How would you have responded?

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It is all over the web, the post from the daughter of former GM CEO, Fritz Henderson, probably traveled faster than the news late Tuesday that he was resigning. This highlights the public’s obsession with the way social media is shaping the communications industry and the diminishing control the communications functions seems to have on how, when and which information gets to the public eye.

That aside, much of the conversations on Twitter and blogs are on the failure of GM to respond to Sarah Henderson’s post.  The question is should they? Will this post really have an effect on the brand reputation and purchasing decisions of consumers like you or I to buy a GM car? Perhaps a few people, close friends of Sarah and the family that naturally see the events as unfair – Hey! if anyone in my family ever gets fired, my natural tendency will be to protect and stand by the ones I love, I just don’t think I would do it over Facebook, but that is me.  Sarah did, and that raises questions to how a company such as GM, with significant challenges ahead, should react to this type of post/situation.

Should GM address Sarah? Or should the company let it go and let the noise diminish overtime?  Is a statement about family members being off limits the right statement? And was it really the daughter of Fritz Henderson the person who posted the Facebook update? Which brings a whole other set of questions as to validity, credibility and influence of social media platforms, but I will leave that for another post…

Yes, it brings up questions about the decisions made at GM and it brings about important issues as to how to best deal with disagreements that were not intended to become public in the way they have. I say focus on the important stuff; after all there have and will always be disagreements, retractors and angry people. The difference now is that those have a louder voice that can travel fast and through many vehicles, but do they have more influence as they would’ve have otherwise? i.e. at the lunch cafeteria in school?  How would you have responded?