Introduction

This is “What Just Happened?,” the podcast that looks at the biggest brand crises of our time, what they meant for organisational strategy and behaviour, and their lasting impact on our approach to crisis communication.

I’m Kate Hartley. And I’m Tamara Littleton. And together, we’ll delve into what happened, why it mattered, and whether it could happen again.

Episode

Tamara Littleton: Today we’re looking at the HMV live tweeting of people being let go from the company back in 2013. Kate, do you want to give us a bit of background?

Kate Hartley: Yeah, and I almost thought we shouldn’t cover this, because it was such a specific issue at a very specific point in time, and then when I started looking into it, I realised that actually it’s still incredibly relevant, because it’s still happening, albeit on different channels.

TL: And it’s worth looking briefly at HMV’s story. It was huge, and I remember the excitement of going to an actual store to buy music. It had that massive flagship store on Oxford Street in London that I spent far too much time in.

KH: So did I. It’s that place we went to go and buy things with your Christmas money and stuff, and it was really exciting to go in there, wasn’t it? And it was huge.

HMV was massive. It was founded in 1921 and it grew really quickly, particularly through the 70s and 80s. And then its shops were bought by a joint venture between EMI and a company called Advent International, and that formed HMV Media Group, and that group included Waterstones, which actually I hadn’t realised, but there were lots of other brands as well. And then it floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2002, so it really was huge.

TL: I remember it didn’t have a great few years in the late 2000s. It tried to launch a site to let people import their own music, like iTunes, but that closed.

KH: Yeah, that closed in 2009, but it did still invest in digital media. It was such a massive period of change, wasn’t it, for the music industry, and it acquired a company called 7digital, which provided its music download service. It also moved into the ebook space with Waterstones, but of course we know how that went too.

TL: And yeah, as you said, that was a tough time to sell music if you had physical stores, because everything was moving online, and HMV isn’t the name you think of when you think digital music.

KH: It isn’t, sadly. And by 2011, it was giving profit warnings that the share price was falling, profits were down, and it said it was going to close 40 HMV shops and 20 Waterstones shops as well. It also sold off the rest of Waterstones that same year, and then sold various other assets, including the Hammersmith Apollo, which it had owned through a joint venture, which again I didn’t realise.

But by 2013, it was in pretty serious trouble, and it went into administration, and it was rescued by a company called Hilco Capital that bought its debt and came in to restructure it, as these kinds of companies do. Then, on 31st January in 2013, it announced 190 redundancies, and that’s really when our story starts.

TL: Yeah, so as I remember it, a small group of employees took over HMV’s Twitter account, and it was still called Twitter then, and live streamed them being laid off.

KH: Rookie error: HMV hadn’t stopped them accessing the company’s social media accounts. So the tweet started with one of them saying, “We’re live tweeting from HR, where we’re all being fired. Exciting.” And then it went on to say, “There are over 60 of us being fired at once! Mass execution of loyal employees who love the brand.”

TL: And my favourite was, “Just overheard our marketing director (he’s staying, folks) ask, ‘How do I shut down Twitter?’”

KH: I mean, honestly. And then all of this with the hashtag #hmvXFactorFiring, and it really was live streamed. I mean, there were posts saying, “Under usual circumstances, we’d never dare to do such a thing as this. However, when the company you dearly love is being ruined, and those hardworking individuals who wanted to make HMV great again have mostly been fired, there seemed no other choice.”

And then here’s the real killer, especially since these accounts were set up by an intern, unpaid, technically illegal, two years ago.

TL: And it was only something like 20 minutes that it was being live tweeted, but it was absolutely compelling watching it play out live, and it also made headlines everywhere. So, let’s talk about HMV’s response. How did they do?

KH: Well, the administrators declined to comment, because, of course, HMV, at that point, was in administration. So, the administrator said they weren’t going to comment, but they did confirm there had been redundancies.

