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Perhaps you’ve heard of Amy’s Baking Company Baking Boutique & Bistro – and not just because the name is a mouthful. In recent hours, the company has quickly escalated its reputation from being a feature on Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares to being the social media crisis that launched a thousand cringes. In the process, it’s also earned close to 45,000 Likes.
It started with the bakery’s appearance on Ramsey’s show. The premise involves Ramsey lending his efforts into improving struggling restaurants, traditionally by yelling excessively at the owners. But at Amy’s, he met his match in owners Samy and Amy Bouzaglo, whose unimaginably intolerable behavior extended not only to him (in lashing at his criticisms) but also to their own servers (in stealing their tips) and to their customers (by screaming at them).
The reality of their service was, apparently, too much reality for the show; Ramsey quit the restaurant.
It’s possible that at this point, the poor publicity could still have been utilized into a more positive spin for ABC Bistro. After all, when a restaurant has sunk so low that even Ramsey declares defeat, it seems that the only way to go from there is up.
Unless, of course, you’re Samy and Amy Bouzaglo and you decide that the most efficient way to dispel negative attention is unleashing a string of ALL-CAPS, expletive- and spelling error-ridden rants. Let’s take a look at their choice of action – and the choice of action that most sane brands on social media would have taken instead. We’ll focus on three.
ABC’s Steps – And The Right Steps
1. ABC Bistro: Reply to everybody!
Better than ABC Bistro: Handle reviews with caution: respond selectively and with precision, rather than responding to every review.
Negative reviews will happen, inevitably once Gordon Ramsey publicly outs your restaurant as insufferable. But nothing, not even that, merits a response to every single negative review. Ever. In doing so, the bistro came across as overly defensive and uptight.
The better move here is to respond to only selective amounts of malicious comments with a firm, clear defense. Besides neutralizing the attacks, this will project an image of the brand as being in control, making readers more willing to accept the brand’s stance.
2. ABC Bistro: Yell! ADD CAPS! More posts will win the argument!
Better than ABC Bistro: Maintain a consistent brand voice that is expressed through the tone and choice of words on social media channels.
If ABC Bistro’s brand was a person, what kind of persona does it communicate through its major flare-up? Certainly it’s not the serene, calming environment suggested by the bistro’s Facebook cover photo. On the contrary, their brand voice in the online battle was better aligned with the negative, overbearing image conveyed on Ramsey’s show – all which only incited further aggression from both ends.
3) ABC Bistro: Curse at the customers! Insult the reviewers!
Better than ABC Bistro: Stay professional in both acknowledging and responding to negativity.
The most optimal way for responding to negative reviews is with grace: recognize the areas for improvement and point out the steps that the company is undertaking to amend its shortcomings. This presents an opportunity also for spotlighting strong points or future developments.
Instead, ABC Bistro hurled expletives directly pointed at its reviewers, calling into question their integrity and reproaching them for being “oppressors.” Though it could be easy to chalk it down to the intensity of the situation, ABC Bistro has, in fact, been actively attacking its negative reviews on Yelp since 2010.
In Summary
There’s that old adage that trumpets the thinking “There is no such thing as bad publicity.” Without the need for further emphasis, it’s obvious that ABC Bistro has embroiled itself into a hot mess of mistakes – and online, those missteps live forever in screengrabs and articles. But on the flip side, ABC Bistro has acquired itself a neat 43,063 Likes (at press time) since its tantrum went viral. That’s up from its original 2,860 Likes – a 1,400% increase!
And that’s not even counting its unpaid-for spotlight on Buzzfeed, Reddit, INC, Forbes, Cnet, and countless other heavily-trafficked sources.
For Samy and Amy Bouzaglo, the publicity came at the cost of becoming the laughing stock of the Internet and the focus of many social media crisis management examples to come. A fair exchange for publicity?
