looks like Marvel and Bedrock Detroit had crisis plans in place. Springing into action to stem the blood flow with succinct apologies and pulling the campaigns in question requires both an agile and prepared PR team. And while those responsible for the thinkThin partnership can’t necessarily apologize for their approach (since it’s the product’s name that caused the public to react), their ability to keep their cool and step away from the ledge also indicates that a crisis plan was likely already in place. Their decision to not promote (if not quite cancel) their #thinkWonderWoman campaign resulted in social media moving on by June 8, less than a week after the film’s premiere. Every one of these brands was spared a protracted crisis by their quick thinking and prepared comms team.

To make sure you have signposts in place before your brand is mentioned in social media, download our e-book on crisis comms. Being prepared for a crisis well before you’ll need it is the easiest way to recover quickly.

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