F.Y.I.

Weber Shandwick launches social media crisis simulator into Asia-Pacific

PR agency Weber Shandwick has launched its social media crisis simulator FireBell into its Asia-Pacific offices today.  

The announcement:

Monday October 10, 2011 –

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 Australian and 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 to learn how to handle it. FireBell prepares clients so 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 Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media channels including social media platforms like Ren Ren and Sina Weibo. The drill team develops a plausible crisis scenario, 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 organisation’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.

Australians spend more time on Facebook than any other country – twelve million Australians – almost half the population –are actively engaged on this social media platform. Furthermore, video sharing platform, YouTube, recieves ten million unique Australian visitors per month and Twitter receives more than one million visitors. With these high user rates and exponential growth also comes the increased threat to brand reputation, making companies and organisations more exposed to risk than ever before.

“Social media has democratised the reputation of brands, governments and individuals, whether they like it or not,” said Jye Smith, digital strategist, Weber Shandwick Australia. “In the past, Australian audiences listened to media messages from brands, publications and authorities, whether government or business. But now, a blogger with a mobile phone can take an issue from a local event to a full-scale, reputation-damaging crisis in a matter of hours. It’s no longer a question of whether an online issue will occur, but when that issue will become a crisis. The social media environment in Australia looks and behaves very differently from that in other Asia Pacific regions, and it’s clear that the solution FireBell offers is of critical importance to our clients – addressing the disconnect between perceived online vulnerability and safeguarding reputation.”

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.

Source: Weber Shandwick press release

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