The Brand Damage Snowball Effect

All of us, at one point or another, have had a bad experience with a company. Sometimes, it’s mild enough for us to grumble for a few moments and go on our way, and give them another shot another day. Other times, it’s bad enough that we’ll never do business with that company again, but we don’t spread that to other people.

Then, there’s the tipping point where we’re so ticked off, we not only vow never to do business with them again, but we tell everyone.

And if you’re the company that’s at the business end of that shotgun, you had better be paying attention.

My friend (and disclosure: client) David Alston is undertaking a move this week, which sucks in and of itself. And he was relying on U-Haul to help him with that move. When his wife dealt with some absolutely abominable customer service regarding their truck reservation, he put his gripe on Twitter for thousands of people to see. He also blogged about it (in a much more objective and level headed way than I might have).

What ensued was an onslaught of responses from David’s Twitter community, and a great post from Catch Up Lady detailing some of the responses and the snowball effect of David’s tweet reaching his followers and their followers and so on. (Just in case you think Twitter still doesn’t matter. But this, for another post.)

One of those followers posted the CEO’s phone number, and David sent him a message. He did call back, but as of this post, I don’t think they’ve connected. I’ll be curious about what this guy has to say about the behavior of his field locations and representatives (and the subsequent damage they’re doing to his brand). I’ll also be curious to know whether the phone call is merely a gesture, and if this guy is aware of the negative publicity he’s receiving across the web (of which I’m sure David will make him aware).

David also did his part by canceling his reservation with U-Haul and subsequently booking with Penske, and he then tweeted about how great their customer service was.

If anything to me, this is yet another powerful case for why listening to social media is critically important, and you can do that even if you don’t have a blog or a Twitter account. Hearing what’s being said can uncover a gold mine (or quagmire) of information from your customers – or former customers – just waiting for you. If I were the U-Haul CEO, I would sure as heck want to know that all these people, in the span of a few hours, had just shared how much they think my company sucks.

Dozens and dozens of people responded to David with their horror stories (and I have one of my own). This many horror stories, and they’re still out there managing to do business? What if no one had managed to give David the CEO’s contact information? Would they have heard a thing? Or cared? Do you think this experience is significant enough to teach an old dog new tricks?

And then the next level: Where is the tipping point, I wonder, to take down a giant like U-Haul or force them to do things differently, and when does our collective patience run out? How do we translate the negativity we feel and express in words, and translate it into action by not supporting the brand enough where they have to change or perish? What separates a stubborn brand from one willing to evolve based on what they learn?

Can social media tip the scales and turn talk into action?

Fancy term. Really (really) basic ideas.

If the term “social media” freaks you (or your boss or your clients) out and causes consternation in the conference room, consider this. It’s a fancy term that describes the tools we use to do something that’s been around in business since the dawn of time: get more customers and keep them happy.

Let’s scrap the tools for a minute – forget the “What” part of social media and suspend your notions of Twitter or Facebook or blogs or podcasts.

This actually seems so utterly fundamental that part of me hesitates to write this as if everyone’s going to say “well duh, Amber.” But I keep seeing folks scrutinizing social media as if it were this revolutionary, alien concept in business that has no bearing on what they’re used to. And when it comes to the technology specifically, that may be the case. These are the means, but not the end game. In practice, all social media does is facilitate a few good tenets of a customer-oriented business like:

Saying Hello
A good part of smart business is finding new ways to say hello to people who are not yet your customers, ideally by carefully locating them somewhere they gather most, and starting a conversation about something interesting. (Note I did not say finding your customers and immediately starting off by selling something.). And of course, greeting your regular customers in a friendly way, wherever you see them.

Being Available
Before someone does business with you, they may have questions they want to ask about who you are and what you do. They may want to see the people behind the business, get to know and trust you. And once they’re your customer, they’ll look to you to be accessible, responsive, and personable when they interact with you. Because as we’ve all heard a dozen and forty times, people do business with other people they like.

Being Accountable
Every business screws up eventually. The more you learn about exactly how and where you’ve screwed up – including from people who would never tell you directly, but who might tell their friends instead – the better your chances of fixing issues when they happen (if not before). Apologizing, taking responsibility for the mistake, and offering a remedy builds trust and credibility. And a little sense of humor never hurts.

Solving Problems
You’re in business because something you make or do makes life or business easier for someone else. Your contributions are more valuable if you can hear the subtleties of those problems in order to better your product or service. And if you hear new problems to solve, that’s even better. One suggestion box is good. A few hundred (thousand?) – with built in ways to respond quickly and easily and provide valuable ongoing information to your customers? Better.

Saying Thank You
So much easier when you have people actively listening, and widespread mechanisms for communicating with them.

