Social media gives consumers a lot of power and they can use that power to attack brands, advertising and companies. While social media is NOT going to save your brand and may not bring in a lot of new customers ignoring social media can be a huge mistake that can cost you a lot of new customers and business.
Companies and brands need to, at a very minimum, monitor social media channels to listen to what consumers are saying about them. If a company or brand starts to hear some negative chatter on their products or brands they need to quickly quantify the chatter to determine which ones represent the biggest threat to the brand and how to respond. More importantly the responses need to quick and honest. Using PR speak with consumers on social media has become equal to telling consumers “we don’t care what you think or say about us” and that can start a downward spiral that is hard to change.
Here are some examples of lessons learned from Open forum American Express: How to respond when social media attacks your brand ;
This past July, LOFT, a brand owned by Ann Taylor Inc., posted photos on its Facebook page of a tall, blonde model wearing LOFT’s new silk cargo pants, with a click-to-buy link in the captions.
What happened next is a perfect example of how social media can suddenly turn on you, even when you’ve done nothing “wrong,” or seemingly out of the ordinary. Fans of the brand complained that while the pants looked good on the model, they weren’t so flattering on anyone who wasn’t 5’10 and stick thin.
Fans requested that LOFT prove their pants could look good on “real women.” And they did. The following day, the company posted photos to Facebook again, this time with their own staff posing in the pants. The “real women” came from different company departments and ranged from a size 2 to size 12, and in height from 5’3″ to 5’10″.
What to Learn from Ann Taylor
- Turn a possible threat via social media into an opportunity.
- Ann Taylor had the good sense to stop the attack before it escalated. Customers had a direct and valid complaint about a product and how it was featured.
- The company did the best thing possible, they stayed calm and listened to the comments. They took the comments into consideration and came up with a constructive resolution.
- By responding to Fan requests to post photos of women of different sizes wearing the pants, the company proved that they really do listen and care about their customer concerns, and they were able to back up the product.
- It’s a double win for Ann Taylor as they actually gained customer support, while avoiding a potential disaster.
Pretzel Crisps
Preztel Crisps launched an ad campaign in New York City with four slogans, including “You can never be too thin.” The campaign launched in early August with that slogan gracing bus shelters and ad stands and caught the attention of the blogosphere after a photo was posted online.
The photo was re-posted to the women’s blog Jezebel and was followed by condemning posts, tweets, and videos from other bloggers. In fact, I was one of the people who vocalized a problem with this particular campaign. The slogan the company picked is a “thinspiration” motto used by the pro-anorexic community, and was called “irresponsible” and accused of promoting unhealthy weight loss.
The company responded first on Twitter to offended tweeters with replies of, “Thin just happens to be a good word to describe the shape of our product.” As outrage escalated the VP of Marketing participated in interviews with bloggers and explained, that they were a small company and simply wanted to launch an ad that would grab people’s attention. As bloggers continued to post, a video made its rounds of one New Yorker’s protest calling the ads a “disgrace” and listing facts about eating disorders.
The same day, Pretzel Crisps sent out an e-mail to bloggers thanking them for their feedback, as well as tweeting, “We didn’t intend to advocate unhealthy weight loss with our ads. Thanks to all for the feedback. The ads will be taken down asap.”
The blogosphere rejoiced feeling that they actually accomplished something, only to learn that the company replaced the offending ad with another play on a pro-anorexic slogan, “Tastes as good as skinny feels,” from the initial campaign.
Further outrage from bloggers was met this time with the brush off: “While dialoging with some of the bloggers, I mentioned that ‘you can never be too thin’ was just one of four tag lines that we had running throughout the city…The only one that people commented on was the ‘too thin’ ad. So we removed them and replaced them with one of the other three.”
The ultimate fallout from the campaign is still yet to be seen, and many blog commenters agree that it was probably the company’s goal to anger people and get the free publicity. But is free publicity really worth tweets like, “Congratulations; you have ruined your product for me forever with your pro-ana ad slogans. It’s too bad–I loved you,” and “How can you people sleep at night? No matter how you may try to justify it, you are promoting eating disorders.”
What To Learn From Pretzelgate 2010
- For all intents and purposes, Pretzel Crisps did a great job of responding to a social media attack on their product. They directly and individually responded to complaints over Twitter, and made themselves available for interviews.
- The company offered their reasoning, and then listened to the reaction of the blogosphere. They took responsibility, they apologized, and they swiftly took action to fix the problem.
- And then they messed up: they lied. They lied and they refused to understand why their other ad was just as offensive as the one that had been taken down. The company claimed they didn’t receive any negative reaction towards the other campaign slogans, which simply wasn’t true.
If you want to maintain integrity, you need to be honest and transparent, and if you’re not, your customers won’t want anything to do with you
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Honestly is the best policy. Your company needs to be open and take cues from its customers, and know when it’s time to quit.
No social media may not give you a lot of new customers but ignoring social media is akin to ignoring your customers and prospects. Social media provides a goldmine of information and you need to listen to what’s being said but you also need to respond quickly and transparently or else you could pay a huge price. Why in the world wouldn’t you want to listen to what your customers are saying about your brand and respond to prevent your brand from being hijacked by angry consumers ?
Source: Openforum American Express: How to respond when social media attacks your brand
The graveyard of digital marketing is littered with the bones and business cards of those that dove in head-first with high expectations, no strategy, and no plan for testing and optimization of results. Jay Baer-Social Media Consultant
making mistakes will become better and stronger if they can learn from their mistakes and move forward.
Marketing Linchpin with over 20 years of progressive marketing experience working on some great consumer product brands. I am passionate about the role the Internet plays in marketing to empowered consumers and I consider myself an expert at developing online marketing solutions that meet customer needs as well as drive business and brand objectives.
