Speaking as someone who has been witness to several flash mobs, I can tell you that they are generally intended to entertain and delight onlookers. And the vast majority are perfectly harmless. If anything, the mall should embrace flash mobs such as the pre-Christmas dance they shut down. This is a fictional depiction, but it’s a pretty fair portrayal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77O6IrDYBBI

All it would have taken on the part of mall management would be a Direct Message on Twitter to one of the flash mob organizers saying, “Noticed your plans to stage a dance in our mall. We like the idea, but we do need someone to come by and sign a waiver & event form. Thanks!” It would have allowed the organizers to realize the fruits of their planning and rehearsal, kept mall management informed and prevented unwarranted panic and conveyed to future flash mob planners that the mall is on board so long as you let someone know ahead of time. This would foster a sense of peer pressure in the online community to prevent unruly flash mobs so that the more legitimate and entertaining ones could continue to take place.

Yes, businesses do need to embrace the new social tools and networks available to them and have crisis response plans in place. But it doesn’t have to be formed in a basis of fear that those darn teenagers are going to run amok in their store. If they put themselves out into the online social space, they need to understand the new realities it represents. Simply monitoring the conversation until you feel it’s time to step in and shut it down is not the answer.

Beverly
“The Biz Whiz”
http://www.thebizwhiz.com

http://www.webinknow.com/2010/10/twitter-misadventure-at-hr-block.html

Not only do we need crisis communications with real-time communication guidelines but social media policies as well.

rv
http://about.me/vorhaus

Certainly a lesson to be learned. However, I would take it even one step further. To paraphrase Carly Fiorina, great leaders are those who not lonly see the possibilities that others don’t see, but also the dangers. I would think the possibility of an event like the one that transpired would have been one that good leadership should have anticipated as a possibility and have a plan in place if it occurred. Clearly, Mayfair did not seem prepared from a media crisis standpoint, which I would attribute to a flaw in management.

Whether Bayshore was actually out ahead of the situation or not, is not answered since they needed only to respond in time to the Mayfair incident.

Good crisis management should endeavor to have a playbook covering all forseeable possibilities. That required being both proactive and interactive.