Last week I attended the #140conf in London on behalf of SocialMedia8. Whilst the conference overall was a bit underwhelming, there were a few interesting pannels – particularlythe ‘Twitter & Brands’ panel hosted by James Poulter, digital strategist at Ogilvy.
The panelist included Jennifer Cisney, Chief Blogger and Social Media Manager at Kodak and Rachel Fellows, Head of Corporate Communications at Kellogg’s. One of Rachel’s comments really struck a chord and was in line with something I have been thinking about recently – it is a lot easier to get buy in from higher up when you show them some of the negative stuff our there, rather than focus on the positives.
The below video is a registration of the above mentioned panel (with thanks to DElyMyth) – the video starts at Rachel’s comment about negative comments in social media being a more persuasive tool to achieve senior level compliance.
It seems that the brands that have been stung the worst also learn the quickest. In a way this make sense, they simply have to – it’s a sink or swim scenario. One of the most used social media case studies is Dell and their Ideastorm platform. But would this platform have existed today if it wasn’t for Jeff Jarvis and the whole Dell Hell situation? Probably not.
Habitat is another brand that has had to grow up fast in social media. After the alleged intern decided to spam the Iran Election hashtag they were one of the most vilified brands in the social media community. Now they have a full social media strategy and are actively engaging with their community on Twitter and Facebook. And they are going about it the right way this time, by starting with listening:
“When we got back on Twitter, one of the first things we did was to ask our followers what kind of updates they wanted to see and they were very forthcoming in responding”, said Denise Fender, head of eCommerce at Habitat.
Traditional thinking has always been that negative news spread much faster and far wider than positive news – it seems this school of thought is still pervasive and is what drives innovation in social media. The focus seems to be on damage control, rather than harnessing the brand’s fans.
So what do you think? Does a brand need to get stung to really wake up to the potential and importance of social media? Did your brand get burnt in social media? Or do you have any more examples, please share them with us in the comments!
