Eurostar’s social media crisis

It sounds like Eurostar felt that Sales and Marketing was the appropriate internal driver for their social media strategy. Unfortunately, this was a situation that spanned other departments. It sounds like, today, you were sitting next to the wrong person, their Sales & Marketing Director.

I totally appreciate the situation; I know how many of these decisions are made in the midst of budgeting, working with agencies, etc. Clearly it could have been handled better and many people who are involved in social media, content strategy and crisis communications hopefully learned some things today at the expense of some Twitterers, crying, hungry babies and some hapless executives. Our social media team definitely did by watching this situation evolve and, in many ways, degrade. Thank you for publishing this part of the story, as well. Again, a lot for all of us to learn.

So you're basically saying that responding on Eurostar's behalf about anything other than the “Little break, Big difference” campaign is outside your current remit? Well, fair enough. And good on you for supporting your clients when they had a crisis.

But I think some of the flak you've been getting today (on TechCrunch, for example) stems from pre-existing annoyances, e.g. what many perceive to be an inexperienced team at we are social that gives its interns/new hires fairly grand titles.

There are also some questions about your own use of social media, which appears to be “inauthentic”: at best: http://yiannopoulos.net/2009/12/we-are-social-h…

I'd be interested to get your response to that last point.

When the social media market matures, you guys are going to get eaten alive. The big problem with what you do is that 'social media conversation' should be a tiny part of a far wider digital strategy, and, alone, it is not that important. It simply does not impact on the bottom line in a significant enough way.

It's fine to pitch yourself as a 'conversation agency,' but this, really is small beer. For any brand worth its salt, 20k Facebook fans is not going to have much of an impact on the bottom line. Being chosen by a client to handle Twitter-patter with these fans is a different proposition to being put in charge of crisis management. When a crisis hits, you guys just look impotent and out of your depth.

Eventually, digital/atl agencies will come along, realise that 'social media' is just an extension of traditional planning roles (i.e. creating online/offline activities which hook into consumer activities), and that when they create this activity, the social media conversation will take care of itself. They will also realise that plonking someone on Twitter and having 'social media conversation' (which is pretty much all you guys do), actually is 5% of what social media is capable of.

At that point, your interns and new hires will begin to struggle. But good luck having a nice run until then.

Hi Robin, I'm sure it's been an interesting 24 hours for you and one you'd care not to repeat!

On my part I'd assumed as much: That you guys had never formally been asked to do eurostar's crisis and issues management (much as you would have liked to) and were only ever given a brief around the whole short breaks thing.

As a result, comments here should really be directed at eurostar and eurostar only. I think it's entirely legitimate to question the situation as a whole as it is a learning for everyone. Less so to publicly point fingers at other agencies – and you'll notice my, and indeed Danny's post, makes no mention of you guys.

I mean after all, you are certainly not the only ones who've been given a social media brief that's primarily promotional in nature while the client is more reticent about the reputation management one.

Though I suspect that will change as many of us use this as a case study to show why exactly brands need to build this in now rather than (as you say eurostar did with you), put it on the drawing board for discussion at a later date.

[...] – eurostar’s social media agency has a post on their blog, which basically says that they’d been brought on solely to do the short breaks promo brief [...]

Hi Robin

I'm glad some of the responses to your post here have been positive.

The Techcrunch article and its feedback lack a little perspective. Putting what's happened to Eurostar passengers to one side, it looks from the outside like a company / service without a clear crisis comms plan… and a lack of communication internally as well as externally.

But that shouldn't make you guys a target. In my experience (we're competitors, right?) what you say about campaigns as learning curves is true and obvious. 2009 has seen a lot of this – big brands in 'prove it' mode with Social Media… before making commitments to wider strategies.

What folks tend to forget is that Social Media is a business in this respect. We all know that companies really ought to use it across most aspects of what they do… but I'm not expecting every CEO to take this line immediately. Eurostar may help the penny to drop, but we'll see… Despite what some reporters/consultants/etc expect, magic wands don't exist – pilot projects and a lot of *really* hard work are what will make companies embrace Social Media.

