Chaos Communications: MKBHD vs. Fisker
Chaos Communications: MKBHD vs. Fisker
An argument for applying Creative Destruction and Chaos Mapping to your communications strategy.
In February, the new but also not new auto manufacturer Fisker took a branding hit when one of the most influential tech creators, MKBHD, AKA Marques Brownlee, reviewed one of their latest SUVs.
Background: Fisher was founded in 2007, failed, and assets were sold and reformed as Karma Automotive. Fisker was reborn again in 2016 as a US manufacturer.
The Context
In June of 2023, Fisker started to roll out its newest SUV, the Fisker Ocean. As part of that rollout, they released a launch edition called the Fisker Ocean One. It had a limited number of vehicles in the batch and was designed to add urgency for people to pre-order them.
For transparency, I originally was one of those people, but canceled in favor of a Wrangler 4xE while waiting for a Rivian R1T.
This rollout is what most of us would call an alpha or beta version. It’s not fully baked, it was internally tested, and early adopters will received something knowing that it will have bugs and flaws. It is also hard to get your hands on due to the limited release.
The Review
On February 17, Marques released a review that can be summarized as: the worst car he has ever reviewed. It's not the worst car ever, just the worst one he has ever personally reviewed.
As a former tech reporter who would conduct reviews, being the first to cover something is a necessity. While The Ocean One was hard to come by, Marques is a well-connected guy and relentless in finding opportunities to create content that his audience is hungry for. So, while many brands in the past have built direct plans to work with the MKBHDs of the world, Fisker was not ready for them. There were apparently ongoing conversations between the two parties, but Fisker wanted their latest software in the vehicle before Marques got his hands on it.
However, as a tech reporter/reviewer, Marques also wanted to create content that reflects the current state of the ride and what people received initially. There would of course be opportunity to create additional content with their latest software down the road. By doing this, it covers the Ocean One more accurately. Anyway, you can watch the review here:
The review hit the top 10 on YouTube, hitting 4.1 million views on that single channel, and had a direct financial impact. This also landed just before their earnings report landed on Feb 29, which did not go well.
The Challenge
In response to the review, Fisker slowed its social content on some channels, as most brands would, in order to determine the best way to handle the situation. Part of the pause is often to let things play out and see how people react, and to determine if our forgetful nature will work in their favor, too. The responses were mixed.
To date, there does not appear to be an official response on the matter, but someone posting to a Fisker Ocean forum claiming to be a representative of the brand put out a somewhat generic statement doubling down on the vehicle not being mass-production ready and stating they would still love to work with the reviewer within scope on their terms. Again, it can’t be confirmed if this is the official statement, but it’s the expected one nonetheless.
Escalating the Mess
Regardless of the communication or maybe lack thereof, it’s not the most proactive. Brushing negative press under the rug is certainly a strategy and can be effective (silence vs. escalating), but you need a very tight ship to keep things quiet.
Until… a senior Fisker engineer singled out the source of the impacted review vehicle, reached out to the actual owner, a car dealership, and… the conversation was recorded.
What Russ likely assumed was that this was a very transparent and personal conversation, but it has now added fuel to the fire.
Creative Destruction
Some call it crisis management, but I prefer Chaos Mapping.
Chaos Mapping involves visualizing the chaotic elements in branding, communications, and marketing, and strategically navigating through them. This could include identifying potential disruptions, market shifts, or emerging trends and developing plans to leverage or counteract them.
Rather than just a standard crisis management plan with specific scenarios, this approach would focus on having rapid decision making built in, follows an agile approach over all so you are not locked into any strategy or project at any one time, and have stakeholders already mapped out. Keep it broad, flexible, and focus on the outcome.
In particular, the aspect under Chaos Mapping referred to Creative Destruction:
Creative Destruction is the process in which new innovations and ideas replace or destroy existing structures, practices, or products.
In the context of this conversation, this means we need to rethink our communications footprint and adapt to new channels on a regular basis. A crisis management plan typically wouldn’t resolve a massive influx of positivity in many cases (see the Keith Lee Effect as an example).
Regardless of what has occurred, we are in a world where someone as influential as Marques can swing through at any moment and drastically change the course of your brand (for better or worse). But this scenario is not limited to someone with 9 million subscribers on a single channel.
If we look back at the car fire incident where a Stanley mug survived and still had ice in it, a single normal person created a wave of chaos, and the brand decided to embrace it quickly.
Brand and communication teams should consider a more adaptive mindset so they are proactively ready to handle any scenario like this one and embrace the chaos.
Final Thought
I don’t see value in providing direct feedback on what Fisker could have or should have done to resolve this particular situation. Hindsight feedback is only valuable if you have the full context, and as outsiders, we don’t have that. I do find this situation to be common enough to use it as an example to highlight the concepts under Chaos Communications and how to be better equipped to handle them.