Les Menuires 7 show how Millennials are prepared to use social media to fight injustice
by iain on Feb 23, 2012 • 12:10 pm 2 CommentsThe Arab Spring, Occupy and now the Les Menuires 7 – the Millennials are showing how natural they find it to use social media to fight injustice.
The Les Menuires 7
In this latest case – the Les Menuires 7 – seven chalet hosts have barricaded themselves into their luxury chalet after apparently being dismissed with immediate effect and told that they will not receive any wages.
Companies must respond quickly to negativity on social media
We have looked before at how companies need to respond promptly and accurately when social media turns against them. In the case of Sunshine Village, it became a public relations disaster. For Snowbasin Resort, a relatively prompt response and apology was much more successful.
The company in this case is ‘Ski The 3V‘ – and at this point the silence is deafening. There has been no comment on their Facebook page, Twitter or via their website. We tried to contact them for their side of the story, but were only able to leave a message and have not heard back.
Serious social media momentum
In the meantime, the Les Menuires 7 Facebook group is flying. It launched on Tuesday evening and passed 1000 fans on Wednesday evening. The Natives and Snowheads forums both have active threads and the hashtag LM7 on Twitter is getting a lot of activity.
One of the Seven was interviewed on BBC Radio Norfolk today (go to 1:55 in) and a Bolton community website has also run a story. We predict the dailies and other snowsports websites will pick up on this in the next 24 hours.
And what of the Seven?
Although we have not seen any confirmation that the seven were indeed sacked without pay, their Facebook page suggests they have already received an improved offer.
If the allegations are indeed true, then the company deserves all the bad publicity it is getting.
The lesson for other brand owners out there is that if, for whatever reason, social media starts working against you, then simply ignoring it will rarely help your cause.
We will update this article in the comments section below as this story progresses.
2 comments
iain says:
Feb 24, 2012
So, as suggested, 19 hours after writing this article are now:
Facebook fans – 3545
Mainstream ski site coverage – Planetski.eu, SkiclubofGreatBritain, WhiteLines
Local Press – Norwich Evening News, Belfast Telegraph
National Press – Daily Mail, Telegraphy
Details of all stories can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/skipedia/posts/368159509870136
iain says:
Feb 24, 2012
Coming up for 72 hours in:
Facebook fans – 4226
Twitter followers – 575
YouTube – 302 views (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDfqJ1n9jV0)
Mainstream ski site coverage – Planetski.eu, SkiclubofGreatBritain, WhiteLines
Local Press – Norwich Evening News, Belfast Telegraph, London Evening Standard
National Press – Daily Mail, Telegraph, Independent
Travel Press – Tnooz
Details of all stories can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/skipedia/posts/368159509870136
There has now been a quote from owner, claiming that staff get paid at the end of the month and it’s not the end of the month yet.