The BOM’s horrible new site provides a great comms case study
Design price tag, discount product: The new BOM site cost $96m to develop
There’s a golden rule that should apply to all crisis communications: “It’s not what happens. It’s what happens after you learn about an issue.”
Australians are a forgiving lot.
We’ll nod if a company shows genuine contrition during a crisis.
But that golden rule doesn’t apply this week.
The apology given by the BOM CEO was mealy mouthed to say the least.
I t really said ‘ suck it up princess ‘ its changed, get over it.
Crisis communications! Really? I think there needs to be a rethink of the word “Crisis”. I worked in Network News for over 20 years (yes, one of the big 3) and trust me, just changing the font weight by 2px on the national map was like standing in front of a pedestal fan, facing a man with a sack of s**t pouring it into that fan. Every time promos or marketing mentioned “New Look”, GFX would stampede the holiday roster to avoid the oncoming “Nightmare on weather graphics street” epic bolloking that was ahead. I don’t know, and never figured out why people go spare on changing anything to do with the weather, but what I do know, is that after a couple of weeks of pillory, came the feedback of how much everyone hated the old way, & couldn’t believe it took that long to change, “what were we all doing in there, sitting on our hands?” I quite like the new one, I just checked to temps for the day so I’m going for a swim, easy!
Michael, is there a real need for each new sentence to also be a new paragraph? It reads less like a piece of journalism, and more like slam poetry.