It hasn’t been a good week for Findus UK, who had to withdraw its beef lasagne from sale after horsemeat was found in the beef.
I don’t envy the Findus PR team one bit. And their comms crisis may get even worse. The Food Standards Agency wants Findus to test the lasagne for the veterinary drug phenylbutazone, which could be dangerous to humans. (There is a good summary of the unfolding PR crisis on PR Week.) Findus have released a statement saying that the horsemeat was a ‘supply chain issue.’ I understand that they’re trying to distance themselves from the issue and limit liability but when a problem is this big I think that phrase could come back to haunt them.
Surprisingly, Findus don’t seem to have undertaken any social media outreach to help manage the crisis. If they’d done that, they might have been able to get control of the story sooner. I can’t even find a Twitter account for Findus. If they had one, they could have shared regular updates about the action they are taking, responded to customer queries and monitored what people were saying about them. Instead, all I can see in my Twitter feed is horsemeat jokes.
In my view Twitter is now one of the most influential and credible social networks, and what you say on it- even, in Findus’ case, if it is nothing at all- can have huge impact. This was brought home to me this week in a great blog by Matt Collins (aka @charitychap) about how HMV staff who were being fired took to the company’s Twitter account to vent their feelings. One of them even tweeted that the HMV marketing director was asking, ‘How do I shut down Twitter?’ Sorry, that’s not how social media works.
What you do- or don’t- tweet can make a big difference to how unfolding events are perceived. Findus would do well to remember that.