And then, later, when they got control of those social media accounts back, there was another post saying, “Our HMV tweets picked up a lot of attention today. It’s clearly been a tough day for all of us at HMV. Please stick with us.”

And then another post said, “There have been job losses today, but not in our stores. We’re still open for business. Thanks for your continued support.” And then it was using a hashtag #saveHMV, which is a bit of an odd one to use, I think.

And then they kind of explained it away by saying, “One of our departing colleagues was understandably upset. We’re still here, though. Thanks for supporting HMV through these challenging times.”

TL: And I think at the time we thought, is this really a big deal? Because the company is going under anyway, but it didn’t, did it? What happened to HMV after that?

KH: It didn’t go under. I mean, it very nearly did, but it closed 66 shops, and it made a lot more redundancies, and officially sold to Hilco in the end. But it did turn a profit eventually in 2014, but then in 2018 it went back into administration, but again just about managed to survive.

And I think in part that’s down to the resurgence of people buying vinyl, which is kind of amazing, so we’re back to spending our Christmas money in HMV again. Then, in 2023, it reopened on Oxford Street.

TL: This was seen as such a real lesson for business leaders at the time, and it’s still used by marketing people today as a case study in the power of social media, and of course making sure you keep control of your accounts. It really propelled the importance of social media for many companies.

I think this was a time when people really were still using interns, for example, on social channels, and I’d say they weren’t really taking it as seriously as they do now. There was no password control or approval system, and I think that was a huge lesson for other brands, and one that people still talk about today when they think about how to control access to their social channels.

KH: And obviously, this is much more your area than mine, Tamara. So, what would you advise brands to do to make sure their channels aren’t taken over? Obviously, other than shutting down Twitter. Good advice.

TL: So, yeah, love a bit of compliance chat. The first thing is to audit your social accounts and all of the channels, and just manage them centrally through a social media management system. I mean, that’s hopefully fairly obvious, but it’s really important, and you have to make sure you have control over who has access to them and who doesn’t.

And we still see companies struggling with passwords, for example, when people leave the company, the ones who have been managing the social channels, or when you change agencies. That’s a big important thing. You know, sometimes you’ve got agencies that used to work on it four years ago still having access to the account, so using a password management system is super important, so you can block access if you need to.

I would say it’s also all about the preparation of the comms, because if you know you are going to be letting people go, you have to have the comms watertight and planned, and make sure that there’s a sign-off process, particularly if you are going to go through something like this.

And for large-scale redundancies, there’s an argument for scenario planning as well, because with case studies like this, it usually comes down to don’t treat people badly. Ushering people into a room and then firing them en masse is going to get a backlash, so maybe don’t do that.

KH: Particularly if they’re the people who run your social media channels.

TL: And HMV, they weren’t the only ones having the trouble at the time, though, because it was an interesting time. I also remember there were other examples around that time where rogue tweets landed on company social media accounts.

And one of my favourites was an accidental one on the Chrysler account in 2011, when a person at a social media agency posted from the Chrysler account, not realising that they were posting from the Chrysler account: “I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #MotorCity, and yet no one here knows how to fucking drive.”

KH: I remember that so well. That employee was fired. I wonder if today we’d have a slightly higher tolerance for something like that happening, because actually it is quite funny.

TL: You’d just call it fake news, wouldn’t you?

KH: And again, in 2011, Marc Jacobs also had an employee go rogue, and again it was an intern who was in charge of social media accounts temporarily until the company found someone to do it permanently, which can’t have been the most motivating thing for them.

And they tweeted, and I’m quoting, “I was asked to do this until we found a replacement. I hate this job. Hope they find someone soon.” And then there was some quite personal stuff about their boss, and it ended with, “I’m only an intern. My last day is tomorrow. I wouldn’t be tweeting this if not. Good luck. I pray for you all if you get the job. I’m out of here. See ya. Don’t want to be ya. Robert is a tyrant. Seriously, he is tough.” Well, it’s a lot, right? Someone who is not happy at all.

