Trial by Social Media

We often have regarded the Jessica Lal murder case as one of the first instances of trail by media in India. If you have seen the movie, ‘No one killed Jessica’, the makers of the film have been completely unapologetic in showing that the murder case had lost its place in the news to larger events happening across. It wasn’t until a channel took it serious and took up the story in a manner exposing the ones involved that justice finally came through.

The pivot point here; a news channel- a part of the organised media had to be involved to take notice and act as a conduit to escalate matters and get people on to the streets to fight for justice. This process of waiting for a news channel or organised media to intervene has actually got bypassed to a fair extent today by the hyper-drive status of social media. Commoners use Facebook and WhatsApp and the popular ones have Twitter following to be applied to leverage social media to a very high extent.

TV channels like Bindaas, Channel V and MTV all today have at least one show where there have been some episodes on how people have used social media to speak out against powerful and influential people around them, report workplace abuse etc. Much like any tool, they also show cases where social media has also been abused to malign people or their reputation as an act of vengeance or to inflict social embarrassment.

If this is the case with individuals, how can corporate houses be left far behind.

Vishal Gondal is a name that found fame as the ‘King of Indian gaming’, thanks to the success of his venture, Indiagames in the late 2000’s. But this gaming wiz also has to his credit to be the man taking on Audi India in a case known to the auto world as the ‘Sleep-walking Audi Q7’. (http://forbesindia.com/blog/business-strategy/the-curious-case-of-vishal-gondals-sleepwalking-audi/)

Gondal had given his prized 65 lac worth luxury car for servicing and as typical of a gizmo freak, had the facility to track the same over GPS. The night before the delivery, he got a speeding alert from the GPS. The next few hours gave him the horror of seeing the car rally across the cities arterial roads and even land up in suspicious scrap yards of Kurla before getting back to the service centre. Gondal’s reflex action, the GPS track went onto Facebook and Twitter where he was blessed with loyal followers who were up in arms with what had happened. Every person who had service issues with any car manufacturer joined hands and the entire fraternity had to take notice. 

But Audi claimed the car never left the workshop and have termed the GPS tracker as defective. In the online war that followed, Audi tried to delete all hate posts on their page; but it simply added to public ire as the smart ones took screen grabs before being deleted. Even though the head of Audi in India spoke of taking action, nothing happened. To this day, Audi has not apologized for any wrong doings on part of their staff even at a cost where it has dented its reputation. A case where an apology and some make good could have cleared the air, still remains unsolved. The insult to injury, Gondal posted pics posing next to a Mini Cooper and handing over the advantage to Audi’s rivals, BMW.

Apart from denial of the truth, Audi faced a lot of flak on social media and also resulted in a loss of face and customers in the coming months. Lessons to be taken: if an apology works- just do it. And more importantly, never delete posts: people are most upset when this happens; especially with woes.

Today I have come across another brewing case: Neha Tomar (apparently a Gurgaon based lawyer) taking on Amul Milk. When a bag of Amul Gold milk went bad (sour) in the Tomar household, they tried to return it back to the vendor. The vendor refused and an attempt to make cheese from the sour milk took things from bad to worse- the curds turned into an elastic emulsion similar to melted mozzarella cheese.  Pictures of this were posted on Facebook on 10^th October with an appeal for caution and action against Amul. Sympathy vote: it has got over 77,000 shares. (https://www.facebook.com/neha.tomar.39/posts/10152355551565785)

Between 10^th to 14^th October, the Facebook page of Amul has been plastered with this post by various people who saw the Ms. Tomar’s post. Things reached a level that Ms. Tomar has even taken a petition to the Health Minister of India with a call for support for 500 names to pass the legal action. Amul in the meantime had been more of organising its stand but with no ill language or posts towards all this on Facebook.

Today afternoon, after four days of the first post and pictures appeared, Amul has come out with an official stand on Facebook which is both solid and scientific in its defence and openly exposing the flaws in Ms. Tomar’s claims. The milk was expired, some irregularities in the dates mentioned by Ms. Tomar in her post, a video to replicate how and why any kind of milk can turn into this lumpy elastic mass and finally; the behind the scene action taken by Amul officials to actively engage with the customer complaint. The most crucial part, disapproving of malicious intention and trying to reinstall the faith in the brand and its legacy of being built by farmers themselves. (https://www.facebook.com/amul.coop/posts/10152808817269446)

This is what separates Amul as a brand from the rest of the millions in India. A complaint was taken seriously, investigated and the reply was made in a solid and well researched. Sure the shares at present are slow (only 1500 odd so far), but the message is loud and clear: no attacks on the brand are taken lightly or left unattended. If the medium of the offensive was social media, it is the same medium employed to manage the damage and answer to the world.

In my opinion, this is amongst the best of the reputation management action on social media I have seen so far and unless there is any drastic change on stands soon- it will be etched as a live example for me to share for at least some time now.