5 things #FyreFest team could have done to save the day. (or make it less of a disaster).

#FyreFest

The Fyre Fest team nailed it.

They have checked every box to tick in the handbook of social media and online promotion.This was a very successful digital campaign until it actually worked.

Now I am not aware if Ja Rule was the chief digital strategist for this campaign however let’s take a look at this

• Interactive website with mobile friendly features https://www.fyrefestival.com/.
  
• Influencer marketing with credible reputation (@haileybaldwin - @ania000 - @iamcaseydiego  - @katebock  -  @BellaHadid - @HaileyBaldwin -  @kendalljenner).
  
• Build up posts from the ground before the event starts including the yachts, the models, tons of them and the private island sneak peek.
  
• Alignment of all the social activities, visual mediums user generated by influencers and branded by Fyre Fest ( Youtube video got more than a million views ).
  
• Finally lead generation. Keeping in mind that the event wasn't cheap or free. Some of the tickets went up to 250,000$ for a group rate and the whole event was sold out.
  
  
  

And that right there is the problem “ It worked”.

Social Media got great coverage with millions of followers and thousands of engagement and the tickets sold out. Perfect social media case study, perfect ending.

But wait it didn’t end happily ever after.

When guests arrived there was no music, no food and no shelter, the two weekend getaway that was promised turned to be a nightmare.

Bands cancelled, the food was just toast and cheese, guests were fighting over food the island was not private. Buses, private jets and transportation was not able to hold the number of people.

The infrastructure of the island couldn’t support either logistics or accommodations. Social media content was generated overwhelming from the ground and account under the name Fyre Fest Fraud was created.

In other words all hell broke loose. Social media horror.  

Before talking about the catastrophe that is Fyre Fest. Personally I don’t think those guys are not smart or intentionally wanted to scam people or it was a fraud act.

The campaign was supported by over than 400 celebrities  and influencers, the bands were already contracted, the partnership was strong. They understand the concept of over-promise and under-deliver, the YouTube ad started by saying “the on ground experience is unbelievable”.

The internet is now overwhelmed with articles saying why this campaign was a failure or simply stating the fact that happened from the New Yorker to Buzzfeed and everything in between.

While the failure of the campaign is visible, the numbers are clear and the damage done could be disasters. 

The question the comes to my mind is, how could they have fixed it?

Well that's not an easy answer, as there are more than one factor. However here are some practices that maybe could have enhanced the situation and prevented the social media outrage.

1- Setting up Social Media Command center:

Endorsed by Dell, Cisco and the American Red Cross. This practice has proven to be vital for crisis management online.

Social media command center is simply a dedicated area where a company’s social media team can monitor and engage social conversation around their brand and market.

The command center handles daily workflow and triage, and is poised to ramp up and implement a crisis management plan. The command center coordinates with other departments in the company: customer service, public relations, sales, marketing, and others.

According to the Red Cross Eighty percent of Americans expect that emergency

responders will monitor social networks, and a third assume that posting or Tweeting a request for help during a disaster will get them help within an hour. 

2- Social Media Functionality:

One of the main unique advantages of social media across all the platforms is being able to reach- update and engage with content instantly.

Where traditional media fall short in this specific comparison a bill board is both more difficult and costly to correct a typo than in a social media post.

One of the things that helped escalate the situation was the absence of online support even worse some of the influencers just deleted the posts which caused more panic and added the fraud pattern to the process.

Taking ownership of this situation by breaking it down to logistics - shelter and food, then directing those who are affected to solutions and alternatives.

3- Using influencers to actually influence.

Instead of deleting the posts one after another which looked to your audience as if it's rats escaping a sinking ship.

Using influencers to  actually influence the audience by alternatives and solutions. Posting updates as frequently as possible with notes of who is working on the problem?, how is it being fixed?, most importantly how safe everyone is?.

And dare I say if there are more than 400 influencers support one campaign then the situation might needed some boots on the ground.

4- Before the flood.

To have an honest well informed answer about what happened internally before and in the first moments of the fest might be difficult.

However hitting a wall with the speed of 120 m/h i way worse than hitting the same wall with the same car with the speed of 10 m/h. With the first signs of disturbance when the team saw that the buses cannot load more and the food is not enough and they know that more is coming.

