Silence is a major crisis management no-no
In case you’ve missed the social media headlines of the past couple days, the Twitter feeds of both Burger King and Jeep were compromised, big time. Burger King was the first to be hit, and the hacker (or hackers) gleefully defaced its profile, changing its display name to McDonalds and publishing messages announcing the company had been “sold to McDonalds because the whopper flopped =[”
For over an hour the @BurgerKing feed was filled with pictures and video poking fun at the company and its employees until it was finally suspended.
McDonalds, to its credit, expressed sympathy in a tweet and assured the public that it had nothing to do with the hacking.
Jeep was hit the very next day by hackers operating under the same M.O., changing its profile to declare that the company had been sold to Cadillac and posting several drug-related messages in the ten minutes before the account was suspended.
A not-so-funny joke
On a related note, in what could very well qualify as one of the most tasteless PR-grabs in recent history, MTV also claimed to be hacked, only to quickly admit that they and fellow Viacom channel BET had coordinated the fake takeover.
Although the company has zero credibility to lose, it was still a poor choice, especially given that both Jeep and Burger King regularly buy valuable ad space on their networks.
Questions, but no answers
Obviously nobody thought that the postings from the hacked Jeep and Burger King accounts were legitimate, and in fact both companies have gained tens of thousands of new followers as a result of the attention (talk about an unexpected benefit!), but the incidents do raise the question of what exactly Twitter is doing to help prevent situations like this.
Everyone from major media outlets to power users has sought comment from Twitter, but the blue bird has repeatedly trotted out its response of, “We don’t comment on individual accounts.” In addition, the @twitter feed has been completely silent since the 14th of this month.
Well Twitter, you know what, that’s really not going to fly for much longer. Yes, we are aware that we’re pretty much locked into your service, but the expectation that a company share what it knows about how users are being hacked, or at least comment on the issue, post tips on account security, SOMETHING, is not an outrageous one in the slightest.
Experts are clamoring for features built to help protect accounts, things like two-step authentication, which would require a second step, such as a text message code, to change passwords or email addresses, yet the company remains mum on that issue as well.
Twitter has had plenty of time to prepare a response strategy, and to implement more powerful security features, but if there’s anything in the works then it’s being kept, unwisely, under wraps.
Time to talk
Major public attacks like these recent ones have powerful potential to scare off brands who are just now considering getting serious about social media, brands that could be spending their advertising dollars with Twitter, or, if they’re concerned about security, Facebook, Google, their local paper…you get the point.
It simply does not do to have a booming silence surrounding your organization when crises are involved. Now is the time to start talking.
The BCM Blogging Team
https://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/