Attract More Visitors

An "Emergency Response" approach might be what's needed re: quick Social Media responses to real world and online faux pas.

Critical to get Info out fast

Having been involved in an Emergency Response Strike Team while at UNOCAL, a global energy resources ("Big Oil") company,  we knew that it's critical to get accurate information out to the media/public as quickly as possible.

With Domino's Pizza's social media problem hitting the web as well as the traditional news sources within the last week it seemed timely to offer a possible solution for future events like this.

Brief Background of Domino's Situation

Some Domino's employees filmed several YouTube videos which showed them treating pizzas/food at Domino's in ways that would cause great shock and distaste for Domino's customers.  This shock could lead to reduced sales as Domino's customers may wonder whether this was an isolated event, or is widespread throughout their company's locations and employees. Domino's didn't respond to the videos right away, taking a "wait and see" attitude at first.  This allowed the situation to play out online, particularly on Twitter.

For more detailed info and links to the now-pulled videos see the Consumerist's post: Domino's Rogue Employees Do Disgusting Things To The Food, Put It On YouTube.  Since then Domino's president has made/uploaded an apology video to YouTube.

Major Problems

• Was the response in Social Media quick enough?
• Was the YouTube video apology accepted as being a genuine apology?

Result

This entire scenario certainly caused a "brand emergency" and could cause a "brand disaster" for Domino's.

What's Needed: A Different Mind-set

With other company's having similar problems, e.g., JetBlue's runway fiasco awhile back, it might be helpful if companies considered an entirely different way of responding which would require a different mind-set:

Consider what happened as the worst possible event possible for your company, product(s), and brand.  Then act...fast!  And take action where your customers are likely to be/read/interact with their news (e.g., Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, or where-ever your customers are likely to be engaged at).

Take a Lesson from the Emergency Response PR Guidelines of an Oil Company

Here's an excerpt from BTC Pipeline Company's Oil Spill Response Plan - Azerbaijan:

"Oil spills are typically highly visible events and will generate public interest and concern.  The media and the public will base their opinions on information that is available to them.  It is important that they have access to factual and timely information.  It is well documented that refusal to talk to the media during a crisis situation creates the assumption that some wrongdoing has taken place.  If BCT does not provide accurate and timely information, reporters will obtain their information from potentially unreliable sources or those who can only speculate on actual events or actions. A "no comment" position can adversely affect BTC's reputation as a responsible corporate citizen, and could result in restrictive legislation that could affect both BTC and others in the industry. It is BTC's policy to cooperate with the media and make timely, accurate information available to the public."

This was written in 2005, well before the recent social media explosion.  But its possible application to bad web PR situations is crystal clear: Get ahead of the situation and respond - respond as quickly and as well as you can.

10 Brief Guidelines for Social Media Emergency Responses

1. Get a response out as quickly as possible.
2. At a minimum, respond in the venue the original SM Emergency occurred in, e.g., YouTube.
3. Then consider other social media venues your customers may frequent and consider creating information streams of communication in them, e.g., Twitter.
4. Get your CEO/President out in front of the situation...and do it in a believable way (minus points for not looking into the camera and talking to us).
5. Continue monitoring the situation and communicating with your customers.
6. Consider ways to put your customers at ease.
7. Consider ways to win your customers back (rewards, etc.).
8. Be truthful and transparent throughout this process.
9. Mean what you say.
10. Do what you mean.

10 Necessary Actions BEFORE Brand Emergencies/Disasters

1. Do Reputation Monitoring.
2. Monitor the web re: your company name, product(s), brand(s), and principals/executives.
3. Do Scenario Planning and Risk Assessments for everything you can imagine...and more.
4. Consider "what if's" for likely as well as unlikely situations.
5. Definitely consider scenarios for the worst possible situations.
6. If you already have disaster scenarios you've created in the past, dust them off, and make them current given new/currently available communications methods.
7. Assume that the walls of all of your facilities, file cabinets, hard drives, servers, and "cloud computing" are transparent.
8. Revise your social media emergency response plans accordingly.
9. Do SWOT analyses for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats for your company and each of its subsidiaries, products, brands, as well as for your competitors.
10. Rinse and repeat (start at #1 again as this is an ongoing process).

Bottom Line

Ideally you want visitors and customers to be attracted to your website and online presences (Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc.) in the best of circumstances so they will have the best possible impressions of your company, brand, products, etc.

Cold dose of Reality: Life isn't always Ideal, so be prepared for the worst and act accordingly. And most of all act quickly!

Your visitors and customers are probably more than willing to meet you half-way, but the burden is on your company and all of your employees to let them know what's going on (create quick communication streams, e.g. via Twitter), what you're doing to solve it (currently), how/why this will never happen again, and how you'd like to form/continue the relationship with them (communication and enticement-wise).

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Part I: Pura Vida - Marketing the Experience of the "Good Life" in Costa Rica

How "Pura Vida" (Good Life), the national motto/tagline of Costa Rica, can help *you* attract more visitors to *your* website.

Two weeks ago I returned from a 7 day trip to Costa Rica where my Wife and I had a wonderful time. In fact, the feeling of Pura Vida (POO-rah VEE-dah), or "Pure Life" (or "Life is Great" ), is still with me.

