The power of a a speedy response when dealing with social media crises

I chose to evaluate a social media crisis at Kitchen Aid which has a lot of parallels with the Red Cross snafu we discussed in class. Similar to what happened with the Red Cross example, an employee accidentally posted a Tweet to the company’s account, a tweet that did not actually represent the position of the company. I believe this is an example of a company that did a great job managing the crisis and mitigating the damage.

In this case, an employee accidentally posted an insensitive post about President Obama’s grandmother to the company Twitter account:

The response to this tweet also reminded me of the Red Cross example, in that it generally helped to limit the damage to the company. This was an accidental crisis that, while it was embarrassing and offensive and merited correction, was likely not incredibly severe.

That said, it did elicit a speedy reply. KitchenAid used an “apologize” + “corrective action” tactic, addressing the issue on Twitter, the platform where the problem arose.

Kitchen Aid responded by quickly deleting the post. Next, the head of the brand posted an apology to the account within 15 minutes, explaining what happened. Because this was an honest mistake, the manager did not try to cover up what happened or defend the employee, she simply made an honest apology and tried to rectify the situation. Additionally, she also outlined a corrective action, explaining that the employee responsible for the post would not be tweeting for the company going forward.

Because the brand manager responded so quickly, she limited the reach of the errant Tweet and proved to the audience that she took this error seriously. Additionally, I believe that the message was in the right format and came from the right person. Hearing an apology from the brand manager proves that the brand takes this mistake seriously; this Tweet merited the immediate response of the head of the brand.

At the same time, because this wasn’t incredibly severe, it would not have made sense for the CEO of Whirlpool (the company that markets Kitchen Aid), for example, to issue an apology. A text- only response was appropriate because it allowed for a speedy reply and enabled Kitchen Aid to tightly control the message. Overall, I think this was quite an effective response to a social media crisis.

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