Damage control should have been number one priority and try to slow the speed and rate of the crisis before it floods. For example informing the people that are yet to come that the event is canceled,  directing those who are in the airport to another hotel or a different island. Finally try to direct most of the on ground effort towards evacuation.

5- Anchors are the worst.

In their apology on the website the Fyre Fest team tried to promote #fyrefest 2018. This creates a cognitive anchor with the audience that Fyre Fest is associated with disaster and that 2018 event won't be any better.

The human brain uses cognitive anchors as a mental heuristic. So we remember situation when we hear songs or remember people in specific location or places. We simply anchor and promoting the coming event while the first event still going viral as a not so good event. Is just an anchor for failure.

My final thoughts are that this campaign is a very interesting case study for social media and another reminder that offline presence and delivering value that services a need to the target audience is still  vital for any social media campaign.

As digital storytellers we are always reminded that part of writing a good story is managing the expectations of the audience. What do the audience expect from your protagonist, from the plot , from the story and most importantly from the storyteller.

Reference for this article can be found here

http://bit.ly/2oYLEBk  

http://bit.ly/2qthnej

http://bit.ly/2pkCCRH

http://bit.ly/2pHitXy  

http://bit.ly/2qtAHIc 

The Effective Social Media Executive (part 1)

The Effective Social Media Executive (part 1)

This is a part of a series of articles about social media executives influenced by the father of modern management book “the effective executive”.

The book actually struck me as being extremely relevant in both principal and practice so I will pick those concepts and try to implement them into the social media field to produce the effective social media executive.

In his book Peter Drucker dedicates a whole chapter to contribution, which is the contribution of the executive to the company or the organization.

This is a profound question to any social media executive, what is your contribution to the field or to the market, if you’re just posting, updating, changing profile pictures that could be great active and could drive both traffic and engagement yet it is not effective.  It’s just posting.

How to determine then what should be the focus of ones contribution?  As per Peter there are four factors

The focus on contribution by itself supplies the four

Basic requirements of effective human relations:

• Communications.

• Teamwork.

• Self-development.

• Development of others.
To break down these four focuses in social media terms we need to look at each of them closely

•   Communication :

Communications have been in the center of managerial attention for years. In modern society however there has been great concern with social media communications. Now it is the social media executive responsibility to ask questions like
 what are the contributions for which will be known for?
What should we expect of you as your audience, friends and followers?
What is the best utilization of your knowledge and your ability?”

Which channels are you using and why?

•    Team work :

The focus on contribution leads to communications sideways and thereby makes teamwork possible. The effective work is actually done in and by teams of people of diverse knowledge and skills. These people have to work together voluntarily and according to the logic of the situation and the demands of the task, rather than according to a formal jurisdictional structure. The question here should be “Who has to use my output for it to become effective?”.

I am still amazed by facebook pages and twitter accounts that still talk only about themselves, their offers, their employees, and their company culture.

Social media as a medium gave us an opportunity to work together as a team of knowledge workers.
Define your output; define your audience and who can benefit from that. Then find you master group or your community creating a dynamic thought process resulting in an output that is both beneficial and effective.

      

•     Individual self-development:

In large measure depends on the focus on contributions. The man who asks of himself, “What is the most important contribution I can make to the performance of this organization?”Asks in effect, “What self-development do I need? What knowledge and skill do I have to acquire to make the contribution should be making? What strengths do I have to put to work? What standards do I have to set myself?”

•   Development of others:
  
  The executive who focuses on contribution also stimulates others to develop themselves. He sets standards which are not personal but grounded in the requirements of the task. At the same time, they are demands for excellence. For they are demands for high aspiration, for ambitious goals, and for work of great impact. People in general, and knowledge workers grow according to the demands they make on themselves. They grow according to what they consider to be achievement and attainment. If they demand little of themselves, they will remain stunted.

So in order to recap in social media terms these 4 main focus points can be easily implemented in our social media strategy and our social media lives.

A-     Communicate : Be social don’t act Social

B-      Teams work: Find your tribe , create a mastermind group

C-      Self development: it’s a dynamic social world and you should be too.

D-     Development of others: adapted to the platforms and set bar for the achievement for yourself and others.

Thanks for reading I hope that you found this adaptation of the book interesting would love to hear your thoughts feel free to
tweet me @fouad_khafaga
or
googl+ :khafagafouad@gmail.com