The real question we ought to be asking ourselves, folks, is not what social media is going to do differently for us. It’s how we’re going to use a host of new, more amplified, and more ubiquitous tools to do what we ought already be doing, but better.

photo by helico

Social Media Powers Better Advertising

One of my issues with advertising has always been that, as a consumer (not an ad expert), I feel like so much advertising misses the mark. It’s not personal. It’s not relevant. It’s often flashy or gimmicky or shocking for the sake of it, but rarely does it help me better understand a brand or build a relationship with it. My good friend and marketing smart guy posted recently about advertising that sucks, and I posted about an ad from the ASPCA that I think totally misses the mark.

I watch the Super Bowl commercials each year like everyone else, but have to be honest that I rarely remember the brands themselves that were part of the remarkable spots. And as much as I love the Budweiser Clydesdales, I’m still not going to buy their beer.

To me, advertising should be about creating awareness for a company, product, service or idea in a way that really connects with people. In human terms. And demonstrates how the brand embodies those ideas. People develop brand loyalty because it does something for them in a way nothing else can, or because they feel a personal affinity for the company/product/service for a particular reason.

And I don’t find any of those things in a jingle, a stunt, sophmoric humor, or flashy weird graphics that are meant to be bizarre or avant garde but have no material connection to the brand itself. And I see lots and lots of ads that do so many of those things. The ads themselves may be interesting or “remarkable” but that doesn’t translate to the brand. Am I missing something?

And I know we use Dell as an example a lot, but that’s really because they’re doing so many things right, like their ReGeneration project. They’ve asked a question: What does green mean to you? And as part of their project, they launched a contest on Facebook where they asked folks to submit artwork that spoke to their feelings about being green. I’m actually a bit behind here – the campaign is several months old now – but it has sticking power in my head because of how open Dell was to letting the community determine the direction for their project.

The cool part to me is that Dell did something that’s one of the pillars of social media in my mind: They let their community create their advertising for them. They took some of the artwork and created ads around them. No fancy agencies, no “crafted messages”, no gimmicks or in-your-face corporate speak. A sample is below.

Dell realized that their customers could and do build up their brand as well or better than they can. Jeremiah Owyang has a good breakdown of the campaign here.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVbcINgCPM8&hl=en&fs=1]

So are you leveraging what your customers and fans are doing on behalf of your brand? How do you think companies can better embrace the brand assets that their customers might be creating for them? Do you think advertising is as misguided as I do, and if so, why hasn’t it changed? Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Contemplating the Social Media Plunge

When I asked around about the reasons why companies hesitate to get involved with social media – whether misconceptions or legitimate concerns – it sparked some great discussion.

By far, the overwhelming consensus was that social media makes companies far more transparent than they’re used to being. Dave Murr and Matthew T. Grant on Twitter and Sonny Gill on Plurk all said that companies are uncomfortable not completely controlling the brand message anymore. Of course, the message we’re delivering loud and clear is that customers are the ones driving much of your brand messaging anyway, with or without you (and they started doing it the minute they became your customers). Frank Martin says that the practice of some traditional media – press releases, advertising messages – being company-controlled gives companies the illusion that they should be able to control all of their marketing. In a digital age, that’s nearly impossible.

Putting time and money toward something that doesn’t have hard ROI attached.
Beth Harte and Laura Pritchard agree that many companies want to see a hard, direct line between efforts and sales leads. So far, metrics for social media are soft and indirect, and tend to be reflected instead through measurements in other areas – website traffic, customer satisfaction levels, strength of relationships with customers and prospects. How do you think these effects compare to other cultivation efforts – like customer appreciation events, golf outings, or other business development activities?

Taking communication outside the communication department. Companies may have a hard time trusting their non-communications trained employees to do and say the right thing without intense supervision. The trick is that customer service reps are talking to customers about product issues, your accounting team is discussing the slow decision processes with their vendors, your product managers are talking about disagreement about the new widget design. Employees aren’t following the script in their everyday business interactions, anyway, and giving them a chance to communicate more openly on behalf of the company can bring to light new insights.

Thinking that social media is an all-or-nothing proposition. Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester has a great post today about how scare tactics are causing some companies to steer clear of social media. The reality is that social media isn’t an overnight sea change, nor is it a silver bullet. It’s one (important) part of a comprehensive, and well thought out communication strategy for any business.

Being faced with questions they don’t have answers to. Tara Whittle mentioned this one and I was glad she did. Sometimes, online customers will ask questions or point out issues that don’t have immediate resolutions. In these cases, I think it’s less the immediate solution to the problem, but how the company handles it that matters. Do they have the confidence to answer “We’re not sure! But we’re going to find out, and here’s how we’ll let you know when we do.” That can build trust and credibility.

