What Ali Bullock has learnt about managing a social-media crisis

At the start of his talk, Bullock explained that he had just left Cathay Pacific Airways a week previously to head communications for WWF. An avid wildlife photographer, Bullock described the move as “following his passion”.

Cathay Pacific has not responded to queries on the appointment of Bullock’s replacement.

Bullock first joined Cathay Pacific about four years ago, and within months of his arrival, a video of a Cathay Pacific pilot conducting a low fly-by with a Boeing 777 went viral. The ‘stunt’ was apparently not quite approved by the organisation, because news that the pilot had been fired by the airline was published by the South China Morning Post, and also went viral.

About 6 million views later, Bullock recalled being called into his superior’s office and being ordered to get the videos taken down and to “turn off the Internet.”

“We didn’t have a social-media team then, but we formed one quickly,” Bullock said, a decision that lmade the airline barely prepared to handle ‘Crazy Airport Auntie’. “This really drove home the necessity of emergency preparedness. We had seen the ‘airport auntie’ video but had no idea it was going to get that big. Not to mention the... ahem... censored incident. So be prepared!” (For the few who may be unfamiliar with the 'censored incident', it involved photos of a flight attendent and a pilot engaged in sexual activity in an aircraft's cockpit.)

A lot of damage caused by these crises can be negated if caught early, said Bullock. Volkswagen saw a harmless tweet turn into a social media crisis simply because it wasn’t aware Greenpeace had published a paper complaining about its environmental policies. Completely unaware, Volkswagen asked its Facebook fans what they would like VW to do in the new year, opening the gates to have Greenpeace chatted about on the brand's own fanpage.

“Be aware, monitor your keywords,” advised Bullock. When Cathay was accused of participating in dolphin trafficking by marine wildlife conservation organisation Sea Shepherd, the social-media team learnt about it almost immediately thanks to word monitoring.

“It turns out that the story was not true," Bullock said. "Cathay had a minority stake in the cargo carrier and we had no idea that this was going on.”

The social-media team brought the cargo team in Japan together with marketing and communications and worked on a press release. The team also made sure to answer every Facebook query and Tweet, spoke to a celebrity who was about to cut up his Cathay loyalty card on TV in support of Sea Shepherd and of course, reached out to Sea Shepherd directly.

“We stopped the rumour going wild, thankfully for Cathay and its brand," Bullock said. "But there were quite a few things we could improve on. For one thing, 24 hours passed between picking up the story and issuing the press release. This is too slow, getting the facts right took us time, but it took too much time." 

Focused on containing the social-media crisis, the team forgot the real-life crisis being faced by Cathay’s staff around the world. “They were verbally assaulted over this issue and they had no idea what was going on, or what to say back, so they looked guilty," he said. "We forgot to send an email to our staff, and that was a mistake.”

It’s important to realise that sometimes, a social-media crisis is actually a crisis, period, Bullock added.

Looking back, the team should also have posted a comment on Sea Shepherd’s page, even though they were afraid of “poking the beast”, he said.

Speaking of poking the beast, fighting social-media wars with lawsuits is sometimes the best way to make things even worse. When Greenpeace took on Nestlé for “using palm oil produced in areas where orangutans’ forests once grew” with a viral video targeting Nestlé brand Kit Kat, the F&B giant responded by suing the organisation.

Although Greenpeace took the video down, the organisation also sent it to all its followers and asked them to post the video, multiplying the issue. Then Nestlé made things even worse by deleting Facebook posts, which is of course, a mistake. “Things got so bad that Nestlé had to change their supply chain policies,” concluded Bullock. Today, Nestlé prints on its packaging an assurance that the palm oil is sourced from sustainable rainforests.

Of course, one of the best ways to manage a social media crisis is to avoid one altogether (if you can). Adidas Germany only planned to release the infamous “shackle sneakers” in Germany and so perhaps missed the impact it had on African-American sensitivities. An image of the sneakers went viral on Facebook, leading to public outrage. Adidas ended up pulping the entire line.

Finally, have backup for when things go wrong, as they very likely will. “Once when a crisis broke over the holidays no one was in the office to handle things," Bullock related. "We had to teach the poor guy who was all alone in the office, who had never even heard of Twitter until then, to use it,” said Bullock. Even worse, he added, Cathay Pacific didn’t monitor all its channels, forgetting that it had different Twitter feeds in different countries. “Have backup people and plans,” he said.

“No one wins in a crisis,” concluded Bullock. “If you wrestle with a pig in muck you get muddy and the pig gets happy. So if needed, just apologise.”