Extinguishing a Fictional Fire: Responding to Emotional and Misinformed Audiences

Along with their benefits, social media platforms can present reputational challenges for organizations, including a channel to breed visible, online reputational threats known as paracrises. In 2018, an emotional television episode of This Is Us sparked social media chatter surrounding the popular slow cooker Crock-Pot. Distraught viewers angrily inundated social media with unfounded fears, proclaimed the appliances were unsafe, and vowed to discard them, circulating inaccurate information and creating a hybrid angry customer and misinformation paracrisis for the brand. Crock-Pot quickly transformed the threat into a public relations success and brand-building opportunity by using emotionally-driven messages, modified crisis response strategies, and strategic alliances. This study illustrates the limitations of current paracrisis response strategies for responding to misinformation and emotional audiences and demonstrates that adapting classic crisis responses (i.e., situational crisis communication theory) can be a more effective approach. The findings offer recommendations for how managers can adapt classic crisis responses and integrate communication style elements, including human voice and humor, to manage angry customers and misinformation paracrises effectively.