How Do You Communicate with Your Fans?

Recently, I visited a local automotive museum because I had planned to attend an advertised truck show. The automotive museum was not the famous one on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles that resembles a red race track. It was a small museum in a Los Angeles suburb. The problem happened when I entered the museum: I was told that the truck show planned for the day of my visit had been canceled.

I immediately did what anyone would do in today's mobile device era. I pulled my smartphone out of my purse, found the museum's website, and showed the receptionist the museum's site's homepage. The homepage mentioned the truck show, the date of my visit, the times, and even included a PDF flyer.

What did the receptionist say upon seeing the site's homepage? He said, "I see the information on the homepage, but we removed it from the EVENTS page about two months ago." Did I hear correctly? The events page on the website was correct, but the homepage was incorrect? Who made the decision to update the sub page without updating the homepage?

This error caused me to ponder how big brands communicate with their customers, fans, and other key stakeholders. There should be emails when events are canceled. There should be big yellow stickers placed strategically "above the fold" (aka, near the top) of websites. Depending on the size of the brands, the stickers with the updates should be placed on every page of a website - not just the events or news page. Depending on the size of the brand, a press release may be appropriate. And lastly, all social media platforms used by the brand should promote any event changes. In this case, the social sites used by the museum were quiet about the cancellation of the truck show.

While the receptionist apologized for the inconvenience, and I still was able to see some classic cars, I was disappointed that I missed the truck show. What should the automotive museum have done? Should it have given me a free ticket for another special event? Or should it have offered to drive me around the block in a 1940's-era Packard, like the one used in the Rose Parade?

What would your brand have done?