By Lee Bo-hyoung
"Rashomon" is a black-and-white film made in 1950 by Japanese movie director Akira Kurosawa. It is always on the top list of the movies selected by many movie enthusiasts. Various characters in the movie tell different stories about the death of one samurai.
What motives and intrigues were behind the murder? The characters have their own truth. No one knows the whole truth. The truth is only known to the film director.
In the case where such fragmented and constructed truth is added by the political and religious beliefs and enthusiasm of each character, finding the trace of truth will be like watching glittering stars behind a spectacular firework display in the night sky.
This happens every day, and we are now living in the days of the post-truth. The term "post-truth" became a popular buzzword with President Trump's election. It was chosen as the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year in 2016. Concerns are high over the reality that feelings and beliefs of a certain individual have more influence on public opinion than objective facts do.
Companies are not free from the post-truth era. This is especially true for our society, as there is low trust in enterprises. A typical example is rumors. Those rumors that the facts are not confirmed, including both inside rumors and external analysis of a company, may cause a huge loss to the companies.
This phenomenon is influenced by easy media publishing and consumer choice. Nowadays anyone can have the status of media without investing a large amount of capital to print newspapers and send out broadcasts.
The number of people participating in the media has surged. In fact, the number of media registered in Korea has already reached more than 18,000, which is more than doubling over the past 10 years.
Considering the number of journalists is about 25,000 as announced by the Korea Press Foundation in 2016, the vast majority of the media are probably single-person media.
In the case of broadcasting, personal broadcasting is prevalent due to the surge of channels like YouTube and AfreecaTV. As such, more incomplete reports due to insufficient investigation of facts are being produced, unlike traditional news made through sufficient fact finding.
How should companies respond in this situation?
The first priority is to ensure that each and every employee is conscious about crisis. Heinrich's Law claims that a crisis arises after 300 small signals. It is most important for employees to capture these signals and to identify facts on a proactive basis.
In the event of a catastrophic crisis, companies lose tremendous resources. It would be the first job of a company to detect small signals of a crisis and to have a culture that responds proactively.
The "oxidized flavor" case of OB Beer in 2014 is a good example of how employees' sense of crisis determines the direction of a crisis.
At that time, there was a rumor going around on SNS that "the beer with oxidized flavor is not good for health, and especially pregnant women must avoid it."
The source of this rumor was detected by an OB Beer salesperson while skimming through SNS messages. The company quickly reported the SNS message to the police, and eventually it was revealed that the SNS message was posted by a rival company.
In response, OB Beer had a hygiene inspection conducted in cooperation with the Food and Drug Administration to confirm that there is no health problem with the beer, which eventually helped consumers verify the fact.
As the signal of a crisis grows, it appears in the reports of media. Nowadays, when a rumor spreads, it begins to be reported in the media without the facts being fully confirmed. In this case, a company should actively explain with respect to such reports not factually verified.
If not explained actively at the beginning, what starts off as a rumor tends to turn into a fact on people's mind. In that event, a situation may arise where the issue must be resolved through government investigation or court proceeding.
A classic example is the "Star Beggars" case of a famous coffee franchise. A digital "star" was given to customers per each cup of coffee purchased. For customers, collecting stars for free coffee was a fun event, and it was an opportunity to raise customer loyalty.
However, for the employees, it might have been annoying to take care of the customers collecting digital stars at busy coffee shops, and some of the employees were referring those customers as "Star Beggars" on their internal message board. This was somehow leaked to the public, and the company had to officially apologize two times after consumer boycott.
As seen from the above cases, when a company is faced with a crisis, each person in the company can grow or lessen the crisis. Let's not forget that it all depends on the employees to make a crisis worse or better.
Lee Bo-hyoung (bohyoung.lee@macoll.com) is CEO of Macoll Consulting Group.
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What motives and intrigues were behind the murder? The characters have their own truth. No one knows the whole truth. The truth is only known to the film director.
In the case where such fragmented and constructed truth is added by the political and religious beliefs and enthusiasm of each character, finding the trace of truth will be like watching glittering stars behind a spectacular firework display in the night sky.
This happens every day, and we are now living in the days of the post-truth. The term "post-truth" became a popular buzzword with President Trump's election. It was chosen as the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year in 2016. Concerns are high over the reality that feelings and beliefs of a certain individual have more influence on public opinion than objective facts do.
Companies are not free from the post-truth era. This is especially true for our society, as there is low trust in enterprises. A typical example is rumors. Those rumors that the facts are not confirmed, including both inside rumors and external analysis of a company, may cause a huge loss to the companies.
This phenomenon is influenced by easy media publishing and consumer choice. Nowadays anyone can have the status of media without investing a large amount of capital to print newspapers and send out broadcasts.
The number of people participating in the media has surged. In fact, the number of media registered in Korea has already reached more than 18,000, which is more than doubling over the past 10 years.
Considering the number of journalists is about 25,000 as announced by the Korea Press Foundation in 2016, the vast majority of the media are probably single-person media.
In the case of broadcasting, personal broadcasting is prevalent due to the surge of channels like YouTube and AfreecaTV. As such, more incomplete reports due to insufficient investigation of facts are being produced, unlike traditional news made through sufficient fact finding.
How should companies respond in this situation?
The first priority is to ensure that each and every employee is conscious about crisis. Heinrich's Law claims that a crisis arises after 300 small signals. It is most important for employees to capture these signals and to identify facts on a proactive basis.
In the event of a catastrophic crisis, companies lose tremendous resources. It would be the first job of a company to detect small signals of a crisis and to have a culture that responds proactively.
The "oxidized flavor" case of OB Beer in 2014 is a good example of how employees' sense of crisis determines the direction of a crisis.
At that time, there was a rumor going around on SNS that "the beer with oxidized flavor is not good for health, and especially pregnant women must avoid it."
The source of this rumor was detected by an OB Beer salesperson while skimming through SNS messages. The company quickly reported the SNS message to the police, and eventually it was revealed that the SNS message was posted by a rival company.
In response, OB Beer had a hygiene inspection conducted in cooperation with the Food and Drug Administration to confirm that there is no health problem with the beer, which eventually helped consumers verify the fact.
As the signal of a crisis grows, it appears in the reports of media. Nowadays, when a rumor spreads, it begins to be reported in the media without the facts being fully confirmed. In this case, a company should actively explain with respect to such reports not factually verified.
If not explained actively at the beginning, what starts off as a rumor tends to turn into a fact on people's mind. In that event, a situation may arise where the issue must be resolved through government investigation or court proceeding.
A classic example is the "Star Beggars" case of a famous coffee franchise. A digital "star" was given to customers per each cup of coffee purchased. For customers, collecting stars for free coffee was a fun event, and it was an opportunity to raise customer loyalty.
However, for the employees, it might have been annoying to take care of the customers collecting digital stars at busy coffee shops, and some of the employees were referring those customers as "Star Beggars" on their internal message board. This was somehow leaked to the public, and the company had to officially apologize two times after consumer boycott.
As seen from the above cases, when a company is faced with a crisis, each person in the company can grow or lessen the crisis. Let's not forget that it all depends on the employees to make a crisis worse or better.
Lee Bo-hyoung (bohyoung.lee@macoll.com) is CEO of Macoll Consulting Group.
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