In other words, the negative reactions vs We Are Social strike me as a little silly…. Right now, do people expect Corp Comms agendas and crisis comms plans for Nine o'Clock news-style fallouts to be set and run (in real time) by agencies like yours and mine? I've run large (very large) PR teams in-house at multi-nationals. It doesn't work this way.

So, something needs re-wiring at Eurostar HQ. Good luck with helping them to shape some new policies… And thanks for this post – sensibly put indeed.

Cheers

Roger

Hi Robin, glad to see your story, pretty much what I expected. I think here you and your team stepped up to help a client over and above what was briefed and have done a great job.

I've written a follow-up to my post you linked to, looking at how brands should use social media vs how they currently do. http://digitalstuffing.com/2009/12/social-media…

A fantastic case study for anyone working agency-side. We have thd responsibility to say no to campaigns like Little Break, Big Difference if clients like Eurostar don't gave other critical areas of their business set up to cope with almost inevitable customer service issues as thus one it is hard but as we are seeing here, external agencies will also take some if the blame too.

I was amazed by how well We Are Social and Eurostar handled the crisis, but what impressed me even more is how you did it: choosing transparency and “human” language to connect with people and help them go through a potentially difficult moment. I also liked a lot the way some negative posts had a positive and constructive answer.
This way of setting up and managing conversations – even in a difficult time – is a real game changer and could bring a lot of benefit to Eurostar, IMO.

[...] Mike Butcher’s scathing commentary about Eurostar’s communication efforts, which prompted a spirited and credible defence from Robin Grant of We Are Social, Eurostar UK’s social media [...]

Sounds like you guys had an interesting day

Great piece – thanks for being so open and transparent as it is rare to get an insight into what happens on the other side at times like this.

As we have both said, this is an unprecedented situation and a learning experience for all but most importantly for Eurostar themselves.

As Roger points out, any blame should clearly sit with the company itself. There is only so much agencies can do in situations like this and it sounds as though you guys went beyond the call of duty.

I'm a firm believer that, done correctly, social media can play an important part (and increasingly, will have to play an important part) in crisis comms. This unfortunate incident may well be the jolt that Eurostar and other companies need to put the plans in place so they are ready to act in future.

Are you KIDDING? “transparency and human language”, my a***! Tell that to the people who were stranded who were given occasional scraps of contradictory or outright wrong information by the themselves overwhelmed staff on the ground. I was in the middle of this, and I am not impressed.
(This is not directed at the we are social guys, clearly (most of?) the blame lies with Eurostar.

Hats off to you and the team Robin. Given your relationship with Eurostar I think you've gone above and beyond in how you've supported them through this difficult time, going well beyond your remit.

It's inappropriate for any commentators to criticise an agency who are doing one thing for a client, for NOT doing something else, which they've never been asked to do. I'm with Dirk, Rachel and Danny on this one. How a client uses an agency is up to the client entirely…and if they want proactive campaigning rather than reactive responding – well that's what they want…

I'm just sorry for Eurostar's sake that it's only during and after this crisis that social media gets weaved into their crisis comms plans. Having said that though, in so doing, they'll pave the way for many other organisations to dust down their own crisis planning docs and consider how best to use social media within them.

[...] there isn’t much to be done. And it seems this is pretty much what happened. In a very honest post, Robin Grant from Wearesocial, a social media agency, has given a very open overview of things from [...]

The crucial social media message will be from the passengers: if they report that “when the chips were down, Eurostar took care of us” then commercial recovery will be only a technical challenge.

However, there is a bold “Eurostar abandoned us” message coming from some passengers at present. This is of course played up by popular media. If that message does not change, Eurostar will lose a lot of custom in the coming years.

Insight into the Little Break campaign meatings limits the damage to wearesocial alone. Against stories of passengers assaulting one another, without air, water, sanitation, light… it will not benefit Eurostar one jot.

Having worked in PR for 15 years, I've handled quite a few crisis situations. I'd make a couple points; firstly, fair play to Wearesocial who stepped into the breach when many other agencies wouldn't have. Secondly, as with many crisis PR events, the crisis reveals genuine issues within the business that have to be sorted out. Effective crisis management is about transparency, speed of response and authenticity but above all it's about learning from the problem and FIXING it (in this case the shocking lack of communication with the poor customers stuck in the tunnel). Despite the fact that the immediate crisis is over, the real work starts now. If it doesn't then it's just delaying the inevitable.

