Creative Concepts

Not every company feels compelled to use social media.  But those who haven’t at least moved to establish their own online presence may be in for a surprise: it’s incredibly easy for someone else to do it for you — and not always with the best of intentions.

Case in point: Michael Werch wondered how long it would take the average corporation to realize that someone was pretending to be them online.  To find out, he began masquerading as the HJ Heinz Corporation on Twitter, mostly as an experiment to test the reflexes of modern business.  The result? Heinz noticed — two weeks later — and Twitter renamed Werch’s account to divest it of any connection to the company.

Werch’s confession in Ad Age has generated an interesting array of (mostly predictable) responses, including:

• The obvious lesson: Businesses must control and protect their online images, even if it means squatting on their own company names across multiple platforms (so enterprising individuals don’t beat them to it).
• The obvious question: Why did Heinz squash Werch’s account, rather than taking it over (or collaborating with him) and building upon the brand goodwill he’d already launched on their behalf?
• The counterpoint: Heinz is the kind of industry leader that “doesn’t need to use Twitter” and other web tools because their perceived impact is so negligible that doing so would be a waste of Heinz’s marketing dollars.
• The counter-counterpoint: Heinz may not need to use Twitter, but imagine the PR headache they’d be facing now if Werch hadn’t been a fan of the brand, but a whistleblower intent on divulging company secrets, questioning their business practices, etc.

Does every company need to use social media?  Of course not.  But just because your company doesn’t use social media, that doesn’t prevent someone else from adopting your company’s name — and, potentially, from damaging your brand.

If your company still isn’t sure about its own intentions toward Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and beyond, here’s a tip: someone in your corporate office should register your company’s name (and all its common derivatives) on all currently-relevant platforms, just in case.  You never have to use them, but you might sleep a little easier knowing that no one else can, either.

(If that tip sounds familiar, it’s probably because someone was telling you the same thing 15 years ago, only the topic was websites, not Twitter accounts.  Same logic, different era, and that logic never stops making sense.)

And, of course, a caveat: if someone really doesn’t like your company, nothing’s stopping them from ranting about you online.  But that kind of vitriol should be spewing from something other than your company’s “official” web presence.  (Plus, if you’ve registered your official presence on Twitter, etc., but your company just hasn’t found a reason to make use of it, there’s nothing like a PR catastrophe to get the engines running — and you don’t want to lose time playing catch-up then, do you?)

If there’s one recurring reason companies are reluctant to embrace social media, it’s that “something could go wrong.”  But when something else goes wrong in your company, are you prepared to use social media as a way to steady the ship?

Eileen O’Brien has an excellent summary of Johnson & Johnson’s recent use of social media to help manage the information flow surrounding their recall of Tylenol and other medications.  And while Twitter and blogs aren’t the only resources a company should turn to in times of crisis, savvy communicators realize that their customers sometimes rely on social media for real-time news.

Consider Wyclef Jean’s response to doubts about the financial clarity of his charity, YELE, after an article in The Smoking Gun called its accounting practices into question.  Instead of ignoring the mounting firestorm, Wyclef issued an official statement at a formal press conference (which may not necessarily have helped alleviate concerns).  But he also posted a video to YouTube regarding his feelings about the situation, which, at the time of this post, has been viewed over 300,00 times — and that’s not counting the numerous duplicates spread around the web.

The lesson?  People love to share information, and in times of crisis, you’d like that information to be coming from you.

These days, being able to deliver pertinent, accurate information to people when and where they expect to see it is safer than expecting them to be herded to a single focal point.  Twitter moves at the speed of misinformation, and the last thing your company needs during a potential crisis is to lose control of the facts due to rapidly spreading inaccuracies.  Better to have a contingency plan in place to mitigate misinformation in advance than to cobble together a response after the story’s already been told.

No business is immune to mistakes, because businesses are made of people, and human beings are notoriously imperfect.  Disasters strike.  Accidents happen.  But not being prepared for the unknown is no one’s idea of a smart business plan.

The Buzz Bin’s Mike Mulvihill kicks off the new year with an excellent observation about social media: the way companies obsess over “controlling the message” is strangling the industry.  In Mulvihill’s own words (emphasis mine):

I’d love to see a survey of how many of the 91 percent of companies using social media are failing miserably because they still just don’t get the fact that every employee is an ambassador, whether at the supermarket, a cocktail party, the kids soccer match or when active on a social media site. They trust their salesmen to represent the company unsupervised, but can’t trust their employees to use social media responsibly. Seems like there’s still a lot of growing up to be done in 2010.

Social media agencies have lamented clients’ unrealistic focus on “controlling the message” for years now.  (We’ve even chimed in on the topic ourselves, including a quote from Scott Monty that puts it all in appropriately absurd perspective.)  But no matter how many times companies are told that a free-flowing discussion about their business is the best thing that could happen to them, they still seem more comfortable spending money on ad campaigns designed to plant specific messages in the audience’s mind, rather than allowing their customers (and employees) to speak freely.

But what are companies so afraid of?

