our social plan

Large companies with “control and command on message at all times” mind sets find the increasing power of the consumer on social media challenging. They cannot control or ignore the publicly shareable commentary now happening. innocent drinks saw early that social media is a way of sharing other messages about the organisation than just product details, that it is a means to connect and delight and amuse and THANK those supporters – yes, supporters! – who buy you. And in doing so, to turn commerce into connection. And when you have no marketing budget for your first five years (as innocent didn’t), social media is free, fun, immediate, creative, interactive, spontaneous, responsive and a whole new way of doing business and charity – knitted hats on smoothies for charity AgeUK.

Happened to see this today, supports some of DSprogis’ thinking — http://leaderswest.com/2012/12/14/people-dont-like-social-media-marketing/

Can’t help wondering which was more beneficial to the brand — the social media exchange itself or the ensuing publicity (like this article)?

Keeping consumer conversations “on brand” is challenging even for brands with an established social presence. I just read an example this morning about Starbucks sponsorship in the UK with The Natural History Museum. Live tweets with the appropriate hashtag were published on a big screen in the museum ice rink. Unfortunate for them the tweets were not filtered. The live conversation became focused on Starbucks tax payments issues in the UK and curse words were displayed on the big screen.

The bottom line, as mentioned above, Social Media has changed the rules of the game and marketing needs to adapt.

Large very public companies have the basic fact that no matter what message they present they will always have negative shots taken at them. So when they jump into an open forum a message with all good intentions will get hammered to some degree.
For those firms it seem the more you can control your target audience the more positive the outcome.

Nik, love it.

Perhaps even worse, check out the ‘epic fail’ of the Australian Airline QANTAS.

“The timing of the PR exercise was questionable, coming just a day after Qantas and its unions broke off contract negotiations and after Qantas grounded its fleet in late October, a drastic move that stranded thousands of angry customers”

I wasn’t one of those customers, but would query the marketing strategy of an airline that was prepared to shut down its entire international operations in an attempt to force a solution on a union in what was a domestic (Australian) market dispute only.

No amount of marketing is going to fix that kind of problem, of an airline that just didn’t care about its customers. A lot of grovelling perhaps, but not just marketing pap.

I’m Australian, and its that kind of attitude of QANTAS towards its customers that makes me fly with just about anyone else.

Dear Tom,

Thank you very much. I will treasure it.

I do think that because of companies like innocent drinks’ success in originating and owning a particular tone of voice and personality, it has become much harder for organisations to find their own. Many resort to lazy copying of a “chummy” tone without really taking the trouble to find their own voice or their own topics. Look at Condescending Corporate Brand page on Facebook for the very fine examples of this that they collect and display. Or indeed Twitter in the UK today, the first day of 2013, when every food brand is tweeting: “And how will you be healthier in 2013?” To which the only real rejoinder is “That’s nobody’s business but my own, thank you.”