November has not been a great month for our icon brand Zespri. Tests early November showed a vine-killing disease known as PSA had been detected in Te Puke, Motueka and Golden Bay, and has since spread up to the Hawkes Bay and Whakatane regions. It’s pretty serious – already this has affected the future growth and export for a couple of years and the Minister of Agriculture David Carter has appealed for Government aid to help eradicate the bacterium.
"This is a extremely important export earner for New Zealand and they are dealing with a very severe disease," he said.
There is no doubt that the airborne bacteria will be hard to get rid of – other countries Italy, France, Portugal, Japan, Korea and China have been forced to live with it, and growers reports over the years suggest that the symptoms have indeed been in New Zealand for quite some time.
They have been regularly in touch with New Zealand press – every change in information, updates on press conferences and meetings has been extremely well handled and I commend Zespri on such a calm head amidst such a crisis.
In terms of channeling this information into social media it has reached Twitter and Facebook, but only because other news mediums have passed it on to their readers. Upon research I found a well used Facebook page with over 700 fans, and updates as early as last week – but with no mention of the bacteria or crops that have been affected. This is a large opportunity missed in reputation management.
The company also don’t have a Twitter account – by not doing so fails to bring their attention to what is being said in a whole new news media platform. You can’t stop the misinformation if you are not on it – but you can be the official channel of information to moderate and confirm and deny any rumours. It’s all about managing the messages – these are the arenas where people voice their opinions, much unlike the traditional news mediums. Zespri need to be clearly disseminating information on both.
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