Rats in my Bed or the Art Preparing for a Bad Buzz

No brand is immune from a bad buzz, and it is often very difficult to get out of it without a long lasting impact on reputation and customer fidelity. In August this year Airbnb, a young start-up from San Francisco, had to pay a hefty price as it tried to catch up with the controversy around a neglected complaint of a customer.

That story made it to the most important web focused media and major newspapers had several articles dedicated to AirBnB’s complaining customer. In retrospect, I very much doubt that AirBnB’s long response time was an error as the negative buzz around the devastated flat prolonged and intensified the media coverage after the firm drew the 9 digit amount.

The more likely case is that AirBnB was waiting for a potential Bad Buzz incident and then took some time to let the news propagate before they took well planned actions.