or a study in crisis communications.

What do you do if there's a crisis? Gary Vaynerchuk had just that happen to his wine-oriented site, Corkd, this month. Somehow, his site was redirecting to an adult site, AdultFriendFinder, and it was noticed immediately by TechCrunch, a "massively influential and well-trafficked tech site".

Unfortunately, everything on the internet happens thisfast, and there's no time to consult the hierarchy, or put together a press release. The issue, especially this issue, had to be fixed now.

What did Gary do?
Luckily, Gary was a reader of TechCrunch and you can see how he responded at TechCrunch's post on the issue and here at Mack Collier's overview of the situation. Hint: Gary was proactive and acted fast.

Lessons Learned

Here are some takeaways from Mack Collier

Monitor social media channels. No one told Gary about the situation. He found out because he already subscribes to those in the know.

Use social media channels to respond. No press release here. Gary made a video comment ASAP on the TechCrunch post and then later on his site.

Admit your mistakes. There's an adage in some circles that everything that happens to you is your fault, and Gary took responsibility despite the fact that he wasn't the one who made that redirect.

Use social media to solve the problem. Gary was able to tap into his network online for help and support with the issue, and his reputation didn't suffer because the web knew that Gary did not create Corkd to attract more people to AdultFriendFinder


Build your Ark BEFORE it rains. This all would have been much harder without the relationships Gary had already had established on the web.

As in real life, sometimes there's no telling what will happen next, so prepare yourself in advance. For those who do have a hierarchy to answer to, it may be helpful to prepare a plan for crisis communications in advance with this as a guideline.

Edit: I realize AdultFriendFinder is not specifically a porn site, however, it is NSFW and not the site that was supposed to be shown at Corkd.