French CEO uses blog during Crisis

What do you do when 15 children are intoxicated (and some hospitalised) because they ate contaminated meat distributed through your chain of hypermarkets ? Here's a very strong example of a French CEO who gets it (you can read the original posts in French here):

Mr. Leclerc, the CEO of the Leclerc Hypermarkets in France has been blogging for some time and loves it. (This was very obvious during his presentation at the L'Echangeur event in Paris in September where I met him).

So when on October 27 he is informed of several cases of intoxication caused by a bacteria in fresh meat which his hypermarkets sell - what does he do ?

1. he is straight forward about the crisis and states up front that this is serious and that the company is reacting - at the same time he warns for a psychoses.
2. he informs about what caused the problem with the meat and speaks, in understandable terms, about the bacteria causing this infection. He also talks about his feelings toward the children and parents.
3. then he talks about the degree of certitude the company has on the origin of the infection/bacteria in the distribution chain. Facts & figures in a chronological order.
4. Mr Leclerc goes on stating what the company did (does), day by day: setting up a crisis team, engaging employees, communicating etc...
5. He then gives the latest situation report.

Mr. Leclerc continues to list and explain several other topics on his blog about this crisis but already by writing straightforwardly about the 5 topics above he, and his crisis team, have demonstrate a very good understanding of the power of blogs as a crisis communications tool and show us that they know how to deal with a crisis.

He finishes with the promise that he'll give a full update at the end of this week.

This could become a very strong European case study on using blogs during a crisis.