When a brand commits a gaffe or implodes on social media, we watch with a mix of horror, schadenfreude, and – perhaps strongest of all – relief that we’re not the ones under fire. But you don’t really know what a social media crisis is like until you’ve been on the inside of one as it unfolds. 

This talk will provide best practices for dealing with all manner of crisis, self-inflicted or not. It will feature Chapin Clark, who runs R/GA's copy department and tweets for @RGA; Wendy Harman, Director of Information Management and Situational Awareness for American Red Cross; and Neal Mann, who is a multimedia innovations editor at The Wall Street Journal and tweets as @fieldproducer. Kristen Joy Watts, an ACD in R/GA's Mobile and Social Platforms Group, will moderate. Other industry professionals who have lived through Twitter and Facebook meltdowns will join us through brief videos. They'll talk about how they handled it, what they'd do differently, and how they moved on.

When a social media crisis runs its course, we tend to forget about it and the people involved (many of whom lose their jobs). There's an assumption that they're no longer suitable for polite society. At the very least, we're sure they'll never work in social media again. Our hope is this presentation will convey there is life after social media catastrophe.`