[...] VIV: WeAreSocial eventually put their side of the story here at 11.37pm. Tweet ThisTipSHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "As hundreds of Eurostar passengers languish, [...]

JDA, I see you and many other people had a very bad experience and I'm sorry about it. But I was just referring to the “social media” part of this crisis and to We Are Social job described in the post, which was handled like I wrote, in a human and transparent way. In general, I see there has been many communication problems, but in a crisis scenario, it's important to recognize something that works.
Again, sorry you were in the middle of this.

Have a great day,
Stefano

to listen, understand and engage in conversations in social media is very nice but you probably have no idea how infuriating it is when not followed by action.

[...] view of the issue is too narrow, as well as being innacurate as this post from We are social shows. The whole communications effort failed, and the speed of the social media response is just [...]

Sorry but even the social media response has been utterly inadequate. It might have eventually have been honest, but some of it contradicted what was said by other channels, and it was far too slow – first tweets were a good 14 hours after this mess started. Seems this is largely the fault of Eurostar rather than We Are Social, but this is *not* a case study in good practice.

I say this as a web designer, active Twitter user, blogger, and ALSO as a Eurostar frequent traveller who was stuck in the middle of this in Brussels.

Fair play folks, the post is a great example of how clients can 'comparmentalise' communications and put off key decisions like monitoring social media until it is too late. Your blog was honest and open and I am delighted to see you are standing up for your corner where too often agencies would receive the kicking.

Respectfully, I would have suggested the case study was a follow up post and this was a clear statement on Eurostar.

Having been slightly involved with a crisis that affected a lot of people and working with a very traditional attitude I sympathise and don't think it is fair that people expect We Are Social to have total comms control of their client, however I'm saddened that you have gotten involved with the blame game with a comment like this:

“they’re not even allowed to communicate with their own staff on board when the train is in the tunnel as all safety regulations and operational responsibility sit firmly with Eurotunnel, which has obviously made it particularly hard from a communications perspective.”

Surely this blog should be to explain your involvement and a commentary on what is is like as an agency to push change in a corporate company. The above comment gives the suggestion that the blog post is just making excuses for the client instead of informing the industry on what it's like to be involved in something like this.

Hope the decision pays off; brave move to do crisis PR and customer service when you're paid to run promotional messaging/marketing campaigns in social media. But a friend in need…

Yes, the Techcrunch article missed the point – it's not that Eurostar didn't care about Twitter, it's that the message received was that Eurostar didn't/doesn't care about it's customers – partly because it didn't respond to questions in a timely and useful manner. But the point that social media communications is primarily about responding, not messaging – should be food for thought for us all.

I don't know about social media, but I was involved in the problem and all they told us when we disembarked was “thanks for your patience” and not even one “we're sorry”.
So what's been done on social media looks so much more in perspective. It could have been better, of course, but it always can.

A spirited and credible defence, Robin, as I mentioned in my own post about this sorry affair earlier this morning.

Yet that doesn't count for much, really, if you have an issue that's standing on such a shaky foundation as this one is: apologies, talk of refunds, free tickets in the future, etc, are all well and good but aren't t addressing the specific questions people are clamouring for answers that are directly related to their awful experiences stuck on Eurostar trains in the Channel Tunnel on Friday night.

It also looks as though this present situation is bringing to a head much simmering anger about what's generally happening with travel over the Christmas holiday: not only Eurostar staff threatening strike action but also other things well outside the company's direct control, eg, BA cabin crew, UK Border Agency, postal workers, you name it.

A crisis in my view, one that Eurostar looks ill prepared to deal with effectively. Certainly little indicator otherwise that I can see. Tell me what I'm missing.

Chris has pretty much taken the words out of my mouth. One thing to add is that in the social media arena it's not just the corporates who are held up to new standards of transparency, but their suppliers/contractors are too. This post is a good example of responding to that reality.

I think there are two issues here which have been unhelpfully merged into one by some commentators.