TL: So, let’s look at this issue of employees going rogue and how it’s evolved, because I remember back in 2017 someone at Twitter deactivated the personal account of Donald Trump, who, of course, was the president, and it was only offline for 11 minutes. Twitter initially said it was human error, but later they did say it was a deliberate act.

KH: They did, and that again was someone on their last day. So, there is definitely a theme emerging here, isn’t there? And a bit of a lesson for the HR teams, I’d say.

TL: You know, just to get a bit serious for a moment, we know from a lot of the work that we do with organisations that the threat of someone on the inside going rogue is something that organisations are really worried about.

KH: And data backs this up. There’s research from Mimecast, just out this year, that says 42% of organisations report an increase in malicious insider incidents, and that’s up from 33% two years ago.

TL: And that threat must increase when an employee is disgruntled, and of course that’s going to happen when there are redundancies or layoffs.

KH: Yeah, and I mean, let’s look at Twitter itself in 2023. So, after Musk took over Twitter in 2022, as we know, he laid off around half the workforce. In March 23, Twitter’s source code was leaked onto GitHub, and GitHub is a platform for developers to share and create code, basically. And Twitter later said employees were responsible for that.

TL: And then Musk issued his hardcore ultimatum to employees after that, where he said employees had to work long hours or leave. I remember loads of employees just posting saluting emojis to Slack, and then also to Twitter, and that was a signal that they were going to leave, or if they didn’t leave, it was showing solidarity to colleagues who were leaving.

KH: And then every email and every internal memo posted to that internal Slack channel was simultaneously sent to journalists, wasn’t it? So specifically, The New York Times and Reuters were getting everything almost live, so in a way it sort of was HMV all over again, just using different channels.

TL: And that’s the thing. So the platforms have changed, but the principles haven’t, and a lot of this stuff will happen on internal channels or closed WhatsApp groups, and then it will get leaked to the media. That just happens now. And, of course, we have Glassdoor for employee reviews, and people leaving a company will review bomb that company, and that’s pretty standard now.

KH: And there’s another channel as well that’s emerged in the last few years. So, in 2023 we started hearing a bit more about a community called Blind. Did you know about Blind?

TL: Not until we were talking about it recently. No.

KH: Yeah, I didn’t know at all. It’s been around for ages, apparently. It’s an app for the workplace. It’s a bit like Glassdoor, but it’s more kind of conversational, and it’s anonymous.

And in 2023, it emerged more because it was used by thousands of Silicon Valley workers to speculate about job cuts. Of course, there were huge numbers of jobs being cut in the tech area, and around 6,000 Microsoft employees signed up for Blind in the week before the company announced 10,000 job cuts.

TL: What always happens with things like this is, of course, there is misinformation spread. There are also false reports of layoffs on Blind, which cause panic, and then mean companies have to respond. And I think Amazon has just had to push back on rumours of a round of layoffs in May, for example.

KH: Exactly. And then, in 2024, we had almost a repeat of HMV, but brought up to date for today’s platform, so it’s a nice place to sort of round this story off in a way.

So this is a story of 27-year-old Brittany Pietsch, who was an account executive for Cloudflare, which is the big tech company that powers hundreds of millions, probably, of websites. She’d been working for the company for about four months, and she knew she was going to be fired because a lot of her colleagues were going through the same thing, and she’d been summoned onto a Zoom call with HR, never a good sign.

She filmed that call on her mobile phone, and she posted it to TikTok, and it’s actually really shocking, I think. So, she’s fired. First of all, she’s fired by two people she’s never even met. One of them actually says to her at the beginning of the call, “It’s nice to meet you,” and then she’s told pretty quickly she didn’t meet the performance expectations required by Cloudflare.

