Weber Shandwick brings Award-winning Crisis Management Tool to Asia Pacific

Global public relations firm Weber Shandwick today launched the Asia Pacific version of its award-winning social media crisis simulator, FireBell.

 

 In an age of real-time information, brands and companies are more at risk than ever to viral attacks from unexpected sources. FireBell is a software application that simulates public relations crisis situations, including viral media attacks, across multiple social media platforms. 

 

First developed by Weber Shandwick in North America in late 2010, today’s launch brings this first-of-its-kind offering to the region by incorporating the online properties, trends, and behaviors unique to Asian markets. The service will also be available in all major Asian languages, including simplified and traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

 

“FireBell is to social media crises what a flight simulator is to an airline pilot learning to handle emergencies in mid-air,” according to Jon Wade digital head, Asia Pacific, Weber Shandwick, “You wouldn’t expect a pilot to be learning how to handle an engine failure at 30,000 feet, would you?  Likewise, companies shouldn’t wait for a real social media crisis to hit them in Asia to learn how to handle it. FireBell prepares clients so that they know how to react to a crisis online quickly and effectively – without the risk of a serious incident.”

 

Through FireBell, clients will be able to experience an authentic scenario of being under attack on sites like RenRen, Facebook, Sina Weibo, Twitter, Tudou, YouTube, Naver, Mixi and other social media channels. The drill team develops a plausible crisis scenario not shared with the client, then builds functioning and fictional offline versions of the client’s social media properties, as well as outside properties such as “anti-fan” pages and contrary blogs. Using these offline and fictional properties, FireBell projects images that look like the organization’s social media profiles, allowing the client to witness and respond to the crisis as it unfolds, accurately and safely preparing for a social media crisis before it occurs

 

“Weber Shandwick has long been a trusted partner in helping clients across Asia Pacific prepare and manage for crisis situations. This is a responsibility we take very seriously,” said Alistair Nicholas who heads Weber Shandwick’s Asia Pacific crisis management practice, “FireBell will allow clients to address the disconnect between perceived online vulnerability and safeguarding reputation. This is an exciting new offering and a key demonstration of Weber Shandwick’s leadership in the industry and in corporate and crisis communications, specifically.”

 

Asia boasts some of the largest online populations in the world, with extremely high rates of social media activity – more often than not, on platforms specifically-developed for the local market. The most frequently-sited example of this is China, a country of 485 million internet users. In Thailand, the number of internet users is more than 24.5 million, the number is tending to increase by 30% annually. With these high user rates and exponential growth also comes the increased threat to brand reputation, making companies and organizations more exposed to risk.

 

“Social media has democratized brands and governments, whether they like it or not,” said Nicholas, “In the past Asian audiences were very respectful of messages communicated by authorities, whether government or business. But now, a blogger with a mobile phone can take a crisis from a local event to a full scale reputation-damaging crisis in a matter of hours. It’s no longer about if an online crisis will occur, but when. Couple this with the fact that the social media environment in Asia looks and behaves very differently from that in other regions, and it’s clear that the solution FireBell offers is of critical importance to our clients in Asia Pacific.”

 

FireBell has received a series of accolades in North America, including  the 2011 “PR Innovation of the Year” award from PRWeek and the top award for “New Digital Service/Product/App” at the 2010 PR News Digital Awards. The proprietary online crisis simulator will serve as part of Weber Shandwick’s crisis communications offerings, led by the firm’s Public Affairs and Corporate Communications practice. The practice was recipient of the PublicAffairsAsia Gold Standard Award for Public Affairs (Consultancy) in both 2009 and 2010.