The video of “Fed Ex Guy Throwing
My Computer Monitor,” which is uploaded by goobie55, is not a big deal in the
beginning, until in two days, five million people watched it, and started to
give negative comments on You Tube. The deliveryman
caught up through video camera when he threw the package from the fence without
having any effort of ringing the bells. He just threw it!
Fed Ex started to
gain more problems, and in the time of crisis where a company reputation starts
to be in jeopardy. Public Relations have to move on to prevent bigger crisis.
Fed Ex did not just ignore the video or pretend that there is nothing happened.
They are responsive by creating “counter” video, by saying “Sorry” to customer.
Fed Ex acknowledges the mistakes, declare what they have done to replace the
broken monitor to their customer, and emphasize, “What just happened, is not
representative of the whole company.” Fed Ex aware of quick response in crisis
management, especially involving fast information dissemination through digital
media (Seeger, et al, 1998). In a smart way, Fed Ex identify that the “throwing
monitor” are: individual human error, incident and the company is still
responsible and want to say sorry, but it is not representing the million
number of “excellence” service.
An apologetic speech
through You Tube video is a polite way to show sympathy towards the “victims”
of Fed Ex incident, even though sometime it can open possible legal
consequences (Benoit, 2007). However, if the organization show sympathetic
response and take responsibility through compensation, it can be an effective
way to rebuild positive perception of the public to the company (Coombs, 2007).
From FedEx, scholars can learn how ambiguous information in the time of crisis can be a possible area for criticism from the audience. Obviously, audiences who have negative response or negative experience have more willingness to put more effort in providing negative testimonials and information. Thus, from this crisis experience, scholars can look deeper on the correlation between particular rhetorical strategies with the immediate response of audience, which is recorded in the commentary section of the Web 2.0. Through digital media text, and audience response artifacts, rhetorical examination of central figure can be mutually connected with the rhetoric of the audience. Thus, as Benson (1989) argued about the mutual agency between audience and speaker, this agency is stronger through the accessibility of response in digital media. The mutual interaction between audience and speaker in the arts of rhetoric also exists to criticize the rhetors and to create the intertwining relations between the “object” and the “subject” (Benson, 1989). The audiences are no longer only the “object” but they can also be the subjects of rhetorical examination.
GOOD JOB!!
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