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Torontonians have been getting excited about visits from George Clooney, Marion Cotillard, Robert De Niro and…. bedbugs?

On August 24, Helen Spitzer, a Toronto-area writer, was at a screening at the Scotiabank Theatre. The following day she developed bumps on all the places that had been touching her seat at the theatre. She tried to contact Cineplex to no avail being routed through telephone hell and never speaking to a live person. When she was unable to reach them she tweeted about her worry that the theatre—a major centre for TIFF—had bedbugs. She’s since deleted the post, but in response, her friend in Los Angeles, James Rocchi tweeted,

“Bad, Bad news from Toronto re: #TIFF10: Torontonian Friend got, yes, bedbugs at the Scotiabank — aka where all press screenings are. …  4:42 PM Aug 30th”

Within 2 hours or Rocchi’s tweet, Cameron Bailey, the Co-director of TIFF, had responded via Twitter that,

“Before bedbugs becomes today’s meme: we’re on it, we’re talking to Cineplex & are planning for an itch-free #TIFF10 6:03 PM Aug 30th”

Within a day TIFF and Cineplex issued a statement that they had hired a pest control company who confirmed that Scotiabank theatre did not have bedbugs, and that Hollywood’s biggest stars would live another day un-blemished and sans-itch.

However, this wasn’t before The Hollywood Reporter, Movieline.com, Perez Hilton, and the major Toronto dailies had all reported on the allegation, some repeating them with more veracity than others.

On one level, this story is a success. TIFF was able to respond to an online allegation within a day to staunch it with minimal damage.

On another level, it has two cautionary tales.

The first is about customer service. Had Cineplex responded to Spitzer’s telephone calls rather than routing her through telephone hell, she might never have tweeted about an itchy backside and her worry about bedbugs. It’s the old adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Frankly, in the age of social media, an ounce of prevention is worth 10 pounds of cure because of the damage that a single person can inflict through a social medium like Twitter. Although the social media element is important to this story, the story begins with flawed customer service. The challenge for TIFF has an additional layer of complexity given that TIFF faced reputational risk over Cineplex’s customer service failure. While social media was a tool in this issue, the issue wasn’t created by social media. One needs only think of the United broke my guitar or #TutusForTanner to see that what appear to be social media issues are spawned by experiences that have nothing to do with Facebook, Twitter or any other social sites. Many of the reputational challenges that companies face are related to good, old-fashioned customer service or the customer service of their partners.

The second tale is the speed at which information travels through social media. TIFF was lucky that Cameron Bailey had an established Twitter presence, and could get TIFF’s narrative into the mix within an hour of Rocchi’s tweet. In social media, speed kills. The takeaway is that you need to be engaged in social media in order to use it to respond to crises at a moment’s notice. You need robust monitoring to see criticisms as they arise, and you need to be ready to respond at a moment’s notice.

At the end of the day, there are no bedbugs in Scotiabank Theatre. TIFF did a sterling job of responding to a real reputational challenge. But the morals of the story are that the best crises to manage are the ones you prevent, and that given the ever-increasing impact of social media on mainstream media dialogue, you need to have a social media presence in place to respond.

The Mark News caught up with Jaime Watt to speak about whether summer polling really matters, and whether the recent poll numbers have any significance in the long-run.

This week Air Canada got caught in the middle of a Twitter uprising after the airline broke a terminally ill child’s $15,000 wheelchair on a flight to La Guardia. Air Canada staff on the ground told the boy and his family that he would have to wait 5 days to get his chair back.

His aunt retaliated on Twitter, the Twittersphere took up his cause, and within 24 hours, Air Canada returned the repaired chair and offered the boy and his cousins a free trip to Disney World – a dream the boy, Tanner Bawn, has always had. In addition, the airline has offered to donate to a fundraising campaign to have Tanner’s home renovated so that the boy can die at home.

There are two things worth noting about this incident:

1. A passionate online community, when activated, can cause companies real grief, particularly if the fight pits David versus Goliath. This all started because Tanner’s aunt, a prolific blogger, tapped people in her social network (many of whom were on their way to New York to participate in a fundraiser for Tanner) and asked people to spread the word. As an influencer in her network, her call to action carried a lot of weight and likely caught Air Canada off guard. She’s proof that influencers have the power to quickly assemble an army of Davids who will take great delight in making Goliath’s life miserable.
2. Air Canada recognized their mistake and responded quickly. They could have ignored the social media masses, but they were smart enough to see that if they didn’t act quickly, they were setting themselves up for an ugly drubbing. Obviously, it would have been better if the folks on the ground had shown more consideration, but the corporate response went above and beyond, thereby quickly putting out the fire.

Some will argue that Air Canada only responded the way it did because of the social media uprising. That’s probably the case, but is that such a bad thing? Social media types like to talk about how important it is for companies to listen to the online community and respond accordingly. Looks like Air Canada did just that.

CBC’s summer panelists Susan Delacourt, Jennifer Ditchburn, David Herle and Jaime Watt discuss the political impact of the complaints against RCMP boss William Elliott and the controversy over Statistics Canada’s census.

