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WGME loses major advertiser over adverse news coverage

N

newsbot

Hannaford, the supermarket chain that had a data breach leading to 4.2 million credit card numbers going into the hands of criminals, has pulled its advertising from WGME due to 'aggressive' coverage of the scandal. Tellingly, Hannaford can't point to a single falsehood in WGME's reporting. WGME is making hay of this, as you might expect, and Hannaford gets yet another black eye.

http://www.wgme.com/News/story_detail/story_detail_9.shtml
 
The handling of this by Hannaford has been in study in how not to do it.

The story breaks and (even with weeks of lead time) they don't get out in front of it.

They continue their regional radio buy with an emphasis on their Pharmacy business.

They don't have their CEO or similar top person: educate, make their case, apologize and pledge to do better; in order to regain trust.

They don't take the lessons of the last 25+ years in corporate crisis communication; remember how Johnson & Johnson handled the Tylenol story?

Then, they go after a news outlet for performing its job.

Major wincing moments throughout from Public Relations pros.
 
What market size is this station in?

The prompter reader and writer are sub-par. The questions could've been put in a better way.

The PR person looked totally unprepared. No wonder they pulled the ads. They had to save face somehow.
 
Kudos to Terry Cole for standing behind his reporters. In this day of dwindling ad dollars in "old media", it's all too easy to look the other way for the sake of the bottom line.

I'd stop shopping at Hannaford if they weren't the only supermarket in my hometown.
 
I hate to say anything nice about a Sinclair-owned station...but mega-props to WGME management for not bowing down to the almighty dollar and sticking by its people.
 
So Hannaford is stupid enough to run important software on a Windows system and then blames a TV station for reporting a security breach?

Good for WGME.

Paul
 
jvparent said:
I hate to say anything nice about a Sinclair-owned station...but mega-props to WGME management for not bowing down to the almighty dollar and sticking by its people.
Click to expand...

I agree but unfortunately all that will be remembered is the money loss this caused and should any of these people try to get jobs in bigger markets, well that will be remembered to.
 
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