We all heard about the Balenciaga controversy a few years ago, when the brand’s ad campaigns featured children holding teddy bears in bondage gear. As social media users caught wind of the campaign, it immediately drew global backlash because the imagery was deemed inappropriate.
Balenciaga was quick to respond, issuing a public apology and taking accountability for the oversight.
Although it would’ve been extremely difficult to recover from something as controversial as this, things could’ve ended up much worse for the brand if they hadn’t responded as they did. While Balenciaga isn’t completely out of the woods even years later, the rapid response helped douse the spark before it turned into a full-blown wildfire.
That’s the power of timely crisis communication backed by social listening. In this post, I take a deep dive into how social listening can be used for effective crisis management. Let’s get started.
Controversies don’t just pop up out of nowhere. And they don’t always turn into a major PR disaster overnight.
They emerge like any other viral topic on social media: from a spark. It could be from the post that gets shared by a few hundred people, whose contacts then share it with a hundred more people until millions of people end up seeing it. Or the claim that gets shared over time until it reaches every major news outlet and meme account.
Over time, the conversation spreads across social platforms and geographic borders, and sometimes even languages, turning into a fire that’s extremely difficult to control.
And with algorithms suggesting highly engaging content to users who don’t even follow a certain page, it’s easier than ever for certain topics to go viral.
I recently came across the following post from Diet Prada in my feed, criticizing the founders of a mahjong tile line who had been featured in “The New York Times.” The post had been shared over 72k times, garnering 116k likes and thousands of comments and reposts. And I didn’t even follow the page. The post came up on my feed because someone I follow had reposted it.
When I searched on Instagram for the brand name, I found dozens of posts criticizing the founders for appropriating Chinese culture. Creators were adding commentary while meme pages were sharing funny reactions…it was a mess.
But when I looked at the brand’s official Instagram handle, they were just posting their usual content with no acknowledgement of the controversy. There were hundreds of angry comments in some of their posts, but the brand had turned off comments for newer posts.
That was five days ago (as of writing this post), and the brand is yet to release a statement addressing the controversy.
From my understanding, the social media backlash started from the Diet Prada post until it ultimately reached more and more people. If the brand had responded appropriately within the first few hours of the post going live, there’s a chance they could’ve prevented the crisis from turning into a full-blown PR disaster.
That’s why the first 24 hours of a potential crisis are so important. It gives brands the opportunity to identify a spark and quickly address it before more people catch wind of it.
But if you’re checking your brand mentions and tags manually, you’re likely to miss this initial spark. Some people may tag or mention your brand while calling you out. But not every critic will mention you directly. So by the time you hear about the controversy, it’s turned into a major crisis that will affect your brand reputation and bottom line.
That’s where real-time social listening comes in, giving you timely insights into conversations that could spark a PR crisis further down the line.
If you’re in PR or are familiar with the social media landscape, you already know that you can’t prevent a crisis. What you can do, however, is shorten the lifecycle.
This involves spotting a spark and putting it out before it catches a bigger fire. And that’s exactly why you need to keep a close eye on what people are saying about your brand across different social media channels. This gives you better visibility into negative sentiment trends, so you can spot looming disasters and address them while they’re still manageable.
With social listening tools, you can monitor brand mentions and relevant conversations in real time. These tools let you visualize patterns in negative sentiment, so it’s easy to spot an upward trend and anticipate a crisis. You can then look deeper into the conversations to see what people are actually saying.
This gives you better insights into the controversy before you come up with a crisis communication plan. How will you respond? Do you take accountability and apologize? Do you need to do a bit more than that?
Social listening tools even let you set up alerts, so you get notified when negative sentiment hits a certain limit. That means you can see when it’s time to take a spark seriously, allowing you to time your response before it turns into a fire that’s hard to put out.
As one of the biggest sports apparel brands, Adidas isn’t a stranger to controversies. The brand has been caught up in several PR issues over the years, as is expected of any brand of this scale.
They’ve faced crises that were big enough to hurt their brand reputation to some extent. But Adidas always manages to bounce back stronger than ever. And it’s because they have a strong crisis communication and response plan that’s informed by data.
One of the more recent controversies involves the brand’s collaboration with designer Willy Chavarria. For their collaboration, Chavarria came up with the Oaxaca Slip-On, inspired by traditional huaraches made by Indigenous artisans from the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico.
Adidas faced strong criticism, with the state’s officials condemning the brand and the designer for appropriating designs from Indigenous communities. The brand’s footwear wasn’t made in a meaningful partnership with the community, as manufacturing was reportedly done in China.
The controversy also spread to Spanish-speaking audiences on social media as various Mexican creators spoke up about it. It even led to Mexico’s President, Claudia Sheinbaum holding a press conference where she publicly called out the brand.