Now, she defends herself, again, all of this being filmed. She says she’s had good reviews from her managers. She’s worked really hard, and then she asks for specific feedback on how she failed the performance expectations, because there’s no information on that coming from these two people. They actually say they can’t tell her, they can’t go into the specifics, which is extraordinary.

If you’re firing somebody for failing on performance, you have to know what performance criteria they failed against. They even told her not to take it personally, that she hadn’t been singled out. So that video had millions of views, and that hit international media, and it sparked a massive backlash. And even the CEO of Cloudflare, Matthew Prince, said it was, in his words, painful to watch. That’s just terrible, awful, isn’t it?

TL: We’re going to see more and more of this. I think there’s a shift in the balance of power that employers really have to consider.

KH: I think that’s true, and there’s research from an HR company, LHH, which is a global talent solutions provider, as part of the Adecco Group, and it says that one in four employees lose trust in leadership after witnessing layoffs.

Well, you can sort of understand that, but interestingly, it says 46% of employees say they would consider recording their layoff experience, and 63% of HR leaders worry that layoff conversations might be recorded or shared publicly.

TL: And it just all goes back to the culture of the organisation, doesn’t it? As we hear about so often on this podcast, it’s one of our favourite subjects, and let’s chat to our guest about this after the break.

Break

TL: We’re joined by Jane Fordham, who is a coach, leadership consultant, and trainer with over 25 years’ experience working with organisations from the Civil Aviation Authority to Warner Brothers. She’s held senior roles at Hanbury Strategy and Golin, and Jane has also been a PRCA Fellow since 2020. So, welcome, Jane.

Jane Fordham: Thank you very much. Delighted to be here.

TL: I’m going to jump in, and the first question that I want to ask is, we’ve often seen the HMV example used as a case study of why companies should lock down access to their social media when people are laid off, but do you think it’s actually more of an issue of culture?

JF: So, great place to start. It’s always an issue of culture in my mind. Everything comes back to culture. I know you had very rich conversations before the break, you know, in terms of social media protocols and so on. So I think we’ve covered a fair amount of that.

But yeah, culture underlies everything, and therefore, for the case of HMV, I think, actually, ironically, because, as you discussed, employees felt so strongly about the brand, they loved the brand. So actually it was like, you know, a nosebleed or whatever, when there was such an abrupt about-turn, and they were so badly treated on the way out of the door, that yeah, it was very incongruous with the culture.

So actually maybe there’s a lesson there when a business is struggling, that any other parties that come in to oversee the process, like administrators, need to take a leaf out of the company’s culture and make sure whatever they’re doing and how they’re doing it follows suit.

KH: That’s so interesting, isn’t it? That leads me on to something to talk about leaks, because I wonder whether we see more leaks from organisations in cultures that are quite tough as well. And when we’re doing simulations, we often see in-house comms teams pulling their hair out over the number of information leaks from employees and kind of accepting it.

So, I wondered what you thought was driving that, and is that getting worse? Has the balance of power shifted from the employer to the employee, and is that a culture issue?

JF: So, I think fairly obviously working in intergenerational workplaces has a massive impact on this, and any leadership organisation, any comms professional, any HR professional who doesn’t understand the kind of cultural zeitgeist and the people that they’ve got working within their organisation is on a hiding to nothing. So yes, the cultural zeitgeist has shifted, and I would suggest mostly in a positive way, actually.

So power is a big word, and I think there’s a kind of contract there. So if an organisation has a great culture and has paid in and, you know, adhered to good practice, then individuals are also going to behave as an adult in a positive way.

But when you get these sorts of scenarios where people are mistreated, they’re disrespected, and crucially, when the wheels start to fall off, they are, you know, kicked out of the door in a horrific way, then there is increased activism, and there are these channels to allow individuals to voice their disgruntlement, and that’s what you’re seeing. So, balance of power, I think it’s only when they’re mistreated that they feel that they need to use that.

