Coca-Cola found itself at the center of a heated (global) debate when the brand's community manager opened a Facebook thread
about their Dasani water. With 3.6MM fans, the #2 brand on Facebook,
starts threads on their discussion tab daily. But on August 5, 2009,
Coca-Cola began to realize that even on pages where most people are
fans, not all people are fans. The seemingly innocent topic started with a question that would rally 88 skeptics (as of this post):
"Congress is demanding to know the sites and sources of Coke's Dasani brand water. When will Coke tell the public where its water is coming from?"
To
start, I applaud Coca-Cola's willingness to enter the conversation to
state its position, restraint in stepping away from the conversation
after stating that position, and still allowing the community to
discuss the hot issue (i.e. where does Dasani get its water). While I
don't recommend using humor to diffuse a situation like Coca-Cola
attempted, at least they're trying to display humanly characteristics.
I like that they displayed firmness with their position and even
pointed people to their site for more information. Another nice element
is that Coca-Cola responded fairly quickly. Within three hours of the
initial post Coca-Cola had formed an opinion; something we can solve by
going through scenario planning before we open topics on the discussion
tab.
There's an important underlying issue that Coca-Cola now faces:
ensure that this topic doesn't jump into another social space. Of the 100 threads started by Coca-Cola, this thread has received the most comments. And even weeks after breaking, the thread continues to receive new posts. The important thing for Coca-Cola at this point is to monitor other social platforms to make sure someone doesn't throw the conversation to Twitter to blow up. On Facebook fan pages, it's growing increasingly important to monitor conversations that garner attention/comments faster than normal. This allows brands to address issues before it reaches critical mass.
The Takeaway
What worked:
• Responded within hours of initial post
• Re-affirmed position in a second post instead of changing stance
• Kept the conversation going instead of closing the thread
• Giving a link to more information about their process
• Tried to change the subject by opening new thread topics
• Using a branded URL shortener to track user interactions
What didn't work:
• Trying to diffuse the situation with humor
What they need to do:
• Monitor other social platforms (e.g. Twitter) to make sure the conversation doesn't jump and then blow-up
• Prevent users from making personal attacks on each other
Coke did some things right. But if implemented from here on out, the lessons they (hopefully) learned will produce better corporate respect and more loyal fans.
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