Thursday, February 27, 2014

Unite Southern
On February 7, Southern University System board of supervisors voted not to renew Baton Rouge Chancellor James Llorens contract. Llorens has been successful in making improvements to the university and connecting with the students. He has also been increasing the enrollment to Southern Universitys Baton Rouge campus. President Mason said he recommended to Llorens some conditions that would be included if Llorens contract was renewed. Mason said the conditions involved developing an improvement plan for campus operations and for Mason to be able to come to campus to speak. When Llorens did not agree with these conditions, Mason told the board of supervisors and they voted 9-6 to not renew his contract. Controversy began when students started to speak up about their outrage of Llorens termination. The students took social media by storm tweeting and Instagramming their support of Llorens. The students of Southern University took a grass roots approach and showed the power social media has today. The students used hashtags to gain a following and to connect all related posts. From these efforts the students gained the attention of donors and alumnus. President Mason has a public perception problem due to the public thinking he is a power hungry individual, who wanted Llorens terminated for his own benefit. The publics of Southern University see Mason as the enemy, removing a chancellor who has only wanted the best for the university. The Southern University Board of Supervisors will discuss and vote again on Chancellor Llorens contract on Monday, February 24. If the board decides to renew Llorens contract then need to make sure the publics image of Southern is united. To do this the university will need to show Mason Llorens as partners rather than enemies. Llorens and Mason could take a state wide tour to each individual campus to show their support for one another.
Posted by Sophie Kirk at 11:47 PM

Sunday, February 9, 2014

SeaWorld's Social Media Crisis

How a company handles a crisis is detrimental to the success of their business. Today social media allows direct access to consumers, but also allows direct access for consumers to the brand. This aspect of social media can hurt a company if they dont interact correctly. SeaWorld has been dealing with an ongoing crisis due to the release of the documentary, Blackfish. This documentary showcases how the animals are treated in SeaWorld facilities and how they were captured from the wild and brought to SeaWorlds across the world. SeaWorld executives responded by criticizing the film and refusing to do a response interview in the documentary. By resisting to address this film, SeaWorld created more buzz and controversy. This is not the correct way to handle bad press. By having no response SeaWorld looks even more in the wrong and deceiving. As the document gained more popularity, social media began to blow up with outrage. Facebook pages began popping up boycotting the sea park until it changed its polices. Also, people who were commenting on the official SeaWorld page noticed that their negative posts to their page were deleted immediately after being posted. This only caused more outrage and dislike from the public. These social media outlets are in place for companies to interact with their audience, but by deleting their posts SeaWorld is isolating their audience. To help solve their problem they needed to have their crisis management team interact with these posts and reassure their audience that they were trying to address their concerns. This outrage sparked a chain reaction of musical guests canceling their performances at SeaWorld parks, as well as schools across the country cancelling their field trips to the parks. After these incidents SeaWorld made their biggest mistake. An online poll was posted on the Orlando Business Journal asking if readers opinion of SeaWorld had been effected by the controversy. After results were tabulated, the Orlando Business Journal discovered that fifty-four percent of voters saying no came from SeaWorlds ip address. This shows SeaWorld was rigging the poll to benefit their brand. Once this was revealed to the public, it only caused more disgust toward SeaWorld. Crisis management lesson number one: ignoring social media does not make it go away; rather it keeps the controversy growing. SeaWorld needs to revamp their brand by showcasing that they will change their policies. If they dont, the company will slowly be shut down by this controversy. Posted by Sophie Kirk at 1:38 PM