How to fail on Twitter: Morrisons and the online PR disaster
STOP PRESS - 16:40 TUESDAY 16 AUGUST 2011 - @Morrisons_PLC is a fake account!
Below is the original blog post written on Friday when the account seemed all too real and we want to leave it intact as much of the advice given is still relevant, however, do so knowing that it was a spoof account. We contacted the Morrisons Press Office today and they are pursuing this with Twitter and we will be writing a fuller analysis of the case later this month.
When Morrisons finally fluttered on to Twitter less than a month ago little did they think ‘disgruntled of Tunbridge Wells’ would hijack its bid to pump latest offers into the Twittersphere and create a PR crisis.
Instead, a legacy of contempt dating back to 2007 is threatening to engulf its discount tweets and worst still its frankly amateur hour attempts to deal with unwelcome tweets is turning Morrisons into another case study of how to fail on Twitter.
Morrisons shut its doors in Tunbridge Wells in January 2007 and the store has remained stubbornly empty ever since while the Supermarket giant stalls any attempt to allow another supermarket chain to move in and service the good people of the town.
So let us just be clear, Morrisons does not have a store in the town, so this is not about direct competition, but seemingly has more to do with Aesop’s fable of The Dog in the Manger. If they cannot have it, nobody can.
A little local difficulty and not that difficult to manage in terms of crisis public relations… until they alighted on the global medium of Twitter on July 21st 2011 and within days the good people of Tunbridge Wells had started to ruffle the supermarket’s feathers with plenty of tweets.
Now, social media is all about engagement and encouraging your followers to join in the conversation, but Morrisons want to shut it down! Check out today’s twitter stream from Morrisons (I’ll spare you the attempts to sell, sell, sell!)
First they seemed surprised at the angry tweets and they tweeted:
Oops! Grammar mistake so that had to apologise after all the tweets told them:
Then they got cross and had to remind followers:
Can you believe that? Can you honestly believe some corporate PR thinks this is an appropriate way to deal with the very real concerns of (admittedly non) customers – on a global medium! This isn’t a press release to the local paper, this is Twitter! My tweet alone flitted around the world to almost 9,000 followers, not counting the Retweets and this blog will give the story legs while the Morrisons’ PR team are tucked up at home at the end of a no doubt busy week.
There is no excuse. Twitter has been around as long as this debacle and a business the size of Morrisons should know what they are doing, and if they have farmed it out to an agency… well, not for long I suspect. Having only 22 tweets in as many days on Twitter (nine tweets were today!) and only 67 followers doesn’t mean minimised exposure.
Clearly the best way to deal with this is resolve whatever nonsense is keeping this store empty and tainting their brand so. As far as social media goes – you should embrace such concerns, give them a name and address, or better still and email to respond to and reply to everyone who tweets, thanking them and letting them know their concerns matter. Of course in light of nearly five years of contempt this needs to be followed up with action.
As for how they use Twitter? Engage for goodness sake! Talk to people and ask them what they want from the Morrisons Twitter feed – how about exclusive offers you can track? And do you know what Morrisons? If you had been using Twitter properly your audience would have drowned out the noise from Kent, however appropriate their concerns are.
What do you think? Should we give Morrisons a break? Or should we expect more from a huge supermarket like them?