Julie Jargon, Emily Steel and Joann S. Lublin report today on Taco Bell fighting back against a lawsuit accusing it of falsifying ingredients in its restaurant offerings with a social media campaign of its own. Like the Spanish Civil War provided a glimpse of modern warfare fully realized in World War Two, we might be seeing a dress rehearsal for how brands fight back when their critics go viral.
Days before Taco Bell was even served with the lawsuit—which was filed by a disgruntled customer on Jan. 19—news of the allegations that the restaurant chain's taco mixture consists of more filler than meat spread widely on the Internet. Stephen Colbert already has parodied the claim on his Comedy Central show, "The Colbert Report."
Taco Bell, a Yum Brands Inc. unit with almost 6,000 stores world-wide, responded swiftly with a spicy and potentially risky retort to the lawsuit. Its rebuttals include full-page newspaper ads headlined, "Thank you for suing us."
Unsurprisingly, the crisis communications experts in the story who will get paid by companies in this position in the future were unanimous in saying that Taco Bell was right to mount an aggressive defense but my take is similar and I don't do much crisis work.
A few years ago a scamster tried to plant a severed figure in a meal at Wendy's and the restaurant's aggressive campaign calling B.S. on it quickly pushed the attackers back on their heels and contained the crisis before it started. It also potentially scared off similar extortion schemes.
Reputation is worth protecting and it is good to see companies doing so.
I also have one more question: do any social media besides Twitter, YouTube and Facebook matter? They always seem to be the only three mentioned whenever any crisis specialist talks about using social media to respond to an issue.
Comments