You work on the Social Media team for Trach's Candy - a leading candy manufacturer in the United States. You are a manager and you report to the director of Social Media, who in turn reports to the SVP of Communications. You frequently work with various brand managers for Trach's different brands.
You have just returned from a Labor Day holiday in Martha's Vineyard. The office is pretty quiet as many of your colleagues have chosen to extend their three-day weekend to four days. You have a Google Reader that regularly tracks the top candy blogs and you scan it this morning to see if there is anything interesting. The blogs are written by true fans of all things sugar - they are colorful posts with lots of pictures and the tone is fun and sweet.
You notice that one of the top blogs "Candy Confectioner" has a whole post on candy corns and how their coloring leads him to question what exactly goes into them. He goes on to list the ingredients -- "sugar, water, corn syrup, fondant, marshmallow and some crazy artificial food coloring that probably causes ADHD." His post catches your eye because your company is the leader when it comes to the production of candy corns with 70 percent of the market. You are about to head into your weekly meeting with the brand manager of Trach's candy corns. What do you do? Do you let he/she know about this blog post? Do you recommend any action? Are there any issues about the timing of this blog post that concern you?
Please post your next steps and look out for the next scenario! 
Posts
5 comments:
It's very important to mention the blog post to the director of Social Media. The biggest time of the year for candy corn is just around the corner, and my boss would be very upset with me if other candy bloggers picked up on the snide remark on candy corn. "Candy corn caused my ADHD" is just silly enough to be made into a meme or funny video that could go viral.
Provided that our candy does not include any dangerous ingredients, I'd reach out to the blogger by saying something light and simple about how we value our ingredients and we'd love to send him or her a bag of our best candy corn to prove how delicious it is.
Of course, the comment made by the blogger is not very threatening-- but if my company can stop a crisis with the cost of a bag of candy corn and some good listening, they should.
I think the response depends on how prominent the blog is, and how much Candy Confectioner singled out Trach's Candy. Assuming the blog is a big deal (i.e. garners a lot of traffic, comments, Facebook/Twitter interaction, etc.), I think the brand manager should know. I'm not sure if an action is necessary at this point. Personally, I would monitor the situation, set up a Google Alert for blogs and conventional media (if one isn't up already), and use BackType.com to track social media links to the post. Odds are that interest in the story will fizzle out on its own, and drawing attention to the post could do more harm than good (obviously in this crisis scenario that won't happen!). The timing is troublesome for three reasons: a) the communications team is out; b) a lot of people are home from work on Labor day weekend so news media tend to run consumer interest stories; and c) Halloween is around the corner, so retailers are beginning to make decisions about which candies to buy.
I think you should definitely let the director of Social Media know. I also think it is important to respond quickly on the blog with a post about the nutritional value of candy corn and some sort of evidence contradicting the claim about candy corn and ADHD. If the claim does go viral like Caroline suggested, I would suggest responding in like form with a humorous video that refutes the claim by emphasizing its ridiculousness -- perhaps via more even more ridiculous health claims, like that sleeping causes narcolepsy, or something silly. Candy corn might even turn into a meme that would increase Halloween sales, rather than hurt them.
I will definitely let the manager know about the blog post and at the meeting propose that we go over the crisis plan to see what steps we need to take. I will also suggest that we respond to the blog with a story that says how we value the health of all our consumers and state what goes into our candies, and the different testing stages these ingredients go through to ensure they are fit for consumption. I will also suggest we get a third party endorser, like a health expert/medical doctor to do a story in the same medium, about the causes of ADHD, and how it cannot be caused by candy corn (backed by research, of course).
Like others have said, I would definitely report the blog post to the brand manager. I would also check to see if there is any validity to the claim. This WebMD article (http://tinyurl.com/ycwqr2a) says that a 2007 study showed a connection between food dye and hyperactivity, so I don't know if we could entirely dismiss it as false.
That being said, the blogger's comment sounded like it was written to be funny, so I wouldn't jump to any drastic moves. Like David wrote, this could potentially draw more attention to the post. I would recommend that Trach's email the blogger, letting him know that Trach's cares about its consumers and offer him a tour of the facilities to show him how candy corn was made and the rigorous testing process it undergoes (which I'm assuming it does).
Also, I would monitor the comments on the blog post as well retweets and other links to it to see if readers are actually taking it seriously. If they are, I would implement a more public response soon.
Post a Comment