Pura Vida - The Tagline/Motto for Costa Rica

Pura Vida is a national motto, or tagline, for Costa Rica. You see it everywhere on everything. Almost every hat, bag, coffee mug, and other tourist item seems to be subtly labeled somewhere with "Pura Vida". It's not always blatant. A cap may have a picture of a volcano on the front and "Pura Vida" on the side band.

Needs Being Met = Satisfaction

One of our drivers told us "If you're working, life is good." In other words, if people in Costa Rica have steady work then they can do all right and have a good life. And isn't that fundamental for all of us? It's like Maslow's hierarchies - Having food, shelter, etc. (benefits of work) satisfied allows one to consider other possibilities in life.

What Keyword Research showed about Life (Good vs. Great)

Interestingly, when I was checking Google AdWords Keyword Tool for the title of this blog post, "good life" had an approximate average of 673,000 monthly searches.  Not surprisingly, there were about 1 million searches in October - Clearly people were looking for "good life" when the financial industry crashed and the world stock markets went into a collective nosedives.

But perhaps more interestingly "great life" only had an average of 74,000 searches - monthly and in October. And "perfect life" was just searched for 22,200 times on average.

So people were just searching for "good life" and they weren't even daring to search for "great life" (let alone "perfect life"!). It's kind of sad when we're not even *hoping* for the best possible outcome versus some lesser flavor of it.

Pura Vida Exemplified: "Talk the Talk and Walk the Walk"

Clearly people should have been in Costa Rica last month! (where they could have actually been living "great life"). The people there "talk the talk and walk the walk" about Pura Vida. I never saw one upset person the whole week we were there.

Terrible Roads = Massages

The roads are challenging (terrible) to say the least...but no-one complains about them. In fact some tourists who rented vehicles seemed to take delight in  the rough pot-hole laden snaking dirt roadways. The roads just are what they are. When our drivers arrived to pick us up they would say, "Are you ready for your massage?" since the twisting turning up-and-down motion of a trip on their roads felt like a massage. This is certainly making the best of the what some may feel was the worst of situations. Pura Vida!

Leveraging the Main Industry and Trends

We were told that Costa Rica's main industry is Tourism. Eco-tourism signs are everywhere, clearing tapping into world trends and the preferences of many youthful travelers.

Omnipresent Branding

Is Costa Rica promoting "Pura Vida"? I hope so, because everyone in the country appears to be living the spirit of it. In fact the small print at the bottom of PuraVida.com home page states that "PuraVida.com is a national brand dedicated to promoting the Costa Rican lifestyle to the world." And it's not hard to see how this is expressed when their brand slogan ("Pura Vida") is on almost every piece of tourist merchandise that mentions Costa Rica, and/or has a picture of a tree frog, toucan, or a volcano on it.

But the omnipresent branding and merchandising in no way lessens the wonderful experience of Pura Vida in Costa Rica and in fact, it seems to enhance it.

Caveat/Disclaimer: By the way, I'm *not* an expert in Costa Rica and I'm *not* commenting as a social or political or historical expert on their country or life. I'm only commenting as a liver and enjoyer of life.

Part II: Attracting Visitors with the Principles of Pura Vida (Good Life)

Here are some things to keep in mind when Attracting Visitors to your website:

• Does your company have a tagline or motto and are you putting it everywhere and on everything?
  • Website, Blog, Business Cards, Literature, Promotional materials, Brochures, etc.
    • By the way, if you need your company name or motto/tagline printed on literally anything, I can highly recommend Joe and Marcy Roschitsch at SCEP Inc.

• Are you using the best/optimized keyword terms to attract visitors to your website, e.g., "good" vs. "great"?

• Are you satisfying people's needs on your website?
  • Are they finding what they came for once they get to your site?
  • Is what they find at your site congruent (in keeping with) what they were promised in the process of getting there?
  • Will they feel good about your site and want to re-visit it again and again?

• Is your website and are your employees "talking the talk and walking the walk" re: your:
  • Tagline/Motto?
  • Mission and Vision?
  • What your marketing and advertising promise leading up to their arrival?
  • What your website promises to deliver?

• Can your employees or customer service "make lemonade out of lemons", e.g., turning terrible roads into massages?
  • And perhaps more importantly can this transformation be delivered happily and without complaints, e.g., a Pura Vida "Great Life" attitude?
  • Clearly Costa Rica has tapped into the whole "spa experience"-type feeling as a lifestyle and philosophy of life people would love to come and experience themselves...again and again.

• Does your site make what people want or need easy to find, e.g., "eco-tour" signs being everywhere, appealing to the youthful environmentally-conscious traveler demographic?
  • Are you leveraging your equivalent of this for your brand, motto/tagline, products, etc.?

• Is the spirit of your brand "lived" (portrayed) on every part of your website and by your personnel and consistently used in every/all places it makes sense to, e.g., your equivalent of coffee mugs with the image of a volcano and the words "Pura Vida" inscribed on them?
  • For instance if Disneyland, "The Happiest Place on Earth"*, didn't fulfill their motto and the expectation of it, people wouldn't look forward to visiting and re-visiting their theme parks as much.
    • * The Happiest place...other than Costa Rica, that is.

In any case, I hope that you enjoyed my impressions from Costa Rica and how I think you can leverage some of these ideas to improve your website so you can leap frog (or tree frog) your competitors to success!

Does your website (or company) have its own version of Pura Vida? If so, what is it and how is it expressed on your site(s)?

• I'd love to hear your comments - please let me know what *your* thoughts/experiences are on this...