Greggs Social Media Team Owned The Internet Today
In the past I’ve penned many a post on how to deal with a business disaster on social media. So it’s heartening when something happens and you see it dealt with perfectly. And that’s just what the team at UK bakery Greggs did today.
As sometimes happens on the net, somehow the Greggs logo that appears under the Google Places map with further information about the company got defaced. The most likely cause of this was probably due to the ability for third parties to add information to Google Places listings and that somebody thought it would be a laugh, or worse.
According to one site, the offending image in question was from here: http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/File:Greggs_logo.png although the image is gone now. However, the best thing about the problem wasn’t that the joke was on Greggs, although many people who saw it in the first instance undoubtedly thought it was funny. The legend on the logo read: ‘providing shit to scum for 70 years’ for those of you who can’t see it in the image.
The joke though, in the end was on the person who put it there. Greggs responded with wit and grace and came up smelling of the sweetest doughnuts in the world.
Fans quickly responded to the incident, with many attempting to bring it to the attention of the bakery’s Twitter team, who were already well on the case.
And it seems that GoogleUK were right behind them …
Of course, there’s nothing that the internet population love more than a good laugh, especially when the offended party is busy laughing heartily along with them.
Greggs has effectively turned what was really nothing more than a minor embarrassment to a company of its size into a complete PR and social media success. Whoever thought that it was funny, perhaps they wanted to do the firm some damage, brings its name into disrepute perhaps?
Unlucky, because as much as some people thought that the incident was a complete fail for Greggs, it wasn’t – it was score one for the brand and zero for the troll.
And it was all down to the rather special (in a nice way) Greggs staff who I expect will be getting headhunted pretty soon after this (you hang onto em Greggs). As someone who works in social media, it’s all too often that you see brands getting it wrong and sometimes, no advice will help. So it’s very refreshing to see a team get it completely right. Act with humour, not defensiveness and never, ever ignore it or before you know it you’ll be the laughing stock of the internet for all the wrong reasons.
What the Greggs staff did right is that they acted like human beings, but ones that work for others and can’t tell you to f*** off so have to put up with the ridicule and attempt to turn to their advantage. Bravo that team because they certainly did turn it and now the internet is laughing along with them and certainly not at them.
All too often we hear about social media ‘fails’ and that’s because they are common and usually pretty hilarious if we’re all honest right? Often, brands respond with a tight-lipped, stuffy corporate approach which sees them put out some kind of apology which never actually sounds very sincere. That’s because it isn’t. Sincerity online is a rare commodity and usually we get an almost robotic reply from social media account staff.
Take Kmart, for example, which defended its decision to open on Black Friday in the US to its followers in just that way – does anyone else suspect a bored looking person sat at the desk endlessly pressing CTL+V?
Now that kind of thing will only get you a worse reputation than Kmart apparently already had – you can see more on the Kmart social faux pas and more at Business Insider here.
So the very best thing you can do if you as a business find yourself on the wrong end of some kind of malicious social behaviour is respond with humour, just like Greggs. Of course, the way that this took off on Twitter was also huge incentive to get the offending image taken down and it’s now gone. Greggs on the other hand have just gained a marketing blast that’s bound to see the company enjoy an increase in business, reputation and profits.
Good for them I say, the company has hired talented people to do its PR and they have done a bang up job of it.
Who says they get that Google Doodle tomorrow then?
Continue reading here: How To Prove Roi For Social Media
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