Editorial Articles

With hundreds of millions of users online every day, the Internet is a staggeringly social medium. Sharing thoughts, ideas, images and goods online brings huge tranches of the population together to chat and participate. The sheer numbers involved make social media a set of channels that marketers should at the very least investigate seriously.

But it’s not as simple as just numbers. Unlike buying a TV campaign, opening up your brand for interaction and comment by vast unaffiliated masses brings danger along with the potential for wider exposure. What if they don’t like us? What if they discover an embarrassing secret?

The history of recent social campaigns is littered with the carcasses of ill-judged initiatives from Rentokil’s extremely active Twitter account that suddenly went quiet when some of the company’s scientific claims were publicly questioned, to Nestlé’s famous Facebook debacle, where it clashed with fans supporting a Greenpeace campaign that re-branded KitKat as “Killer”.

Along with astroturfing (in which organisations use stooges posing as members of the public to simulate grassroots activism), this kind of half engagement with social media can cause real problems. On the surface the organisation is joining in and opening itself up to customers, but as soon as things aren’t quite going to plan, the shutters come down.

Because social media is built on openness and authenticity, this kind of fair weather friendship plays particularly badly and can cause real damage, with erstwhile friends of your brand suddenly able to see ‘what you’re really like’. This breach of trust can create long lasting grudges amongst consumers who had bought into a brand’s apparent transparency. It makes the whole thing more personal than, for example, making a slightly bullish claim in an advertisement.

The reality of social engagement is that once you start, you have to be consistent in approach even when things aren’t going your way, and in this context a little openness goes a long way. If conversations turn to perceived or actual problems with your product or holding company, you can neither shy away from these or be seen to be doing so.

For example, the beef Greenpeace had with Nestlé was in their use of palm oil, the plantations for which were encroaching on orangutans' natural habitat. Ironically, Nestlé is no worse than a lot of other big food manufacturers in this regard and actually better than many. However, rather than set out its stall and meet hysterical criticism with rational argument, it instead threatened users with legal action, a move that was met with jeers and thousands more fans joining in.

Contrast this ‘shut down and control’ approach with O2’s methods. As a large technology supplier it is bound to come across customers that are rightly or wrongly frustrated with its products. Instead of trying to shout them down or use SEO techniques to make them less visible, O2 employs staff specifically to search out customer problems online and proactively solve them.

It can take time for measures like these to gain widespread recognition, but the enormous goodwill and positive sentiment they generate along the way can be spectacular. It also means that detractors (who tend to be more vocal than supporters) have less to whine about and actually on occasion turns them around from complaint to abject gratitude to O2 for having found them and helped them out, all without a single call to a call centre.

Social media’s lessons will be learnt and re-learnt over the coming years. Smart marketers will start as soon as possible and avoid the pitfall of treating it as just another medium to be turned on and off when needed. If you make yourself one of the people, be prepared for the odd knock.

Sanjay Vadher
Business Development Director, Tangent One