Why fast food giant Jollibee’s IT mishap is a blessing in disguise

Fast food giant Jollibee recently had to shut down 72 of its 2,244 stores in the Philippines due to a problem caused by their new IT system. While this glitch was a costly one – estimates put their daily losses at US$4 million per day – it is not without value. The rise of the Twitter hashtag #ChickenSad, which is a play on Jollibee’s popular menu item Chicken Joy, is a lesson learned for the chain and a case study for Philippine entrepreneurs on the importance of transparency in the age of social media.

Image courtesy of the Jollibee Facebook page.

Is it #ChickenSad or #ChickenMad?

At first glance, Jollibee’s brand has taken a beating via #ChickenSad. Philippines is a social media capital of the world, and it has gang-filled online ghettoes and down-on-your-luck neighborhoods where no one – not even a fast food giant – can walk out unscathed:

Why do I have this feeling that #Jollibee will soon increase menu prices (if that system upgrade is true) #ChickenSad— Ruth dela Cruz (@ruthilicious) August 8, 2014

How big of an impact will #ChickenSad be to Jollibee’s stock price over the next few weeks? @stocksmartsph #PSE— marvin germo (@marvingermo) August 11, 2014

Dude, 72 stores temporarily closed? This #ChickenSad drama is fo real…— John Paul Manahan (@misterjpmanahan) August 8, 2014

Despite this outpouring of #ChickenSad sentiment, Jollibee has been mostly mum. They issued a short statement to the Philippine Stock Exchange reassuring their investors that the firm has an ample supply of raw materials. They did not add anything on social media, continuing only their promotional posts, in addition to a few canned responses that they used over and over again:

@beavelazco Rest assured that we are committed to having all our products available again within a few days in all our affected stores.— Jollibee (@Jollibee) August 15, 2014

Jonha Revesencio (pictured below), a digital marketer from digital publishing platform RebelMouse, says that company has a responsibility to publicly acknowledge the problem in detail. Their lack of a thorough response, Revesencio says, gave birth to #ChickenSad and fueled its rise.

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