In the early morning of Saturday, July 6, 2013, the chairman of the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway Limited faced a catastrophic situation when a company train carrying crude oil derailed in the small town of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, Canada, causing a series of explosions that decimated the downtown core. Emergency crews fought to put out fires and search for survivors; residents were relocated to a local school to escape the noxious fumes, but the death toll and number of missing continued to rise. In the days that followed, as the provincial police and federal agencies began to investigate and suggested they might lay charges of criminal negligence, the company, which had no permanent public relations staff, needed to devise a communication strategy to reassure various stakeholders who were looking for answers as to why the derailment occurred, who would be held accountable and ultimately what action would be taken in the aftermath of such a deadly event. Also available is the supplement case <a ref=https://www.iveycases.com/ProductView.aspx?id=62139>9B13M136</a>.
In early January 2012, the director of social media for the McDonald’s Corporation (McDonald's) was challenged with a tall order. The corporation had just launched a large public relations campaign using the Twitter hashtag “#MeetTheFarmers” to promote connections with family farms and local suppliers. Maximizing a Twitter Promoted Trends expenditure, the director had switched the hashtag from “#MeetTheFarmers” to “#McDStories” halfway through the first day of the campaign. However, numerous detractors used the hashtag to express negative comments towards the corporation. A few days later, the media started to run negative coverage with mocking headlines and articles providing screenshots of the negative tweets but no statistics that explained or put proper context to the situation. The director needed to devise a better strategy for McDonald’s social media campaigns in order to prevent potential media fallouts.
During the month of November, many men in Canada and around the world participated each year in Movember by growing moustaches and collecting pledges. As a not-for-profit organization, Movember Canada strived to raise both money and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer. The community development manager for Movember Canada faced an interesting challenge. The participation of more women represented a significant opportunity to make a large impact with monetary fundraising, but it also provided an important chance to change attitudes towards men’s health. However, many organizations relating to women’s health were already well established and successful at reaching out each year for support from female demographics. The manager needed to determine how the organization could attract and involve more women in battling a health issue that was not their own. Compounding the challenge was the efficient and simple campaign operated by Movember Canada, which relied on a lean team and low administrative costs.
The Chief of the Australian Army faces a significant public scandal. In recent weeks, allegations have emerged that members of the country’s defence forces, including officers, shared explicit emails and photos that denigrated women. The scandal occurs as the Australian Defence Force is actively encouraging more women to join the ranks of the military. The Chief of the Australian Army needs to devise a strategy to communicate to the victims of the scandal, members of the army and the general public that the Australian Army is a national institution with strong values and moral standards and will not tolerate chauvinism of any kind.
The relationship between Aboriginal peoples and the Canadian government has been characterized by conflict and change. Although the Conservative government seemed to support Aboriginal objectives when it issued an historic apology in 2007 for the abuses suffered under the residential schools program and signed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People in 2008, it included changes to the Indian Act in its 2012 omnibus Bill C-45 that put economic development ahead of environmental protection and violated numerous First Nations treaties. In response, a group of First Nations activists initiated the Idle No More movement, which used social media to organize demonstrations around the country, including teach-ins, flash mob round dances and blockades of major transportation routes. Although supported by many non-Aboriginal environmental and human rights groups both in Canada and abroad, the movement appeared to lose steam after the prime minister met Aboriginal leaders to outline eight key items of consensus for action to address Aboriginal and treaty rights, health care, education and employment issues and Chief Theresa Spence suspended the hunger strike that had galvanized support. How could Idle No More organizers maintain the momentum and awareness they had worked so hard to achieve?
The public editor of The Globe and Mail, Canada’s leading national newspaper, faces a significant ethical situation. An advocate of media standards has released a blog post outlining allegations of plagiarism against a prominent newspaper columnist. Following the release of the blog post, numerous members of the public and the journalism community began commenting on the situation. The public editor is responsible for upholding journalistic ethics and for investigating and responding to public concerns. She needs to respond to the allegations of plagiarism and ensure the public that the national newspaper upholds strong ethical standards.
On September 26, 2013, the chief executive officer of the world-leading pasta manufacturer, the Barilla Group, was challenged with a precarious situation. A day earlier, during an interview on an Italian radio show, the company chairman made a series of anti-gay remarks when asked why the company did not feature advertisements with gay families. Social media exploded with negative comments and numerous equality themed pictures creatively featuring pasta. U.S. late night television shows mocked the company, and various equality rights organizations around the world called for a boycott of its products. Competitors also issued statements and ads extolling their respect for diversity. Everyone — customers, news media, competitors and organizations supporting diversity — were looking for an explanation. The company desperately needed to devise a strategy to publicly respond and avoid the negative long-term consequences of a damaged brand name, decreased market share and ultimately lost revenues.
PepsiCo faces criticism after releasing a series of online advertisements for Mountain Dew that featured an angry Mountain Dew–drinking goat, a battered white woman on crutches and the goat in a police lineup of all black men. Critics are offended by the advertisement’s portrayal of violence toward women and racial stereotypes. As the public outcry spreads, Mountain Dew’s senior brand manager needs to devise a course of action or risk damage to one of its billion-dollar brands.<p>You might also like: Abercrombie & #Fitchthehomeless, Abercrombie and Fitch, Domino’s Pizza
The co-founder and president of an environmentally friendly moving supply company faces the challenge of expanding his company’s brand. The company, which provides plastic, reusable moving bins and other moving supplies, has branded itself as providing a convenient, affordable and eco-friendly alternative to cardboard moving boxes. The company can expand by setting up additional corporate stores or by selling individual franchises. The co-founder and president also contemplates focusing his efforts on dominating and revolutionizing the Canadian moving industry. He also remains open to the possibility of eventually selling the company to a larger organization. In considering all options, he wants to sustain the integrity and success of the brand he has built and to ensure that any future expansion maintains his commitment to providing consumers with value, high quality and superior customer service.
