SUSS COM302e TMA02: Crisis Communication Strategy for Irvins' Incident

This report examines the crisis communication strategies employed by Irvins Salted Egg following the discovery of a lizard in their fish skin snack. The report delves into the impact of the incident on the brand's credibility and stakeholders, including consumers, retailers, and the company's management. It analyzes the importance of timely and effective communication, particularly through social media, in addressing consumer concerns and mitigating reputational damage. The report outlines a detailed crisis communication plan, emphasizing the need for immediate apologies, quality control measures, and transparent communication with all stakeholders. It also explores the importance of forming a crisis management team, setting up a centralized crisis management center, and developing a risk management plan to prevent future incidents. Furthermore, the report includes a sample newsletter and underscores the critical role of corporate communicators in managing crises and maintaining brand reputation.

Running Head: CORPORATE COMMUNICATION
CORPORATE COMMUNICATION
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Corporate communication is identified as a primary component of business
communication. With the changing world of business, the dynamic market environment demands
regularly and timely communication of brands with its internal as well as external public to
maintain strong brand presence as well as heal the corporate would during any crisis situation
(Doorley & Garcia, 2015). Therefore this report deals with the crisis situation that was raised in
the Irvins Salted Egg manufacturing firm after the shocking incident where consumers found a
dead lizard in the fish skin snack packet ("Yahoo is now a part of Verizon Media", 2019). Being
an extremely popular food company with more than 13 outlets in Singapore Hong Kong and the
Philippines, this incident came as a great slap on the brand’s credibility and demanded
immediate attention of the company executives. Therefore in order to develop an effective crisis
communication strategy it is very essential for the brand to consider certain core attributes which
includes the following:
a) This contamination issue has no doubt affected the image of the company and the key
stakeholders of the firm which includes the sellers’ retailers the company management
and of course the most important aspect of any business the customers. In the refereed
case study Ms. Jane Holloway who is a loyal consumer of this brand seemed to be utterly
disgusted and equally shocked after her family discovered the dead reptile in their half
eaten bag of Irvins Salted Egg Fish Skin. Ms Holloway is very disappointed as the
product is quite expensive as a small packet of this salted egg fish skin weighing nearly
105g costs over $8.Moreover being almost a regular buyer of this product such
contamination issues directly affected consumer’s moral. As Ms Holloway took to social
media to raise her voice against this contamination, the other netizens equally supported

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her and asked the company to seek immediate refund to these customers who have
received such contaminated packets of products.
Therefore in such a crisis condition the company officials must address the situation with
utmost immediacy and urgency. As the social media is considered to be the fastest mode
of communication as well as to have the highest reach the company must utilize it as the
prior communication channel to first and foremost send an apology to the customers who
have suffered in this crisis situation as well as guaranteeing them to take immediate steps
in checking that the contaminated food packets are not distributed any further (IRVINS
winning recipe for surviving a PR crisis", 2019). However it is also necessary to address
this issue in an individual manner. Therefore the company officials must communicate to
the stores spread across different cities to emphasize on their quality control measures
and check the available packets of Irvins egg fish skin before any further sales. The store
retailers must send the rest of the products of re-examination as well as if any customer
comes to complain for the contamination issue the retailers must be polite and patient
enough and seek immediate apology for this big blunder. Another very big concern for
the firm is to communicate with its customers on a personal level. Therefore in the reefed
case study as Ms. Holloway seems to be very disappointed the brand must send an
apology mail to the customer as early as possible along with regular communication
regarding what steps the company is taking towards checking this contamination issue
either through their social media channels or through personal mails to the affected
consumers.
b) Social media is rightfully regarded as the fastest mode of communication where any
information spreads like wild fire. Therefore in case of Irvins where many of consumers

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and netizens have immensely criticized the brand for being so careless with their quality
of manufacturing the company should first and foremost embrace whatever issues are
being raised in the social media and necessarily try to answer it all (Jin, Liu & Austin,
2014). Being available and acknowledging one’s mistake stands immensely important in
any such crisis situation. The necessary communication step in such a crisis situation
would include:
1. Gaining control of the situation is something that needs to be done right at the outset.
It is imperative in this instance to assign the senior most professionals to take charge
of the situation. A heart-felt apology post by the senior officials must be uploaded as
early as possible in the social media profile. The problem also needs to be identified
through the use of what may be termed as reliable information. Everyone must be
aware of who it is to be contacted in the given situation, where and when. A crisis
management team needs to be formed that can put the plans of action in place for the
crisis situation to be suitably mitigated.
2. Setting up a crisis management center of a centralized nature is the next important
step that needs to be undertaken. Crisis management is a specialized activity, and as
such the people who are recruited to be part of this center should be individuals who
have sufficient experience in the area of crisis management and who are therefore
likely to do a good job of getting the situation under control. The crisis management
center should also be serviced by individuals who are highly alert by nature and who
will not hesitate to work even at odd hours of the day to be on high alert of possible
crisis situations that may arise and which may have to be resolved in an instant.