But Adidas was swift to respond, issuing a public apology and requesting to meet with Oaxacan officials to open a dialogue for reparations within days of the controversy’s initial spark.
In the statement, the brand expressed how deeply they valued the cultural wealth of Mexico’s Indigenous people and acknowledged the relevance of the criticisms. They also reaffirmed their commitment to collaborate with the Yalálag community to honor their cultural legacy.
By taking accountability and apologizing, Adidas was able to quickly douse the fire before it reached the larger social media community. Here’s a quick timeline of events for this controversy:
August 3-4: Promo begins for the Oaxaca Slip On, with several social media users starting to notice the design similarities and the “Made in China” label on the box.
By mid-August, the controversy had already shown signs of slowing down. Interest in “Adidas Oaxaca” on Google Trends began rising after August 3 and sharply spiked around August 10. But it then started to drop once the brand released their statement.
This swift and tasteful response is a standout example in crisis communication. The brand was quick to respond and take accountability before the issue turned into a bigger PR disaster.
Now that you can see why social listening is so important for preventing a PR disaster, it’s time to look at the practical steps. Here are the best practices for using social listening to manage a crisis.
As established earlier, managing a crisis is all about spotting the early sparks and dousing them before they spread. That’s why you need real-time listening to keep track of the latest conversations across social media. You should be able to see a looming crisis before it turns into a bigger PR nightmare that’s hard to control.
Use listening tools to keep a close eye on relevant conversations about your brand or campaign. And use the sentiment tracking features to identify sentiment trends.
Some negative brand mentions are normal. What you should watch out for are those rising patterns of negative sentiment. Are you noticing more conversations with negative brand mentions? This could help you spot when controversies are brewing, so you can be prepared with a crisis communication plan.
Platforms like Influencity offer robust social listening tools for effective brand management. You can track sentiment history and visualize when negative sentiments are rising across different social media platforms.
The best part about Influencity is that it goes far beyond the major social media platforms and extends its monitoring to nontraditional channels like Reddit or TikTok comments. So you get greater visibility and control over rising negative sentiment.
Not every criticism warrants a response. There are instances of malicious creators making baseless claims just for clout.
And for this type of controversy, the best thing you can do is wait for it to die down on its own. Any response or action could unintentionally shine a bigger spotlight on the controversy when you’re dealing with malicious actors. And you could end up a victim of a phenomenon similar to the Streisand effect.
It’s important for brands to filter out the noise and focus on controversies that pose an actual threat to their reputation.
Ask yourself:
However, a response is essential if the controversy is becoming more widespread because even if the claim is baseless, it could still affect your brand reputation if it reaches more people. While only a small portion of audiences eat up those lies, a significant portion might end up with some doubt in your brand because they believe there’s “no smoke without fire.”
It can be helpful to set up automated alerts, so you get notified when negative sentiment crosses a certain threshold…say 15%.
This will help you identify when certain controversies are getting out of control. That’s when you know it’s time to respond—baseless claim or not.
A spike in negative sentiment shows you that people are negatively talking about your brand. Digging deeper into their conversation will show you exactly what they’re saying. So you not only understand what the response is, but why they’re responding a certain way.
Are they unhappy about the lack of representation in your ad campaign? Are they unhappy about the high prices? Or perhaps they’re calling you out for working with a certain creator.
Taking a closer look at these conversations will help you come up with an appropriate game plan. You’ll be able to figure out what matters to your audience and how to respond or adjust your campaign messaging accordingly.
Platforms like Influencity will even help you break down the sentiments by emotion. Yes, people are expressing negative sentiment. But are they actually angry? Or fearful? Or disgusted? This streamlines your analysis and helps inform your crisis communication strategy.
Who’s leading the conversation? Which creators are influencing people’s opinions?
Figuring out the key influencers in your controversy is essential for effective crisis management. So once you come up with a strategy to respond, you could involve them to get the message across.
For instance, you could directly reach out to them and thank them for holding you accountable as you share your efforts to resolve the issue. Once the creators share your brand’s response, it could help ease some tension among their audiences and positively influence sentiment to a certain extent.
You’ll essentially be responding to the crisis through the same channels that spread it.
Every potential crisis is an opportunity to boost your brand reputation. People care about how your brand responds to valid criticisms. And social listening gives you the timely insights you need to inform your crisis communication. Make the most of the ideas and tips shared above to spin a possible PR disaster into a PR win.
Social listening helps you detect spikes in negative sentiment so you can spot a crisis early. It also helps you analyze the conversations to see what matters to audiences and come up with an appropriate response.
The best way to handle a PR crisis is by offering a swift response addressing the situation and maintaining transparency throughout the process.
Social listening is the process of monitoring social media conversations related to your brand and/or industry and analyzing what people are saying, how they feel, and what you need to do.
An example of social listening is tracking brand sentiment to identify spikes in negative mentions and prevent a PR crisis.