What could possibly be divulged by your employees that could give the public a worse impression of your business than the knowledge that you refuse to grant your employees the freedom to discuss your company?

On the other hand, when the public sees that you, the employer, value your team’s insights and trust them to behave responsibly, you set a standard that consumers (and other companies) appreciate.  The world is comprised of people, not facades.  And people like doing business with people, not images.

This year, why not grant your customers — and your employees — the freedom to speak openly about your brand?  At worst, you’ll discover some flaws worth correcting.  At best, you’ll learn what you really are doing right — and where to build for the future.

In Andrew Cherwenka’s recent case study, he explains how AT&T used Facebook to defend themselves against Verizon’s claims of a better 3G network,  and how that plan backfired when the very customers AT&T expected to rally to their defense instead fell silent while the conversation was dominated by Verizon fans.  (At one point, 89% of the sentiment on the forum was pro-Verizon, prompting one poster to comment, “You’re basically maintaining a fan page for Verizon.”)

Whoops.

Yet while Cherwenka is correct in surmising that the 2-way nature of the web has eroded a company’s ability to control the messaging surrounding their brand, there is one positive that AT&T should be taking away from this experience:

Now they know what their biggest problems are.

Granted, those problems may be technological in nature (like spotty cell coverage) or they may be matters of negative consumer perception.  That’s up to AT&T to decide (or admit).  But because AT&T has a record of what the public really thinks about its service, they can now choose to fix those problems head-on, OR they can choose to ignore them and hope the public eventually loses interest, which often happens.

Regardless of what AT&T chooses to do, your company can embrace this same lesson.  Yes, your social efforts may occasionally backfire.  Yes, the public may sometimes provide you with opinions and suggestions you’d rather not have to hear.  But this feedback is actually the most important information that you could hope to receive, because this is what helps you understand what you need to improve in order to grow as a company.

The better your product actually is, the more loyalty and evangelism you’ll see from your customers — and the more money you’ll be able to save on advertising to convince people you really are that remarkable.

Your social media presence is only as useful as the change it triggers in your business. To that end, here are 3 recent case studies we’ve found, along with the lessons explained (or implied) by each:

• The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) called in its bloggers to head off a potential PR disaster stemming from one blogger’s (misinformation-driven?) post about her baby being seized during airport screening.  (Lesson: Companies large and small are realizing that web-driven PR fires need to be addressed immediately.)
• Michael Bissell gives a blow-by-blow account of how an offhanded web comment resulted in LinkedIn considering a change to the way they process information.  (Lesson: Consumers, speak up; you never know who’s listening.)
• Network Solutions assigned one employee to manage a wave of customer dissatisfaction on Twitter.  The result?  A flip from 58% negative commentary to 18%, and several positive blog mentions of individual outreach.  (Lesson: Even a small effort toward improving your customers’ experience can help turn the tide of dissatisfaction.)

In each example, companies are proving that engaging dissatisfied (or downright angry) customers directly can mitigate the potential PR damage caused by consumer aggravation.  And while those concerns are normally specific to a time, place and incident, the goodwill engendered by such outreach is a long-standing example that reminds customers at large how much your company does care about their experience — and it shows them that you’re not afraid to use the same tools they do to ensure that their needs are met.

Heidi Sullivan’s* recent blog post about “the Amp app” makes a valid point: “Don’t alienate your customers.”  She also gives credit to our client, Bigelow Tea, whom she cites as a positive example of a brand adapting its messaging after discovering its social media audience differs from the audience it expected to find.  This is the kind of advice and execution businesses tend to appreciate.

But there’s another side to the Amp issue — namely, PepsiCo’s willingness to alienate potential customers in exchange for the attendant publicity.  Since those presumed to be put off by the application are women, Amp — which is aimed at young, active males — is willing to offend half the planet’s population simply because its parent company has already written women off as unlikely purchasers of their product.

But Amp apparently didn’t count on men being offended by the app as well, or at least not men in their target demographic.  So now it’s conceivable that more than 50% of potential Amp consumers will have a negative opinion of the brand, which means Amp had better hope that it could remain profitable based solely on sales to those in its expected demographic (and that they didn’t also find Amp’s advertising objectionable).

Controversy may generate publicity, but why so starkly reduce the number of individuals who are likely to see your brand as an emblem of positive self-image?  Why market a product in a way that makes others doubt the values of those who buy it?

Social media isn’t just about the message — it’s about the people (or companies) who conceive of it, create it and share it.  And no bad idea gets a greenlight without someone thinking it’s a good idea.

Make sure your messages represent the values YOU want to be known for.

*  Our own Valorie Luther was thrilled to be joining Heidi on a Blog World Expo panel until a sprained ankle forced Valorie to cancel her role in the event.  We here at Creative Concepts still wish Valorie’s panel-mates a spirited and productive debate!

One of our clients, Ouidad, has ventured into the world of web video with a trio of hair care tips for the terminally curly. Each video has a different focus — beauty & empowerment, hair care on the go and 4-minute curls — which means each video also (presumably) has a different audience, despite the fact that they’re all coming from the same source.

