GM hits the fail button on Sarah Henderson’s Facebook assault
All it takes is a single comment to set off a social media storm and the daughter of ousted GM CEO Fritz Henderson kicked one off last night with a comment slamming the carmaker on Facebook. What did GM? Stayed silent.
Sarah Henderson let fly with an expletive filled message on Facebook’s GM’s page (with its modest 106,019 fans) after the company announced that her father, Fritz Henderson, was “resigning” to be replaced by Ed Whitacre who she described as “as a selfish piece of shift (sic)”. Ouch.
The comment was taken down quickly, but not before auto site jalopnik.com had seen the post and saved it for prosperity and giving rise to thousands of news stories and blog posts.
Here’s what she said: “He fucking got asked to step down all of you fucking idiots. Im Fritz’s fucking daughter, and he did not fucking resign. Whitacre is a selfish piece of shift, who cares about himself and not the fucking company. Have fun with GM, I hope to never buy from this god foresaken company every again. Fuck all of you.”
Does this damage GM’s brand much? Does Sarah Henderson telling us that “Whitacre is a selfish piece of shift, who cares about himself and not the fucking company” do irreparable damage to its image?
Probably not, but it isn’t good PR either and I’m pretty sure there will be some lasting damage from this. It might be small, but it will strike a chord with some people. They certainly won’t become fans of GM on Facebook.
So how do you deal with this? Do you immediately take the comment down and try to ignore it or do you do something else?
I’m pretty sure that most PR advisors will be telling GM to take it down, but it should also respond in someway and it hasn’t done that. All GM would say was “that family members of employees were off limits”.
They are off limits, but no one is suggesting you take Sarah Henderson down, just that you respond to her and do what you can – see if there is a conversation to be had. It might be there is nothing to be done, but usually there is.
Amusingly while GM was quick to take down her comment (there are a couple of hundred on the page) it did not take down a little video on the sidebar where it says “Fritz Henderson is looking forward to World Expo 2010″. I’m guessing not so much.
It has been a Facebook week with all these Facebook stats out yesterday and possible new designs leaking earlier this week.
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