@robingrant now venturing into the Eurostar story – how will he walk the tightrope my view frm dec09 [link to post] #socialbuzz

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@singleredfish Here’s a good one from @andrewgrill mate: [link to post] – & there’s a whole bunch of good stuff on there

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Thanks to @TelcoGeek: Here’s a good one from @andrewgrill mate: [link to post] – & there’s a whole bunch of good stuff on there

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NOTE : This isn’t about the mechanical issues, its about a total lack of foresight and responsiveness to previous failures.

The 2008 chunnel fire was fair/ample warning that “no plan was in place”.

Its unrealistic to expect the same management, who created this failed system, to be skilled enough to fix it…. or for that matter to deserve a second chance.

Name: Simon Redfern
email: simon.redfern @eurostar.com
message: Hello

You posted on your blog about the Eurostar trains that broke down in December, and made the point about the need for better communication with our passengers.

I thought you might be interested to see a copy of the Independent Review into the events, and our response which has just been published.

You can find our response here http://bit.ly/9idW1l together with a visual representation of what happened on the day.

We are extremely sorry for what happened, and take the situation very seriously. We’ve already taken action to address many of the Review’s recommendations, and we are committed to implementing all of its recommendations as quickly as possible. Above all we are focused on:

Improving passenger care in disruption
Improving communications, and
Strengthening the resilience of our trains

The Eurostar communications team will be providing information and updates at @eurostarcomms where we’ll be working closely with @little_break and @creamoflondon. You’ll find us making corporate announcements there as well as reporting back should there be any key service updates.

I hope you have time to look at the review findings, particularly on the communications side of things. If you have any thoughts please don’t hesitate to let me know.

All the best

Simon Redfern
Eurostar

It has been poor since the inspeption. With large public projects some people get it right London Olypic bid and some get it wrong. Oh and do not mention the Dome. I think they will learn the hard way through the negative plublicity, which you refer to. Others seem to feel this on the comments, I mean how much does a Twitter cost, nil preux.

Eurostar will implement a real-time listening and respond plan to engage in conversations in social media [link to post]

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How many other “traditional agencies” would do the same over a weekend and go beyond the call of duty.

Hats off to them for showing how as an industry we can respond quickly and help get the message out to the people that need it.

As with anything, a crisis tests every procedure and helps make things better for next time.

The real failing here is the Eurostar/Eurotunnel (traditional) communication efforts.

This should be the focus of any enquiry. Robin and the team should come out of this looking good and with lots of new business in 2010 in my view.

If as you suggest Eurostar may have been withholding information (and we may never know), then we are back to the old ways of PR and it is hard for Social Media (and the We Are Social team) to fight against this somewhat traditional approach of PR which is to contain the message.

This was my real point – social media promotes transparency which goes against standard PR training.

The irony is not lost on the term “public relations” which is really another name for “media management”.

Social media does not afford this luxury so brands and companies need a different approach.

With social media, it’s all about Listen > Learn > Engage > Integrate.

You have to start to listen and then engage to get anywhere and this is frankly painful for brands, so we should not beat them up, but instead help them make the transition.

Remember the web 10 years ago…. “do we really need a website?” was the standard response.

Now it’s “so do we need a social media strategy?”. People that ask this of me going forward will be given a 1 word response.

Eurostar.

Having said that, it may well be that the client just didn’t want to say anything or put anything out via these channels, which you can totally appreciate WAS not pointing out to people.