We all screw up all the time, the real question is what you do when you find yourself in the bottom of a big PR hole. This is a textbook case of a big company, at last, learning the meaning of "agile". When the name jars, a Krafty stunt starts smelling like burnt toast

FACED with the overwhelming rejection of iSnack 2.0, Kraft has done an about-turn and ditched the name of its new Vegemite cream cheese blend.

[...] After five days of criticism, including thousands of posts on blogs and social networking sites, Kraft admitted it got the name wrong. A spokesman, Simon Talbot, said iSnack 2.0 - which was picked from 48,000 entries submitted by Vegemite lovers - had ''not resonated with Australians, particularly the modern technical aspects associated with it''.

The new name will be decided by mass vote. The company will announce more details tomorrow, ensuring yet more Australians will hear about the new spread. The half-million jars bearing the new name are destined to become collectors' items to be traded on eBay.

[...] Gerry McCusker, who has written a book on public relations disasters, said: ''It's not a PR disaster, yet. If anything this is edgy contemporary marketing.''

He said the company had been good at ''controversy management'', a term the PR industry uses for nimble-footed companies that turn a negative into an advantage. ''They've used controversy to secure engagement and they are responding very well,'' he said.

Never mind the experts, I know impressive when I see it and someone in Kraft should get a medal for this for having the guts to say, "we screwed up, we are going to get killed here unless we take this seriously. On the other hand, we now have the undivided attention of a whole lot of people, what shall we do with it?"

But note the role of Facebook and Twitter here; pure Cluetrain Manifesto. When the Manifesto was written there was only email and online forms, a bit of forum software and a dying usenet and a lot of people scratched their heads and wanted to know how these "markets that are conversations" would be conducted.

Short answer, Social networking tools. Absolutely everyone needs to listen, learn, read on and be ready to respond. Have you ever been on the wrong end of this kind of problem, or worse, one where the problem was substantive?

How do you respond and, most importantly here, how do you/would you use online social networks to support and lead that response? Another clue, the response probably doesn't include "closing down all staff access to twitter". Comments are open.

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