KH: Yeah, we talk a lot in crisis exercises about the relationship between brands and consumers, and that idea of kind of betrayal when it goes bad if you’ve really invested in that brand. But I think we almost forget about it a little bit, as being just as important, don’t we, between the organisation and its employees. That’s a really, really important point.

Do you get a warning sign as an organisation that you’re starting to lose the trust of your employees, and is it possible, once that’s happened, to regain it?

JF: So, trust in an organisation, as in most human relationships, is hard won and can be quickly lost and takes a long while to rebuild. So, yes, absolutely, it is possible to rebuild it.

But to come to the first part of your question, what signs are there? There can be myriad signs, and I’m a big data fan. Yeah, follow your gut and look at the data as well. So, do you have feedback channels? Do you have engagement tools?

Very often, it’s not just what people are saying, it’s whether they’re saying anything at all. If they’re disengaging altogether, that can possibly be a warning sign. You know, are there fewer interactions on your portals and your hubs, and so on? A fairly obvious one is obviously retention. If people are walking with their feet, that is probably a bit of a sign.

So, yeah, there are many, many indicators that trust might be lost. And my advice would be, listen, listen across all different types of channels, and it’s the mixture of intuition and looking at some of those data points.

KH: Can I just add something on to that as well, because I think one of the things that we see is that we talk a lot about insider threat when we do simulations, so we, Tamara and I. One of the things that organisations always say is they have a reporting channel, and then we ask, how is it used, and how is it silence?

JF: So you get to the point where you think, is it good that people aren’t using those reporting channels because there’s nothing to report, or do they care so little that they can’t even be bothered because they think that nothing’s going to happen?

KH: I think that’s absolutely bang on.

JF: And in some ways it’s nigh on impossible to interpret those internal channels and the use or neglect of what an organisation provides. But with a deft hand and a fair bit of experience and a good broad data set, you can draw some pretty decent conclusions, I think.

But it is interesting what you say about activism, and so on, because actually the famous Edelman Trust Barometer of 2026, which looks at sources of trust across all areas of society, in 2026 actually my employer stood out as one of the most trusted entities in the report, in the world. So financial institutions, governments, and so on, are seeing their trust slide, but it is intriguing. It was very intriguing to me that that was a 2026 trend.

TL: Very interesting. And can I go back to the whole mass redundancy layoff thing, because I’m just interested in your view of, is there a good way to handle mass redundancies or layoffs? You know, what does good look like, particularly for leadership teams, and how should companies prepare for any fallout?

JF: So, I think you said before the break, Tamara, very astutely, obviously, plan, plan, plan. So no business hopes to be making big bad news stories like this, but when you know it’s on the cards, have an exceptionally detailed, well-thought-out plan.

One would hope that all of the kind of cultural best practice is happening, that you’ve had good and open internal comms. So even when there might be a slow car crash, and again, thinking about how you set out HMV and its demise, people knew that the business wasn’t doing very well. You shouldn’t hide that bad news.

But then what happens at the sharp end is you have a clear strategy. You have thought very carefully about the process, the internal process of exiting people, which is always a really tough one.

And something that’s always stood me in good stead is think about however you’re going to communicate it internally, whatever the process is, you don’t want it to be public, but assume that it could be public. So anything you are planning, you have to be able to look yourself in the mirror on Twitter or Glassdoor, or whatever else.

And yeah, try and handle it also, as you said, try and handle yourself with as much humanity and kindness as possible, whilst recognising this is going to be a really tough message for those individuals. Try everything in your power, even when it’s really bad news, to handle people with grace. You know, you can have good leavers even when it’s a performance review or it’s redundancies, or so on. It is possible.

KH: And I think when we do exercises, we very often — in fact, I was doing one yesterday with an amazing team who were talking about the role that internal comms plays in a crisis, not necessarily a crisis that’s been caused by people within the organisation, but something outside of it. And when should you start thinking about your people?

