Social Media Corporate Crisis Management 101 Training for the Middle East Partnership Initiative Alumni Chapter in Algeria

1. CRISIS MANAGEMENT 2.0
YASSER TAKIE EDDINE ABDESSELAM
DIGITAL MANAGER @ ICOSNET, SPA.
DIGITAL COMMUNICATION CONSULTANT
GRAPHIC & WEBDESIGNER

2. INTRO
As a company in a the local market, whether you’re a startup, a large company, a group of companies or even a
multinational business, you are always facing threats of crises.
It is certainly not something you can avoid, yet it most certainly is something you have to deal with.
A crisis is not something in your hand that you can control or predict, it depends on totally independent and
external factors.
Dealing with a crisis is called « Crisis Management »

3. DEFINITION
A crisis can be defined as:
“A state of affairs in a business wherein the leadership (owner, CEO, or Board of
Directors) must take urgent and unprecedented action to try to save the business from
failure—with the distinct possibility of a highly undesirable outcome.”
In a time of crisis, conventional management practices are inadequate and ways of
responding usually insufficient.
FACT: A CRISIS ISN’T ONLY A NEGATIVE STATE, SOMETIMES WHEN THINGS ARE TOO
POSITIVE, THEY CAN CAUSE A CRISIS.

4. EXAMPLES OF CRISES
Johnson&Johnson’s
• 1982
• 31 Million bottles
recalled
• $1M worth
• $100.000 offered
as reward
Bridgestone
• 1998/2000
• 200 deaths
• $6,5M worth of
tires recalled
JetBlue
• 2007
• 1000 blocked
passengers for 11
hours

5. EXAMPLES OF CRISES
Djezzy
• 2009
• Many destroyed outlets
• General boycott
• ???
Toyota
• 2010
• 8,8 million cars recalled
• 19 deaths
• 1,2 billion dollars fee

6. RECENT CRISES (ALGERIAN BRANDS)
•The
“Meuh”
Contest
Loya
•The
“Divorce”
Commercial
N’Gous

7. TYPES OF CRISES
Flash Fire
 Minor crisis
 Easy to manage
 Short
 Does not need crisis cell
 Does not need high leadership interventions
Rolling Disaster
 Major crisis
 May ruin the company’s reputation
 May cause financial losses
 Hard to manage
 May last for years
 Needs dedicated crisis management cell
 Needs highest leadership interventions, strategic
level

8. TYPES OF CRISES
THE ALLAH GHALEB CRISIS
 Does not depend on you
 Caused by lack of awareness
 Almost impossible to manage
 Happens only in 3rd World countries
 You pay someone else’s due
 You pray that it will end up alright

9. MANAGING THE CRISIS
Crisis management is the process by which an organization deals with a
major event that threatens to harm the organization, its stakeholders, or the
general public.
Crisis management is a whole process, a plan, a strategy even. Whether
it’s a Flash Fire or a Rolling Disaster, an angry #hashtag or Ddos hack, it has to
go through a chain of actions to be monitored, managed and eventually
overcome.
Crisis management is a 3 phases cycle, no matter how big is the company,
it’s always the same:
Pre-crisis
• Preparation
Crisis
• Reaction
Post-Crisis
• Analysis

10. PHASE I: PRE-CRISIS
 Be prepared for the crisis
 It can happen to anyone, you can not predict it
 Create an emergency cell
 Only deployed when needed (internal, not recruits)
 Create a team ready for response
 People who can react fast, social media ninjas
 Train the emergency team
 Crisis simulations, trainings
 Create an internal communication plan
 Eveyone is potential spokesperson, employees must be
aware
 Create response templates
 Quickly editable templates that can work for most cases
 Set the emergency calls priority
 Who to call when a management/leadership decision or
statement is needed
 Have an eye on what’s happening
 Follow your brand e-reputation and make reports
 Prevent crises from happening
 Expect what may happen, communicate to stop it

11. PHASE II: CRISIS
 Be aware of what is happening
 Do not react until you understand
 React as fast as you can
 The longer you take, the worse it becomes
 Deploy the crisis cell
 Ninjas with Katanas (A team with fast fingers)
 Respond on the network where it started
 Go to the source
 Communicate on all other social media
 Cover as much ground as you can, do not neglect any of
the social network
 Put everything on hold
 Postpone your editorial calendar
 Issue an official statement (or press release)
 Acknowledge your awareness and explain your position
regarding the crisis
 IF YOU ARE WRONG: APOLOGIZE
 Blame only yourself, the customer is your master, especially in a
crisis time
 Make sure you spell your words right
 Every single letter is important, if your statement doesn’t your
company, it will burn it to ashes
 Communicate only enough, do not overreact
 A simple effective response is better than a

12. PHASE III: POST-CRISIS
 Collect DATA, it’s IMPERATIVE
 Go beyond the crisis, get all the details
 Analyze DATA
 The only way to prevent it from happening again is to understand how it really happened
 Use the analysis outcome to change/reverse/eliminate what caused the crisis
 You don’t want it to happen again, because if it does it’s your end !
 Keep communicating
 The crisis is never over until another trend comes up
 Keep following your brand
 The crisis can come back anytime, an angry customer can bring it back to life
 Give your team some time to relax
 People are … You guessed it … “HUMANS”, give them a day off to chill and forget about the stress

13. APPLICATION: LET’S TRY IT !
General
manager
Communication
Manager
Community
Manager
Public relations
Manager
 General Manager
 Manages Everything
 Responsible for everything
 Public Relations Manager
 Manages external relations with Media
 Communication Manager
 Manages cross-channels communication
 Community Manager
 Manages social media

14. CASE STUDY: GOOD FOOD CO.
 TIMELINE OF EVENTS
 Distribution sends out 2,000,000 Bags of Chips into the market (Produced on March 8th 2016) and expire 3 months later (Net
worth: 20,000,000 DZD)
 A mother buys 5 bags of chips for her children on March 14th, and finds insects in two of them,
 The mother goes and complains to the retail store about them, and keeps the open bags,
 The mother’s brother is a social media addict, web influencer, takes a picture and tweets it
 « @GoodFoodCo are you sure about the « #Good » part of your name ? #Insects #InfestedFood #Algeria »
 The brother has 3856 Followers on twitter, 30% are daily active users
 Tweet gets retweeted 29 times,
 1,2,3 Viva l’Algérie facebook page screenshoots it and posts it,
 Your Twitter and Facebook pages are now officially a comments dumpster,
 The general manager is on a vacation, and he leaves the Marketing Manager as Acting General Manager
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: WE HAVE A CRISIS !

15. THANK YOU
BE DIGITAL, BE SOCIAL, BE AWESOME !
YASSER TAKIE EDDINE ABDESSELAM
abdesselamyasser@gmail.com
about.me/yasserabdesselam
linkedin.com/in/yasserabdesselam
facebook.com/themagnifico
twitter.com/lyxdesign