Committing the resources to do it right. Social media done comprehensively takes an investment of time, capital, and human resources. As I’ve posted before, engaging in social media can be a part of anyone’s job. Listening alone takes effort – GM alone has at least 10 staff people dedicated to monitoring their brand on the web. As Sonny says, monitoring social media has become an extesion of brand mangement. And once you’ve heard what’s being said, responding and doing something of value with the feedback you receive requires new thinking and sometimes, new ways of doing things. And, as another savvy plurker pointed out, some companies might even think that shifting their position and messaging in response to feedback can make them seem weak. I’d venture to say that evolving your messaging to respond to your community does quite the opposite, but would welcome your take on this too!

It’s just new. Frank points out that it may not be fear so much as that many companies simply aren’t early adopters, and he’s right. Kellye Crane points out that much like websites once were the unproven tool, some companies are waiting to see just how other companies are making use of social media and how they in turn can leverage it for their specific business. And some may be comfortable with the status quo, thinking that “if it ain’t broke…”. The more that bellwether companies like Dell, Starbucks, Ford, Beam Global, Southwest Airlines and more blaze the trail, the more likely others are to see the value for themselves, too.

So how about you? Is your company venturing into the waters of social media, and what are your concerns? Are you the champion for social media, and how are you addressing these concerns with your clients or management? Please share in the comments!

Photo by danflo

On Women and the Internet

This morning, the New York Times ran an article about women online, this time in the Technology section about advertising on women’s sites.

I thought the article was well done, and I’m glad that it was placed where it was. (BTW – I get the whole logistics about the siloed section placements in the mainstream papers. We’ve been over this, so please let’s not revisit that quagmire. I still think it’s a crappy system. But that’s not what this post is about.)

The article had a very balanced tone, was very business focused, and featured objective writing about the appeal of female-centric websites for advertisers wanting to reach this influential audience. Statistics and studies abound – see just a few results from Forrester here – about the influence and buying power of women in markets both online and off.

I do think there’s tremendous value in segmenting gender demographics for marketing and branding purposes, because let’s face it – men and women are different. And statistically speaking, we skew our interests toward certain things. Marketing and advertising have spent many, many millions of dollars on gender-focused campaigns for this very reason. And as far as social media goes, advertising dollars are shifting online, and in large part to women-centric sites.

The discussion on Plurk this morning, however, shifted gears a bit, and we started talking about women and the internet in general. How do they use it? Are the largest volume of them really using sites dedicated to fashion, food, or entertainment?

To wit: this question from my social media-savvy friend Deb from I Can’t Keep Up:

Why not show how women participate online in other ways? I really struggle over this issue. I would rather see more evidence of women using the internet intellectually, professionally, and even for their sport. So maybe I just want to see something on women’s participation in non-gender based sites. Then we would have an idea of women’s impact overall.

This report from Pew talks about how women are more likely to use the internet to foster their human connections with others. The popular blog Lip-Sticking talks about marketing to women online – and covers topics as diverse as entrepreneurship in Afghanistan, health and fitness, real estate, and technology (and yes, there are plenty of posts about fashion, family, and other traditionally female topics).

Personally, I don’t frequent sites that are female-focused exclusively. I prefer to get my information from all across the web, and my tastes are probably not “traditionally” female. But oddly, I talk to a LOT of women who have similar interests to mine, and eschew destinations focused on lighter fare like fashion or celebrities. (For the record, I wholeheartedly endorse the work of bloggers like Dooce. 850,000 people read her blog – including me on occasion – which means she is unequivocably providing fun and at times irreverent content that people love. Great stuff, and the essence of building a community online.)

So, the big questions:

Am I just swimming in a fishbowl of other non-traditional women? Are we predisposed to dismiss “women’s” sites simply because they’re not our cup of tea, and are we missing something as a result? Are we too sensitive about the idea that women like to talk fashion, celebrities, and sex?

Does the impact of women online who don’t target their activities based on their gender matter to the future of the internet and social media?

The statistics don’t lie, and the women’s sites abound and thrive (which I think is great, for the women who DO want that content). Advertisers are spending their money there, and presumably they’re seeing returns for their efforts. But according to the NYT article, advertisers just aren’t seeing the value in reaching women on sites that focus on more serious topics like politics or business. Why is this?

How is the internet going to adapt to and connect with women that aren’t in that traditionally female niche? Should it?

Are they reaching us already, in more mainstream ways? Are we in the minority, and is it merely a numbers game? Do we just not respond to advertising in the same way, and why should they care about us?

Would love to hear your thoughts and insights. I know I’ll be chewing on this one for a while!

photo by Valerie Renee