Social media perils could have fatal consequences on brand reputation of companies
Managers must have proper strategies to address even minute problems as they could later snowball into publicity disasters
March 2015 was not a good month for Singtel chief executive Chua Sock Koong. She had to publicly apologise to her main rivals. Regulators issued a stern warning. Competitors were considering their legal options. The reason? A social media campaign designed to promote Singtel youth mobile plan suddenly came back to haunt the telecom company.
A year earlier, Singtel had hired a social media firm, Gushcloud, to disparage companies such as M1 and StarHub using bloggers connected to the marketing company. The story became public after an independent blogger received a link to leaked documents from Gushcloud. When she broke the news, the nightmare started for Singtel.
Social media are now ubiquitous in the corporate world and in our day-to-day life, but they also create corporate risks.
We have identified four threats.
● Fragging: Employees can intentionally try to harm their employer’s reputation. Take the case of HMV, the global entertainment retailer. In 2013, the social media team had been downsized and the 21-year old in control of the account had a field day, airing the company’s dirty laundry in public. By the time the company regained control of its Twitter account and deleted the messages, they had already gone viral.