Firstly I don't think that anyone is disagreeing with the fact that Eurostar failed to effectively communicate to its passengers over the weekend. My heart goes out to all those who were stranded and I guess I'd be pretty fromaged off it it were me in that situation.

However, the role of communicating the chaos SHOULD NOT FALL UPON THE SHOULDERS OF EUROSTAR'S AGENCY. As Robin states above, We Are Social was taken on to manage the Little Break, Big Difference campaign, and from what I've seen have done a brilliant job. In fact, a few months ago I took a Eurostar to Paris for the weekend for my girlfriend's birthday and on my way back as I tweeted about my fab trip I received a message back instantly from @little_break. This blew me away. The tone was pitched perfectly and made me feel good about the Eurostar brand.

I've often pitched against We Are Social in an agency capacity and have been frustrated with how often they win great clients. I can only put this down as a testament to the quality and diligence that goes into their campaign execution.

It irks me that clients think that by hiring a conversation/social media agency they have ticked a box on a marketing checklist and in effect wipe their hands of engaging directly in communications. The responsibility of customer updates should be firmly with the customer support team and I feel a little disappointed that Eurostar failed to see this. Conversely, hats off to Robin, Nathan and the team for attempting to steer the client in the right direction.

Also, Richard Brown's statement was something that Eurostar should have thought up but didn't. Luckily We Are Social were at hand to make it happen.

If anything, We Are Social should use this as a case study on how they go the extra mile for clients even when it clearly falls well outside of an agency's remit.

Finally, people have commented unfairly on the inexperience of the team at We Are Social. I disagree totally with this as I have had the pleasure of meeting some of the newer recruits who actually live, breath, eat and sleep social media. A really strong agency.

Well done guys. Keep it up.

Alex – I don't envy your situation at all. I was stuck in this, not in a train but at a station (Bruxelles Gare du Midi) and there too it was a complete mess, and messages given there were contradicting what was said at other stations and online. More at my website.

[...] social media agency We Are Social posted a note about today’s Eurostar crisis on Sunday to summarise how they were helping with the response as Eurostar are one of their [...]

Guys, ignore the rest. Great work this weekend. I don't why you're getting such a hard time. Soon they'll be blaming you for the crucifixtion.

Milo, account exec and account manager are standard job titles for junior employees of marketing agencies, graduates with business/marketing degrees with up to 5 years experience. These are job titles are used throughout the world in the marketing industry (and also sales) and have been for years. It's not something new which We Are Social have just created. As far as I can see the junior members of the team are supported by an experienced team who, as in all agencies, are the ones driving strategy and planning.

It appears that strategic recommendations in this case have been ignored by Eurostar and fair play to We Are Social for picking up the pieces.

Robin – Should be an easy sale for you guys to sign Eurostar up for a 1 yr monitoring and response package next week!

@robin1966 — good work, good article. You're in a tricky situation, but I think you've probably gone further towards getting this sorted than lots of other agencies have managed.

@timaldiss — nice point for an ideal world. I don't see any other disciplines (say ATL, DM/CRM, conventional PR) really selling their stuff in or being criticised on that basis. Much as we'd all like to go on retainer for clients' reputation work, the reality is that we're all in business to sell people what they want, and not what they need.

Lots of good comments above. How many other “traditional” agencies without a “brief” and a budget would roll up their sleeves on the weekend and help out a client in a pickle as the We Are Social team has clearly done.

By its very nature, social media is all about getting in there and getting the job done, being honest and admitting shortcomings – all which We Are Social and Robin has done well above.

This will become a benchmark case study for other brands to consider, should they ever feel themselves in the middle of a “Eurostar moment”.

I have blogged on this over at London Calling » How to prevent your own “Eurostar moment” http://bit.ly/eurostarmoment

great to have documented what went on very soon after it happened, so hats off to we are social for doing that. but in terms of process excellence, i was a little disappointed to read that all it amounted in effect to was setting up a monitor and respond team in place to handle real-time social media mentions, and getting the CEO to say sorry in public. feels like the emperor's new clothes rather than anything exciting or new

Completely agree with you on the job titles, Lindsay – it seems a pretty spurious complaint.