Jaime Watt conducted the following interview for The Mark News:

Despite the Helena Guergis scandal and controversy surrounding the handling of Afghan detainees, the Conservative Party maintains a sizable lead over the Liberal Party, who have failed to capitalize on their opponents’ bad press. In a July 8 EKOS poll, the Conservatives tallied a 10-point advantage over the Liberals, just days after Stephen Harper’s much-maligned G20 Summit led to destruction in the streets of Toronto.

Jaime Watt, Chair and Senior Partner at Navigator Ltd., spoke with The Mark about why the Tories have managed to deflect criticism on several occasions. He says the key is sticking to their key messages and competencies.

Jaime Watt conducted the following interview for The Mark News:

The “Liberal Express” bus tour, which will take Michael Ignatieff on a nine-week trip across Canada, kicked off last week – but not without some early controversy. On day one of the tour, the bus broke down near the Quebec-Ontario border. And prior to the tour’s start, Ignatieff compared Prime Minister Stephen Harper to the devil in Calgary. Ignatieff is trying to build support for the Liberal Party, which is polling at its lowest levels since Stéphane Dion was party leader.

Jaime Watt, Chair and Senior Partner at Navigator Ltd., spoke with The Mark about why Michael Ignatieff’s summer strategy confuses him, and why he thinks the Liberal leader needs to solidify his core constituency.

It was nearly impossible to escape this week without stumbling upon a tweet or Facebook status update about The Old Spice Guy (aka Isaiah Mustafa). If you haven’t checked out the YouTube response videos, you’re missing out on one brilliantly executed social media campaign.

Social media practitioners constantly talk of the need for “engagement.” Everyone claims to be doing it; few actually do it. It’s safe to say, the Old Spice’s marketing agency, Wieden + Kennedy gets it. What makes this campaign truly remarkable, is how quickly the writers and producers of the videos responded to real-time questions and comments sent to them via Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. For instance, one Twitter fan asked the Old Spice Guy to propose to his girlfriend. The request was sent at 7:06pm ET on July 13th. The response came in at 8:29pm:

There were 87 180 such videos in a two-day span – all of them custom responses to specific questions.

You can’t get any more engaging than that. For the recipient, they get a video they can’t help but share with their followers, helping to catapult the campaign to viral heights. According to Iain Tait of Weiden, what made this campaign so successful was how closely social media specialists worked with the technical team.

“We’re looking at who’s written those comments, what their influence is and what comments have the most potential for helping us create new content. The social media guys and script writers are collaborating to make that call in real time. We have people shooting and we’re editing it as it happens. Then the social media guys are looking at how to get that back out around the web…in real time.”

Trust also played an important role – Proctor and Gamble left it to Weiden to wage this campaign with little supervision. Speed kills in this business, and Proctor and Gamble were smart to let their pros do their jobs.

For a walk down memory lane, here’s the original TV commercial that started it all:

This week Mashable reported that Lady Gaga beat President Obama to 10 million Facebook fans. Big surprise? Not really. No president has had a number one record since… well ever. What is interesting is that the president remains so close in Facebook fans to Lady Gaga. It speaks to two distinct points: the value that the White House places on the use of social media, the culture of celebrity that attaches itself to American presidents.

The Obama campaign was notable for its use of social media. My.barackobama.com was a game-changing campaign tool. It decentralized organizing ability to local levels, brought Americans together, and successfully converted interest into action. Since the election my.barackobama.com has been converted into Organizing for America. Additionally, Democrats have continued to drive their social media presence. Partially this reflects a media reality in which increasing numbers of people around the world get their news online and through social media, but also the importance that the Obama Democrats continue to place on social media during the mid-term. Their success is notable. Though the president continues to be buffeted by criticisms about the BP spill, his handling of the economic crisis and wars overseas, his fan-count is second only to the current darling of pop music. It’s especially notable because of the strength that social media can give to detractors, and let’s not kid ourselves, the GOP have not been slouches online. Let’s set something straight, no pop star could ever have the negatives of a sitting president, so for a president—any president—to be this close in popularity a pop star speaks to the importance placed the Democrats upon driving social media.

The culture of celebrity that attaches itself to American presidents is nothing new. I will leave this debate to historians and cultural theorists, but most people would agree that John Kennedy was the first celebrity president, and presidential celebrity has only increased since then. You only need to take a look at the number of magazine covers that Lyndon Johnson was on and compare it to the number of covers that Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton has appeared on to see the veracity of this claim. The Obama fan count—which has reached 10 million during this week—is proof that this trend continues. Indeed, the president has more Facebook fans than a lot of celebs. The Oprah Winfrey Show has 1.6 million fans, Twilight has 4.6 million… and Mike Huckabee has 287,327 fans. The president’s fan count is in the absolute upper echelon of Facebook fan counts.

The translation of celebrity into social media popularity is unsurprising. In addition to presidential celebrity, the president’s fan count has been further increased by the Democrats ongoing commitment to social media. At the moment the ask presented by the Obama Facebook page is only to “like” the page and “stay in touch.” With the next election still two years off it will be interesting to see is how well this social media popularity can be translated into more significant asks such as fundraising dollars, volunteer hours and ultimately into votes.