Since Ouidad and her daughter, Sondriel, are so comfortable being themselves and sharing their insights with the camera, we knew they’d represent their business better than any hired hosts possibly could. But they also realized that Sondriel’s expertise may sound more authentic to a teen or young adult audience than Ouidad’s would, because not every audience perceives “authority” the same way.

If you (or a client) are creating original media for the web, you need to be consistent in your branding, but don’t be slavishly insistent on a single point of view. Your audience is multifaceted; let your messaging be, too.

In a recent post for Social Media Today (SMT), Tactical Transparency author Shel Holtz makes the case that traditional PR can still be just as effective of a marketing resource as the hot new grassroots options like “trusted peers” and word-of-mouth.  The catch?  In Shel’s view, traditional PR needs to start operating a little more… non-traditionally.

Holtz advocates newly-popular concepts like acting transparently, forsaking astroturfed messaging, etc.  Common sense, really.  It should go without saying that PR agencies ought to engage people in ways the people themselves find meaningful, rather than using new tools to reinforce old, erroneous and ineffective messages.  And yet… why have Holtz and countless others had to go out of their way to say it?

The popularity — and, in some ways, the mere existence — of books like Holtz & John C. Havens’s Tactical Transparency and Chris Brogan & Julien Smith’s Trust Agents would seem to signal that audiences now crave a return to authenticity in media.  But how did the practice — or the perception — of PR ever stray so far from these principles to begin with?  Why is social media heralded as an antidote to unsavory, top-down control of a company’s messaging?  And how have common sense observations about the need for honesty become so resonant?

It’s flattering to believe that social media is somehow immune from the excesses (or improprieties) that have become associated with the black hats of PR.  But that’s a false sense of entitlement.  If we’re all smart, the next stage of social media’s integration into mainstream messaging will focus less on how new messages are spread and more on what those messages are actually saying in the first place.

When we saw one of our clients, Bigelow Tea, mentioned in The Twitter Book (by Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein) as a positive example of how businesses should use Twitter, we were ecstatic.

And then we realized we’d stopped taking our own advice.

In the book, O’Reilly and Milstein applaud Bigelow Tea for using conversational tweets to direct traffic to their tea-related blog posts, rather than those generic “New Blog Post: Topic X” auto-tweets, which most users have now begun to subconsciously tune out.  Naturally, we were pleased — until we realized the Twitter Tools plugin we’d just installed on the Bigelow Tea Blog was doing precisely what The Twitter Book had lauded us for not doing, all because we hadn’t double-checked the plugin’s default checkboxes.

So we disabled it.  (The auto-tweet part, not the whole plugin.)  Our lesson?  Sometimes a compliment can help you find even more ways to improve.  (And, while you’re at it: make sure you double-check the details…)

By now, even if you don’t live in Chicago, you’ve probably heard of Horizon Realty.  That’s because they recently decided to sue one of their tenants over what they considered to be a libelous message posted to Twitter — specifically:

When news of this lawsuit hit the web, many were astounded by Horizon Realty’s seemingly over-the-top behavior — especially considering the Tweeter in question (Amanda Bonnen) only had 20 followers at the time of the tweet.  (Perhaps even more mind-boggling was Horizon Realty’s response to the public outrage, including the presumed joke, “We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of organization.”)

While the lawsuit itself — and the web firestorm that surrounds it — will find its own conclusion, let’s not miss the opportunity to find several lessons in this fiasco.

1. What you say on Twitter is public. (Even if you don’t think it is.)  That goes not only for what YOU say, but what’s said ABOUT you.
2. The days of being a “sue first, ask questions later” organization may soon be over. Spurious lawsuits only work as scare tactics when the defendant is isolated from legal resources, support and information — none of which is true in this digitally connected age.
3. The public is quick to defend the underdog. Within hours of this story first being tweeted, it was among the top Trending Topics on Twitter.  (Note to corporations: you are almost never the underdog.)
4. The public rarely has all the facts. In this case, Horizon contends that Bonnen had filed a class action lawsuit against them on June 24th regarding the alleged mold issue. If Horizon’s portrayal of Bonnen as a tenant seeking to exploit the system for financial gain turns out to be true, their behavior may not only be understandable but forgivable.
5. Your reputation is ALWAYS in the hands of others. Horizon contends it needed to file its suit against Bonnen because it has a reputation to defend (against her allegations of mold), but they failed to assess the negative impact this lawsuit could have on their reputation in the eyes of potential customers.  Regardless of the facts in the case, the web-going public’s perception is that Horizon Realty is a reactionary and overly-litigious company — not an impression likely to bring in new tenants by the truckload.

All said, there’s still one other question we won’t be able to answer quite yet: namely, how *does* a wave of negative online publicity affect a company? Horizon Realty isn’t Domino’s, and their PR crises aren’t parallel, but the web’s reaction to them has been similar. Whether Horizon’s clientele pays attention to Twitter is something only time (and Horizon Realty’s bottom line) will tell.