To limit Ross & Brand damage the BBC needed a “response blog”

russell brand!!!

Originally uploaded by rinoa_88

What to do if your in a crisis and your irate customers have been enabled by social technologies? What to do when a groundswell of negative public opinion gathers ominously on forums blogs and the like?

Blog your way out of it!

In this Monday’s Media Guardian Digital veteran Steve Bowbrick argues the BBC could and should have reacted through a “response blog” to the forore thats broken out around a Russel Brand & Jonathan Ross broadcast.

Bowbrick says the blog should have come from the managers who authorised the broadcast.

Consultant Martin Belam also took issue with the BBC on his blog:

One of the joys of having the web as a corporate communication channel is that it is very flexible and can be very, very dynamic. Not all businesses take full advantage of that, though. The BBC has not been very nimble in its response to the Brand / Ross / Sachs sex scandal, and this has been especially true on the web.

At lunchtime today, even as the Corporation announced the suspension of Ross and Brand, if you visited /programmes on bbc.co.uk it was the smirking face of Ross that greeted you.

Bellan points out that as bad is the fact that Russel Brand has a BBC blog. But it was not used to talk to the audience. An opportunity missed. If there’s anything worse than not having a blog to engage your customers, it’s having one and not using it.

“Brand’s BBC blog hadn’t been updated since October 15th, before the offensive episode of the programme was even transmitted.”

“I’m sure the BBC’s press officers have been frantically working with the national newspapers all day trying to influence what will be in tomorrow’s headlines. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Licence Fee payers will have visited all of these places on bbc.co.uk, and got the firm impression that the BBC wasn’t reacting to the crisis at all. In service design terms, the Radio 2 homepage, Russell Brand blog & show pages, and the search engine results are all ‘touch points’ that failed today to deliver the right user experience.”

The BBC still has some way to go before its geared up to be as interactively engaged with its audience as technology now allows it to be. Said Danny Rodgers in a separate article:

As arguably the second-highest-profile institution in this country after the government, the BBC faces a uniquely complex PR challenge. Given this, even some senior executives at the corporation admit privately that the PR operation is not fit for purpose.

ZuluZulu’s bet is that the BBC PR team did not even think about using blogs as part of their job. The new role of online PR still has not dawned on the erstwhile spin-meisters.