You are a social media manager for a vendor management consultancy. Your clients include well known financial institutions, banks, and insurance agencies. Despite the fact that these organizations can be conservative in their advertising approach, you have generated solid interest in the services of your consultancy along with multiple new client prospects. You have employed a variety of social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. You are in the process of designing a new marketing campaign by using your favorite Web 2.0 tool Pinterest when you get a call from Mark, your buddy at the IT department. One of the pins you created for your company's Pinterest website, says Mark, has been pinned by MLC, a company known for shady financial practices and even money laundering. It seems MLC is trying to build a clean new reputation and enter the legitimate financial market. They would love to associate the name of their company with your own consultancy name and established reputation. Mark urges you to close the Pinterest account immediately. You hang up when Don, the manager of the sales department stops at your desk on the way to the new training about security issues related to social media. You had forgotten all about it. Should you go? Maybe the training will help you find a way to neutralize the attempts of MLC to involve the name of your company in their marketing campaign.
While considering your options, you get a call from your boss, the VP of marketing. He's been informed and troubled by the situation with MLC, and he wants you to handle it immediately.
What should you do? How can yo apply each step of the S2PS2 to generate viable solutions and solve the problem?
Consider the following questions:
Question: What is the problem? What are the main events?
Question: Who are the participants and the decision makers influencing the outcome?
Question: Why did the problem occur? What were the main factors contributing to the problem?
Question: Was there a turning point or defining moment during the course of events? Did this event make any specific solutions possible?
Question: What other possible solutions do you see? What evaluation models can you use?
Question: What solution will you implement? What kinds of rules or plans need to be put in place to facilitate the implementation of the solution?