Real credit to We are Social for being so open about their role this weekend – from the outside this has been a fascinating comms case study to chew over, but it can't have been at all easy for the people on the ground.

What a surprise. The usual sycophants and self-promoters are trotting out to give We Are Social a quick handjob of support. Hey there guys!

Milo is right in his criticisms and questions. This company has a serious lack of experience across its employee base. Employing young people is obviously cheap which is great for margins, not so great for clients. Anyone that's met Robin will know that he's a cunning salesman. Sadly I don't think he has the team to back up the volume of wins he's achieved in such a short space of time.

I'd put a lot of the general sniping (including this) down to Robin's heavy handed approach to selling himself and the business in the UK. People just plain don't like Robin's cut throat sales tactics in the UK industry. Remember when it emerged he was bidding for top search position for competitor 'Nixon McInnes' on Google Adwords? Not exactly ethical.

I'm not sure what theh 'usual sychophants' would actually gain from giving Robin a bit of reacharound especially as most appear to be competitors.

I think some of the criticisms from Milo are just – certainly the Twitter feed appears a bit suspect. However, i still don't agree with using the Eurostar incident as an excuse to snipe at We Are Social. If anything they've actually come off in a much better light – how they have reacted has been quite impressive. It wouldn't come as much of a surprise if they got more business from Eurostar from it to be honest.

i have no response to the snipes at Robin's personal character, everyone's entitled to their own opinion – I'm just not sure if using the the Eurostar story is the right way of doing so.

Fair point Tim. This is not the place or the medium for tittle tattle and personal jibes.

You're right on the overall impact of this too, they have done well to make the best of a very poor situation for a client that doesn't appear to know what they're doing.

I'd still be keen to hear more in response to Milo's Twitter question though!

Hahaha nice vidya.

This old duffer looks like he's been hauled out of bed by the Anti Terror Squad at 3am, given someone else's clothes and plonked in front of a camera.

Good job idiot.

Objectively, from across the pond where Winter typically mucks up the best-laid plans of gazillions of holiday travelers, this appears to be a tutorial of sorts:

First lesson: there is never a shortage of finger pointers immediately following a misstep of this nature. The human proclivity for transferring grief, anger or blame pre-dates Twitter by hundreds of thousands of years.

Second lesson: Twitter is not magic fairy dust that makes us impervious to harm or that immediately provides pain relief. When cell phones were still a novelty, people would wander into the wilderness ill-prepared for even the slightest inconvenience, thinking that salvation was but a phone call away. Wrong.

Third lesson: You can lead a client to logic but you cannot make them think long-term, especially if the short-term promises income.

Fourth lesson: “Shoot the messenger” still works when you're irrationally angry.

Fifth lesson: As good as we try to be with the best tools at our disposal, we are often only as good as our clients. That's how this marriage works sometimes.

Sixth lesson: This is how clients – and the communications firms that try to help them – learn. As it is allegedly written on the corporate walls of Twitter, “Let's try to make better mistakes tomorrow.”

So endeth the lesson.

Fair play to you guys. Seems like you went above and beyond the agreed scope of your project so hat tip for that.

Coming back to Mat M's point though- what client's needs and wants in this space are, need to be interrogated and challenged. We need to use weekends like this one to demonstrate the gap that Mat has rightly highlighted.

Spot on points from Tim Hoang I think.

I'm not sure why this blog post became a place to snipe at Robin and the We are Social team.

Why can't this conversation be more about the role social media can play in an integrated crisis comms plan, and less about personal attacks? That would be something I'd actually like to read and we'd all stand to gain a lot more value from.

Hats off to Robin and the team for handling this when it wasn't what they were contracted to do. They would have had a lot of internal processes to adhere to and lots of red tape and I can appreciate it would have been difficult to get information through Twitter etc.. as it likely wasn't prioritised as an 'official' channel by Eurostar themselves. Which is why we should try and learn something from this and hope for more streamlined processes in the future.

Social media clearly needs to play a bigger part in the PR strategy and crisis comms and now hopefully more brands will realise this. It's no longer just a nice 'extra' if you have some leftover budget. It's moved beyond that, as this weekend proves.

