Oh dear. I’ll bet that in the scale of things, innocuous (though popular) consumer brand Chapstick didn’t expect to find itself in the centre of a social media firestorm this week. I mean, it’s Chapstick, right? A useful, trustworthy, dependable, brand. What could it possibly do to upset people? Well, it could put a picture …

A customer comes into your flagship store, walks up to a member of staff and says that they’re having a problem with their latest purchase. It’s faulty and they want a refund. Does the employee: a.    Acknowledge that they are unhappy with the product, apologise, and help solve the problem b.    Pretend they didn’t hear …

Last week, social media strategist Jeremiah Owyang and his team at Altimeter published their excellent report “Social Business Readiness: How Advanced Companies Prepare Internally“. They started by defining a social media crisis as: “A social media crisis is a crisis issue that arises in or is amplified by social media, and results in negative mainstream …

Earlier this month, Versace found itself in hot water over the issue of sandblasting jeans, a process which (according to the Clean Clothes Campaign and a report on Mashable) has been known to kill workers. According to the Campaign’s petition, other brands such as Levis, Gucci and H&M have outlawed the practice. Activists attacked Versace’s …

As the world waits for News International to take some responsibility for the appalling story that the News of the World (NOTW) allegedly hacked into Milly Dowler’s answerphone, an interesting reputational issue is unfolding for the brands that ad vertise in NOTW. A campaign has sprung up on Twitter, encouraging people to tweet brands (among …

Crisis management is the phrase du jour in the eModeration / Carrot Communications camp at the moment. We’ve been workshopping our little socks off with brands and agencies who want help with preparing for a social media crisis. In the interest of finding out what the rest of the world is up to, we went …