Table of contents for March 12, 2018 in Adweek

When it happens, it moves so fast that your initial feeling is disorientation. That quickly flips to nausea, fear and then panic. I’m of course talking about a brand crisis unfolding before the world, supercharged by social media and shared and commented on into oblivion. You’ve been dragged. It’s a tough position for both individuals and brands to be in, and dealing with reputation management in its wake can be even trickier. In this fifth Digital Transformation Playbook in partnership with Accenture Interactive, we unpack how brands relate to their customers in good times and bad. (See above right to launch an AR breakdown of the report, powered by The Glimpse Group, from Accenture Interactive managing director in North America Glen Hartman.) There are countless examples of brand missteps, but…

Nearly 20 percent of U.S. households now contain 10 or more connected devices, and as consumers increasingly work new communication tools into their daily lives, they are also demanding multichannel options when they need customer service and expect it to be faster and easier to use than ever. Not all companies, however, are meeting those expectations. New research shows that 70 percent of U.S. consumers say being able to get customer service via multiple channels is important to them, while 36 percent will switch channels if their issue isn’t resolved within an hour. Yet, many seeking customer service report having trouble getting through to knowledgeable agents, having to wait longer than they expect and having trouble navigating automated systems. Chatbots are only part of the solution, according to Mark Sherwin,…

GOOD KFC U.K. The restaurant’s cheeky response to a chicken shortage turned an embarrassing screwup into a public relations win. As a result, its reputation is recovering relatively quickly, notes Stephan Shakespeare, co-founder and CEO of YouGov. BAD EQUIFAX Equifax’s massive data breach last summer was a tragedy of errors, from withholding information to creating a buggy and insecure website for consumers to check if their data was affected, resulting in a rare 50-state class-action lawsuit. UGLY VOLKSWAGEN VW broke almost every rule of crisis management, from lying about the problems to failing to keep customers and dealers in the loop, when it was found to be cheating on diesel emission tests for nearly 11 million cars.…

Get your plans in order. Each crisis may come as a surprise, but your response should not be. Smart organizations have a crisis management plan in place that involves every aspect of the organization—including HR, legal and technical. “Ninety-five percent of the crises I’ve seen in my 30-plus year career could have been completely preventable with advance planning,” says Jonathan Bernstein, president of Bernstein Crisis Management. That plan should also include media training for executives, pre-approved responses for public relations and social media, and regular tabletop exercises. “You need to look at systems that might preclude you from responding correctly,” he adds. “For example, can your website handle 500 times its normal volume of traffic? The answer is almost always no. So if you can’t add bandwidth on the fly…

THE ROAD The FedEx fleet of vans and trucks covers some 2.5 million miles every day. Driver Randy Thomas of Cross Lanes, W.Va., has driven for 39 years without an accident. THE TRUCK FedEx has some 170,000 vans in its fleet, historically workhorses like the Ford F-59, though it has begun to replace them with fuel-efficient models like this Mercedes Sprinter. THE LOGO While arrows are a clichéd feature of many corporate marks, the FedEx arrow—defined by negative space—is a textbook example of subtle, adroit branding. In October 1987, all eyes were on the small town of Midland, Texas, where an 18-month-old girl named Jessica McClure had fallen 22 feet to the bottom of an abandoned water well. Rescuers decided the only way to pull out “Baby Jessica” was to…

If social media ceased to exist, experiential marketing would, too. That’s according to experiential-focused NA Collective, a New York indie agency described as half production studio, half creative shop. “I’ve been doing experiential my entire career, so it’s really cool to see how social media changed the game for it,” said Chiara Adin, NA founding partner, CCO. Event effectiveness had historically been hard to measure—until marketers realized they could track social media hits. Adin explained that events must be unique, authentic and especially risky to become viral—a goal the 30-person NA team always aims to reach. The agency delivered when it helped create an instantly classic stunt at New York Comic Con, deploying 20 actors on pedicabs dressed as Stranger Things’ Dustin to promote the Netflix show’s second season. “When…

On March 4, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri scored Oscar wins for its stars, Frances McDormand (best actress) and Sam Rockwell (best supporting actor). The billboard industry thanked the film for bringing attention back to billboards with, well, a few Three Billboards-inspired billboards. (Say that five times fast.) While the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA) didn’t use the same three-billboard tactic as the film, it did try to mimic the graphics with all-caps black lettering on a red background for the congratulatory billboard.…

What will cities of the near future look like when buildings, cars, people and a whole slew of other things can communicate with each other? Earlier this month, tech companies and telecoms at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, tried to answer that question, showing off their plans for 5G—a next-generation wireless network that will enable exponentially faster data processing and media downloads. And while lightning-quick speeds might seem like a small luxury, they’re crucial for enabling everything from self-driving cars and smart grids to a broader Internet of Things that could benefit big-data-minded brands and governments alike. The infrastructure for 5G is still only beginning—with wider availability not expected until at least 2020—but cities like New York, Las Vegas, Sacramento, Calif., and Atlanta will soon get a chance to…

Loeb, who runs Edelman’s crisis and risk mitigation practice, didn’t grow up in the PR business. A lawyer by background, he found himself in the crisis management world after serving as the Midwest counsel for the Anti-Defamation League working on policy management and crisis work involving civil rights issues and hate crimes legislation. But then, as many do, he ended up in public relations. Which makes sense. Navigating policy and legislative issues is a similar playing field to crisis communications. “The crisis and reputation business has manifested itself in a fairly dynamic way to be a far more consultative and advisory business than it was when I got into it,” he said. “When crises were purely reactive—something would happen and when brands called, you’d be busy for six months and…

These days, if you’re going to successfully market goods or services to digitally savvy consumers, you better be skilled at using the latest technologies and hippest channels to forge meaningful messages that delight and inspire. Toward that end, “It’s a tremendous competitive advantage to have a leader who can survey the confusing and rapidly changing landscape and identify the innovations that hold promise,” says Richard Giuliani, experience director at CP+B, which has partnered with Domino’s digital chief Dennis Maloney for numerous cutting-edge campaigns. Maloney and the 19 other pivotal players profiled here fulfill the promise of fusing tech innovation with marketing smarts to drive interest and sales. Google CMO Lorraine Twohill, also featured below, sums it up best: “Know the user, know the magic, connect the two.” DENNIS MALONEY VP,…

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