The way in which the general public use social media has always been a step or two ahead of most brands, organisations and – let's be honest here – most in-house and agency PR people! Unfortunately not every brand or communicator is as progressive as we'd like them to be, and it often takes a massive shock to the system like this to catalyse real change and get the customer service/corporate comms/social media dots joined up properly. I'm sure the We Are Social team would have had discussions on monitoring, crisis planning etc with their client well before this. But as anyone that's worked agency-side will know, clients have the luxury of paying agencies to ignore their recommendations…

Well done guys for hanging in there and doing what appears to be a stirling job over the weekend!

[...] it had never been contracted to provide these services, their remit being only the campaign. As Robin Grant of we are social explains When we first met with Eurostar, as we do with all of our clients, we talked to them about [...]

[...] their current contract and b) they actually dug in and helped out where Eurostar would let them. (see We Are Social’s Robin Grant in full on firefighting mode.) Another point to note here is: you can have the best PR, social media, communications teams in [...]

[...] Eurostar were paying them for a full monitoring, response package. Which according to Robin Grant, they weren’t . social media monitoring and response services come with a cost and it looks like in this case, [...]

[...] Deal with reality of the crisis There is an interesting post from the agency that support Eurostar.  However, the @little_break, as the Tweeting community will tell you, was barely known.  [...]

Robin – it seems to me like you and your team at WAS have done all you could to help the client in their time of need – and it does strike me that the sniping at you by others has largely been petty and unjustified. The personal attacks are not too pleasant either – though to your credit you have allowed these to remain on the blog.

What concerns me slightly is how your defence has in some way incriminated your client as not listening to your advice and recommendations. Whilst you have defended your agency's reputation, are you not now doing some of your client's dirty washing in public here?

If they are okay with you discussing your discussions then fine, of course – and maybe it will mean that – just like Dell after 'Dell Hell' – Eurostar will become the very watchword for social media excellence. They would be crazy to attach blame to you for your handling and I have no doubt you are in a great place to advise them moving forward from this.

What I want to know is where Eurostar's comms team is. They have quite a large internal team, so how come they haven't a crisis comms plan already in place? Especially after last year's problems.

A “conversation company” should not be driving a crisis plan; it should, of course be part of any plan and feed into it at planning stage. Social media should be part of the plan, not driving it – that's knee jerk.

The final plan should be the responsibility of the head of comms in-house. Where were they?

I also think it's a bit strange that you are washing your client's dirty laundry in public, but perhaps you have permission?

I know that neither I nor any of the companies I have ever worked for would push the blame back to the client unless we were threatened with being sued for something that wasn't our fault…..

@simonsanders & @Grazia

To be absolutly clear, yes we had Eurostar's consent in writing this post.

[...] there were some insightful posts that gave a balanced view of the situation, not least from We Are Social themselves. But this is not a post about We are Social. I want to talk about what the conversations [...]

I am no a sycophant and I believe Robin has a genuine point here.

Our clients do very often turn deaf ears to our pleads for online&social media crisis plans and online crisis scenarios training initiatives, etc until it is only too late to mount the appropriate response.

I really hope that online crisis plans are taken more seriously by major customers after the Eurostar debacle.

All very interesting however the MOST important thing is that Eurostar put in place safety measures which include on the spot communications for passengers in future Eurostar crises.
Good PR can only do a certain amount…
I must say the CEO looks shattered in that video clip…

[...] Mashup for you, which is a bit later and a bit shorter than usual, as obviously we’ve had our focus on other things over the last few [...]

[...] We Are Social: A note about today’s Eurostar crisis. [...]

[...] much as We Are Social annoyingly name drop work they have done into every comment they leave on the web EVER, they have [...]

[...] This post from social media agency We Are Social came as people tried to blame them for not responding to the Euro Star breaking down and leaving customers stranded even though the company were not even engaged to deal with customer service full time. [...]

Fair play to you indeed!

I'm a big believer in solid crises management contingencies from the point of pitching for work. As you never know when situations like this will come along and ultimately trash or change the course of any well indented campaign efforts.

