Social Media Communication during a Corporate Brand Crisis: The Case of Findus

Abstract: The purpose of the research is to explore how social media can be used in order to handle a corporate brand crisis and to analyze how consumers respond to and reason regarding crisis communication in social media. The study is conducted with a qualitative case study approach. A combination of observations and semi-structured interviews were chosen to collect the empirical data. The theoretical framework of the study is mainly based on theories within corporate branding, crisis management and social media that describe the new conditions within marketing. The empirical material is based on observations of Findus’ social media platforms, as well as four interviews with managers from Findus, two interviews with researchers at Lund University and eight interviews with consumers in ages between 23-65 years. The analysis is presented in five themes based on the dominant tendencies from the empirical material; Proactive Efforts, Monitoring Activity, Social Media Competence, Content Strategy and Segmenting Communication. These five themes are the backbone of our own framework, which describes effective ways to manage corporate branding crisis management in social media. The study concludes that many of the theories from the literature review are applicable on corporate brand crisis management in social media, but it is essential to have specific social media competence, since there are different social rules online than offline.