I mean, I think we’d all agree that the answer is straight away, but then I think the default sometimes for communications teams is to put something out to all their employees saying, this thing is happening, do not talk to media, do not talk to social media, and just shutting everything down. And that’s not necessarily effective. They just say, well, you know, why isn’t that working?

So I wanted to look a little bit at what role internal comms specifically plays at preventing that kind of leak or reputation damage, or somebody saying on social media, this awful thing’s happening in, you know, my workplace. So, can you talk a little bit about internal comms?

JF: Yeah, so thinking about kind of horse and bolting and all of those cliches, and so on. You can’t be getting internal comms involved right at the last minute. You have to be thinking it entirely related to strategy, entirely related to good culture and good practice.

The organisation and employees have to have been used to having regular and open and accurate internal comms and two-way internal comms, so that you’re getting those insights and you’re getting those data points to inform your strategy. You’ve got a litmus test of sentiment in the organisation, and actually you’re planning your comms according to those data points and insights.

However, if we are getting to kind of the sharp end, then they should be continuing in that same vein, even when it is really tough. They should communicate with humanity and clarity and with speed. I think if you’ve got a vacuum, that’s terrible news. Somebody or something is going to fill it, and they might well fill it externally.

I loved what the esteemed Fishni Sung to said a couple of weeks ago. She was at an internal comms conference, that internal comms should be the editor of the change story, which I think is absolutely bang on. Don’t have them as an afterthought.

KH: Yeah, I love that.

TL: So, we’ve talked internal, but what happens if misinformation about layoffs starts spreading, particularly on closed platforms where contributors are anonymous? So how should companies respond to that?

KH: Because I’d never even heard about Blind. I mean, I wonder how many companies even monitor it.

JF: We’re all blind. So what do I think about this? Well, I think, go back to the plan. You should have had a plan, you should have had a good plan, and you should have been ready for all eventualities.

So, hopefully you’ve been a good citizen, hopefully you’ve got a lot of culture credits in the bank, and so on and so forth, and you’ve taken people along on the journey. But you can’t, you know, legislate for every scenario, and people will feel really, really motivated.

So part of me thinks for the most part these things are going to be pretty quick. They’re going to flash up, they’re going to disappear, and one would hope that it’s relatively marginal. So don’t breathe too much oxygen into it. I don’t think usually, you know, responding to every little element is helpful at all.

So yeah, go back to your key principles, avoid knee-jerk reactions, but crucially, keep the internal comms going, and stick to the knitting, and stick to your key messages.

TL: Lastly, Jane, I’m just keen to know, obviously HMV happened a long time ago, but this kind of thing will happen again. And if you were brought into a company after something like this had happened, what would you advise, and where would you start?

JF: It would be a fascinating brief, and I’d jump at the chance, but it’s kind of stripping everything back to the core lesson. So, have you listened, really, really listened to all your key stakeholders? Hoover up all of that insight from the way that things were mishandled and be really, you know, humble pie, be open, be full of humility, and be genuine and open in your wish to do something differently going forwards.

And then, you know, if it is about changing culture, that is not straightforward. That is a long-term endeavour. And I’m thinking about, for some reason, when gender pay gap reporting came into the UK, became law pre-COVID, I was working with a couple of clients at the time, and they had polar opposite views.

They were both coming from quite a challenging starting point, but they were having to report. One of them had started the year before, saying, “You know, we’re on a journey. We’ve got a long way to go. Please come with us. We want your input.” The other one called me, and I distinctly remember it was right around my birthday, because I was going away, like, the week before. “Data’s terrible. Can you help us?”

TL: Can you fix this?

KH: Can you just fix that for us?

JF: Unless we have a time machine, or we can start out for next year.

TL: Exactly, exactly. Fantastic. Okay. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Jane. It’s been an absolute pleasure.

Outro

You’ve been listening to “What Just Happened?” with Kate Hartley and Tamara Littleton. If you enjoyed the podcast, please subscribe, rate, and review.