Hope you managed to get some decent crimbo time in for yourselves.

[...] Eurostar’s social media crisis / we are social Having monitored the Eurostar episode, I think Robin puts forward an excellent case for why We Are Social were *spot on* with their advice to Eurostar, and their (unpaid) help throughout the crisis. (tags: wearesocial eurostar crisis crisismanagement) [...]

[...] dernier, Robin Grant, le DG de We Are Social a publié un billet sur la situation d’Eurostar et des médias sociaux que je vous traduis ici car celui-ci va [...]

I think you are spot on…. I enjoyed your take on it

A social media company that publishes a graph on it's own website that you can't read the scale on, and can't click through to get a larger version of. Well done indeed.

[...] been a week since we woke up to the news of the Eurostar incident (for those coming to this fresh, read our original post here). Our role continues to be the subject of speculation, so I thought it worth updating you on what [...]

[...] che la sua campagna blogger su twitter e facebook, si sarebbe rivelata una buona premessa per gestire l’attuale crisi prenatalizia ? In questo caso la sua presenza nel momento del bisogno non è un indice di performance [...]

[...] A note about today’s Eurostar crisis / we are social [...]

[...] agency itself it is folly to blast them for not adequately handling the situation. As outlined in a blog post on the agency’s site, Eurostar was advised to incorporate a realtime listening and responding element in place and chose [...]

[...] Für lau beim Krisenfall arbeiten? Das Beispiel Eurostar und we are social Ein am 19. Dezember 2009 steckengebliebener Zug markierte für Eurostar  den Beginn einer anhaltenden Imagekrise. Kurz nach dem Bekanntwerden entschloss sich die Agentur we are social, die mit einer separaten WOM-Kampagne für Eurostar betraut war, ihren Kunden bei der Krisen-PR zu unterstützen – ohne Entgelt. Eine Replik auf die vernichtende Kritik des Krisenmanagements (nicht nur von Eurostar) findet sich im Agenturblog. [...]

[...] campaign, rather than more general umbrella. Robin has responded on We Are Social’s Blog: A note about today’s Eurostar crisis – Within 24 hours the company had posted a video on YouTube and was tackling their [...]

[...] find out how We Are Social dealt with this nightmare scenario Robin Grant has posted a detailed write-up. I encourage you to read it and file as an example of “Best practice when the sh*t hits the [...]

Robin, thanks for sharing this – some useful lessons for everyone I'm sure although to be honest, I think any criticism levelled at the lack of a social media response is more symptomatic of a society that is suffering from a massive case of “daddy buy me a pony” than good vs. bad crisis management. A few critics out there would do well to spare a thought for passengers actually stuck on the train.

Robin, thanks for sharing this – some useful lessons for everyone I'm sure although to be honest, I think any criticism levelled at the lack of a social media response is more symptomatic of a society that is suffering from a massive case of “daddy buy me a pony” than good vs. bad crisis management. A few critics out there would do well to spare a thought for passengers actually stuck on the train.

[...] We Are Social has since opened offices in Milan and Paris. Among We Are Social’s most high profile work in the UK was its involvement in crisis communications for Eurostar when its trains suffered a series of breakdowns in the Channel Tu…. [...]

Well, lesson learned that's for sure. Next time I imagine you'll see the best of responses from here on out.

[...] 17 May Evidence that when news days are slow, Social Media becomes evil. Passengers get stuck on train. No corporate crisis comms plan. Social Media involved at the fringe. Agency gets slammed. Behold, the source and the fall out. [...]

This is great information for customers who are wanting to travel to Europe by Eurostar. Thanks to all who have commented here. I am also helping Eurostar customers provide as much as possible through http://www.LondonParisTrain.com

[...] clearly have a crisis on their hands, and we know from painful experience it’s not nice to be second guessed in situations like these. They’re obviously right [...]

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Yes you are right grantsmith. Thanks, Ruan

[...] to respond to tweets from passengers about a blocked train the previous night (actually, as it turned out through no fault of their own, and despite best practice [...]

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[...] that I, via TechcrunchUK.  @IrishRail, happy to hear your thoughts on this article and think this link may be of interest to [...]