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2. Communicating directly with the affected constituencies is something that needs to be
done next. An effort needs to be made to find out how internal and external publics like
employees and customers have been affected by the matter and the role that can be taken
by organized leadership to address the issues that have arisen (Newburry et al., 2019).
3. The next important step is communicating this emergency situation across different
stores of the brand and asking the retailers not to sell any packets of the product until and
unless thorough examination is done. It is crucial to remember in this respect that
communication needs to be carried out at an early stage rather than a later stage and
responses in the form of silence or vague answers is something that is going to have to be
strictly avoided. The situation has to be dealt with head on and avoidance or silence is
only going to make the situation worse (Silver & Shaw, 2018).
4. It is also necessary for the firm to publicize all the examination and quality check
reports either through social media or by using the television, or the news papers.
5. It is also necessary for the brand to constantly monitor all the communication channels
to see that no wrong or misleading information is being spared in the hours of crisis and
if so then the company officials must immediately communicate and clear out any
confusion as early as possible (Ren et al., 2015).
6. The company must train the whole crisis management team keeping in mind one single
objective which is to heal the corporate wounds as early as possible. Therefore the brand
message, the mission and the vision of the brand must be well aligned to achieve the
same (Coombs, 2014).
7) Immediate plans have to be made in order to keep a crisis like this from arising again
in the near future. A risk management and risk detection plan will have to be drawn up
that will alert the leadership to the possible occurrence of a similar crisis down the line
(Gavrila & Ramirez, 2019).

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8) Business operations need to be continued with as usual and no impression should be
given in general of the fact that a crisis has taken place. There should be no interference
with or interruption to client related communication and activities and business has to go
one just like it does on a daily basis (Prosperio & Zervas, 2017).
c) News Letter:
Dear Irvins Families,
Irvins a very well-known snacking brand is extremely apologetic and shameful for the
food contamination issue which has caused pain and severe problem to our valuable customers.
Irvins considers communication to be a very important aspect of retaining brand value, therefore
through this new release emphasizes on the aspect of what and how it plans to check this crisis
situation. Irvins sells its snacks across Singapore and this incident did spread like wild fire
affecting its sales across the whole city.
Irvins has always stood by the notion of quality and utmost consumer satisfaction. The
day we received this news of contamination we made sure to close all our stores across all the
cities for two days as a sign of showing apology to the most treasured possession of our brand
that is our consumers. Therefore we have taken stringent actions in investigating the root cause
of such quality failure and breakdown in the whole selling process of Irvins most addictive
snacks the egg fish skin. We are glad to announce that all the food packets have already been
pulled down and sent for testing and investigation. We are rigorously testing all products present
in all our retail outlets using the most upgraded food processing and packaging technology. We
would request our valuable consumers to post any query related to our products on our official
website or on our social media page and even lend us some of their valuable suggestions on how

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we can further make room for improvements. We assure you to bring back your favorite snack in
a better and healthier manner.
Thank you,
Yours Truly,
Irvins.
Therefore from the above cited discussion it is very clear that no matter how big or small
crisis situation is a brand is expected to act immediately upon it. It is really the attitude of the
company official which can make or break the company’s reputation forever in any such crisis
situation. Thus the role of a corporate communicator gains a lot of significance in any crisis
situation as the need to strategies the whole communication pan, implement it and continuously
monitor its significance is very essential.

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References:
Coombs, W. T. (2014). Ongoing crisis communication: Planning, managing, and responding.
Sage Publications.
Doorley, J., & Garcia, H. F. (2015). Reputation management: The key to successful public
relations and corporate communication. Routledge.
Gavrila, S. G., & Ramirez, F. O. (2019). Reputation management revisited: US universities
presenting themselves online. In Universities as Agencies (pp. 67-91). Palgrave Macmillan,
Cham.
IRVINS winning recipe for surviving a PR crisis. (2019). Retrieved 5 October 2019, from
https://medium.com/@betterdanthis/irvins-winning-recipe-for-surviving-a-pr-crisis-
f70be3148cbf
Jin, Y., Liu, B. F., & Austin, L. L. (2014). Examining the role of social media in effective crisis
management: The effects of crisis origin, information form, and source on publics’ crisis
responses. Communication research, 41(1), 74-94.
Newburry, W., Deephouse, D. L., & Gardberg, N. A. (2019). Global Aspects of Reputation and
Strategic Management', Global Aspects of Reputation and Strategic Management
(Research in Global Strategic Management, Volume 18).

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Proserpio, D., & Zervas, G. (2017). Online reputation management: Estimating the impact of
management responses on consumer reviews. Marketing Science, 36(5), 645-665.
Ren, J., Zhang, Y., Zhang, K., & Shen, X. S. (2015). SACRM: Social aware crowdsourcing with
reputation management in mobile sensing. Computer Communications, 65, 55-65.
Silver, I. M., & Shaw, A. (2018). Pint-sized public relations: The development of reputation
management. Trends in cognitive sciences, 22(4), 277-279.
Yahoo is now a part of Verizon Media. (2019). Retrieved 5 October 2019, from
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/irvins-salted-egg-founder-says-hygiene-better-new-facilities-
email-apology-thai-customer-121443654.html