The director of the Infection Prevention and Control Unit at the University Health Network (UHN), in Toronto, Canada, is working to reduce healthcare acquired infections (HAIs) by using a different way to communicate with hospital staff. Through positive deviance (PD), participants are gaining new perspectives to help identify the changes that are needed to reduce HAIs. The initiative has been successful at UHN. Now the director needs to figure out how to spread the success of positive deviance to more health care regions and facilities in Canada and the United States to improve patient lives and the quality of health care.
In April 2011, Sony’s PlayStation and Qriocity services were attacked by an illegal and unauthorized intrusion into the company network, compromising user account information. For five days, the corporation turned off both its PlayStation Network and Qriocity services while it conducted a full and complete investigation with the help of an external security firm. Although brief statements about the issue were posted on the PlayStation blog site, Sony did not publicly disclose the full extent of the security breach or the expected date when network services might return to normal, leaving many people speculating if personal or financial information had been illegally obtained. The timing was complicated by the imminent announcement of the launch of Sony’s first tablet computer. With its public statement, Sony intended to communicate key points of information about, explanations of and solutions to the network interruption. With over 70 million PlayStation Network and Qriocity service user accounts worldwide, customers, industry analysts, investors, consumer protection groups and government officials were all waiting for answers.
The executive of Government and Corporate Affairs at Qantas Airlines faced a communication situation that was spiralling out of control. Qantas had launched a contest through the social media service Twitter, asking participants to use Twitter to describe their “dream luxury inflight experience.” However, the competition dissolved as thousands of people used the opportunity to express negative comments about Qantas. By the second day, nearly 15,000 people worldwide had used social media to vent their frustrations with the airline.<br><br>The executive needs to devise a plan of action, before additional damage is incurred by one of Australia’s strongest brands.
The chief executive officer (CEO) of a large consumer health conglomerate faces a controversial situation. Loyal consumers of a feminine hygiene product are outraged when they learn that a highly coveted product has been permanently discontinued. Unable to find their favourite brand in stock, consumers create a website and post online petitions to boycott, or rather “girlcott,” all products made by the company. The company has already suffered serious consumer, investor and government scrutiny after having experienced more than a dozen product recalls in recent years. The CEO needs to develop a strategy to deal with the mounting consumer anger and public speculation, or risk the negative consequences of a militant, brand savvy, population of female consumers.
Facebook’s director of policy communications was faced with a situation caused by a YouTube video posted by the non-governmental organization (NGO) Greenpeace. This video publicly critiqued the environmental sustainability of Facebook’s decision to build a new data centre, its main objection being that the new facility would be connected to a local utility provider that supplied electricity mainly from the burning of coal, one of the largest sources of global warming. This video was only the latest of a series of actions, commenced by Greenpeace eight months earlier, immediately following Facebook’s decision to build the new facility. Greenpeace had dubbed these actions the “Unfriend Coal Campaign,” which now had 500,000 followers and had generated numerous media stories. Greenpeace’s goal was to pressure Facebook into adopting cleaner energy policies by leveraging Facebook’s own social media against the company. As Facebook had no plans to stop building the facility, its director needed to figure out the best course of action to take in response to the mounting pressure from Greenpeace, in order to alleviate the increasingly negative attention from media and consumers.
In 2012, the Ontario provincial government announced that after 41 years in operation, the iconic Toronto tourist attraction Ontario Place would be shut down. The immediate closing would save the province and tax payers an estimated $20 million a year and eliminate at least 48 full-time jobs and 600 summer positions in the process. Ontario Place attendance had dropped sharply from an average of three million visitors during the early 1980's, to just over 327,000 in 2010. The Ontario government planned to keep the park closed until 2017 and spend the five years following closure to redevelop the majority of the site. It established an advisory panel empowered with the task of evaluating how to once again make Ontario Place a popular city venue and tourist destination. The advisory panel was expected to submit a full report outlining the best ideas for the Ontario Place revitalization to the provincial government by the end of the summer.
On the morning of September 19, 2011, the chief executive officer (CEO) of the online movie provider Netflix Incorporated became witness to growing public discontent and media criticism directed at the company. The previous evening, the CEO had announced on the company blog that Netflix would be splitting into two separate entities. With the proposed change, the Netflix DVD-by-mail service would be spun out and renamed Qwikster. The move would leave the Netflix brand to focus on offering online streamed entertainment. This was not the first time Netflix had caused large-scale consumer frustration, as a few months earlier in July 2011 the company had announced it would be increasing rates by as much as 60 per cent. The result was a loss of over one million Netflix subscribers by September 2011, representing the first time the company had ever lost subscribers from one quarter to the next. Although the split into two separate entities could be seen as a good business strategy, Netflix did not follow through with a well-developed communication plan. Moving forward, both Netflix and Qwikster had come to represent an unfortunate dichotomy, and Netflix’s management was in desperate need to develop better communications with disgruntled consumers or risk losing additional subscribers and lucrative profits to a number of growing competitors.
Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO of Research in Motion (RIM), faced a situation of truly disastrous proportions. Earlier that week, service outages had started occurring on RIM’s popular BlackBerry smartphone devices, affecting over 30 million BlackBerry users globally. For a total of three days, RIM engineers worked around the clock to fix the widespread technical problems. However, with the company providing only brief comments to the public, many consumers and industry officials became increasingly frustrated. With the worldwide release of the new Apple iPhone 4S just days away, Lazaridis was presented with the additional challenge of how and if RIM should respond publicly to help restore consumer and market confidence.