Wily protestors turn Facebook app against company, creating need for crisis management
An attempt to engage consumers via Facebook backfired for Cheerios last month when anti-GMO protesters turned the company’s new custom app to their own purposes.
The protestors flooded Cheerios’ page created with the app originally intended to foster engagement by allowing fans to “share what Cheerios mean to them.” Instead of the expected heartfelt messages, a bevy of posts like the one below appeared:
Cheerios’ Facebook admins went on a spree of deletions and wisely pulled the plug on the app after realizing that it was allowing negative statements to be published in the company’s own font. To their credit they only deleted images that violated their intellectual property rights from the page, not comments from protesters, demonstrating that Cheerios (and, by extension, parent company General Mills) has a firm handle on the do’s and don’ts of crisis management for social media. However, this crisis was predictable – and preventable.
The clash over GMO’s and other genetically modified foods shows no sign of slowing down. The crisis management planning of any organization even potentially associated with the matter should include the possibility of both online and in-person protests, as well as more extreme actions like pickets or boycotts.
The BCM Blogging Team
https://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/