The Facebook rescue

It was a perfectly normal day. Rainy but warm, and hump-day — the day that divides the beginning of the work week with the end of the work week. So who could have known that a crisis was just about to come in our door — literally.

The normally serene river outside our front door, a source of inspiration and calm on most days, was absolutely raging. Little did we know that it wasn’t the rage that would get us, but the rise. By 11:00 the water level had gone from a foot and a half to four or five feet and was fast approaching overflow. By the time we realized it, the water outside our door was several feet deep and raging passed us to lower ground. Just wading through it to get to our cars was hard to do without being pulled down. What do you do?

Well, first you make sure everyone gets out safely. And second, you take a deep breath and remind yourself that you will deal with it and be OK. Everything can be cleaned up and as long as computers were up and out of the water — which they were — you can still operate until the clean-up is complete.

So what’s that got to do with Facebook you ask? Well, Facebook was our rescue — by reporting right away what was happening on our Facebook page, friends, family and colleagues heard what we were up against and jumped to lend their support. It was nearly instantaneous and made a world of difference in our ability to get critical office equipment out and up to dryer ground and safe haven.

Even after the initial moment of crisis, Facebook has done a great deal to help us manage the situation with our clients and current projects. It gave us a way to communicate to those in our inner circle until we were able to get back into the office and retrieve our computers. And it’s even helped us pull off a little PR work, so inactive clients could be assured of our recovery and return to normal operations.

The Tylenol 180

There is an almost legendary success story in the marketing world often referred to as the Tylenol 180. (No, we didn’t coin it. 🙂 When painkiller brand, Tylenol, experienced a series of package tampering incidents in the early eighties, they faced a situation that could easily have proven to be a brand fatality. But because the company handled the crisis so quickly and so well, it not only recovered from it, but built brand equity and market share in the process. They responded to reports nearly immediately and with great integrity and concern for customer safety, and as a result, emerged from the incidents more trusted than before.

And that was even before social media! With social media like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, such customer relations successes are easier to pull off and even more immediate. That alone is a good reason for every company to be engaged in social media at least to some extent. We swear by it.

If you want to know more about how to use facebook for your business, follow us on facebook or give us a call.

— Chris Quinn, principal and brand strategist

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