BECOMING A SOCIAL BUSINESS: LESSONS FROM BRAVO AND FORD

In the article, Big Brands’ Journey Toward Social Business, Francine Hardaway analyzes Bravo TV Network’s social media strategy and then concludes with three checkpoints to becoming a successful social business.

To start the process, every department, not just the marketing and PR teams, have to work under the philosophy of being social. Brand and consumer awareness has to be fully understood by every department.

The next step involves social media training that is company-wide and driven from the top down. Meaning that a social business starts with the executives embracing the social philosophy; the CEO should start blogging.

Lastly, fully integrate your business objectives into your social media strategy. This will be an automatic checkpoint for your company if social business is driven by the executives and is used in every department.

Bravo has been a social business pioneer; it now has a blog for every program running on its network.

Ford is another company that understands the power of becoming a social business.

As I mentioned in my week 1 post, some companies have great product launches because they had created awareness or “hype” via word-or-mouth for their product. In the article, Ford Uses Social To Rewrite Launch Rules, Sarah Mahoney describes how getting consumers to talk about their product has been a key to Ford’s success.

Ford wanted to sell their Fiesta, a European model, in the US but it had zero name-plate recognition. So what Ford did was give 100 Fiestas to social-media savvy young adults and let them talk about the car for them.

Ford weighed the risks of not being in control of what was being said about their car, with one executive even raising the question that these young people might smoke weed in the car. They did have their incidents, but it turned out to be a huge success and the social-media content from the young drivers reached 28 million views and their nameplate awareness rose to 60% before they ran their first traditional ad.

Since the strategy was so successful, Ford now uses 20% of every product launch budget for pre-launch activities such as the Fiesta campaign.

Not only did Ford create awareness through their brand agents, but they also listened to them and made adjustments to the Fiesta that they had never thought of.

Ford success also comes from their understanding that listening to their customers is just as important as talking to them.

-Brian Scholl

HOW FORD IS DOING IT RIGHT

Ford appointed Scott Monty as their Global Digital/Multimedia Communications Manager and it was one of the smartest moves they have ever made. Running a widely successful personal blog, as well as managing the giant corporation’s public relations and communications efforts, Monty has set the bar for media relations practitioners.

In an interview with Monty by Jim Edwards of BusinessInsider.com, Monty discusses the importance of presence and interaction within the social media realm. Monty raises the stakes by posting extremely controversial issues on his blog, attracting attention both from competitors and consumers. Last week, Monty posted an anonymous letter on Ford’s Facebook from Oracle trashing another site used by the Ford company. However, Monty discusses the importance of simply having a presence on social media sites. Even before Ford was participating in the Twittersphere, they were receiving mentions. By just creating a Twitter account, it allowed Ford to compile and process mentions of their company by consumers around the world.

The choice to interact with consumers was an easy one; excited reactions from consumers over a huge brand replying was enough to keep the ball rolling when it came to giving feedback. However, not all social media sites are so simple to handle-note that Ford has over 80 pages worldwide to discuss different products, locations and services. Ford has been leading the way in using social media and tailoring it to their needs. The first brand to use Google+, and one of the first to use Instagram, Ford is reaching out to consumers on all levels.

Monty describes Ford’s use of social media as a “blended role” because of the overlap between customer service, marketing, and consumer relations. Around the world, there are over 40 people working on social media initiatives for the company. Monty discusses that social media has given Ford added credibility and is so self-regulatory that many fans stand up against any negative mentions of the company before they do. Ford also has done an incredible job with building brands within the company. Monty recognizes that consumers of a Ford Focus are much different than those who purchase Mustangs, and so personas and brands need to be tailored to those consumers.

Ford has done an extensive job researching their audience, reaching out to consumers and developing a unique, blended and complex social media strategy. The complexity of the different pages and identities really allows Ford to be widespread through different sites and allows for their consumers to reach them at various levels.

 

Stephen Shankland of CNet News focuses on Ford’s use of Google+. Since Google+ is normally used for individuals to connect with others, it is rare to find large corporations, especially a global giant like Ford, using the site it their advantage. Google and Ford have teamed up to go beyond just linking all social media sites in one place and establishing connections with other + users, Google Maps users will be able to send navigation tools to their Ford cars through a new syncing process. The use of Google+ gives Ford the competitive edge and allows for its consumers to find the information they need, whether to connect to another social media site to investigate directly, quickly and efficiently.

 

-Rachel Chesno

TRANSPARENCY IN TWITTER MARKETING: THE TWO EXTREMES

Many companies are flocking to social media to promote and spread awareness for their brand.  One social media outlet, Twitter, allows you to read about what all of your customers are talking about while simultaneously providing your company an opportunity to join in the conversation.  Many companies can greatly benefit their brand by tweeting but there is a proper method of doing so.  A brand must find a way to communicate with their publics without coming across as advertising.  This means a business needs to find a voice that is human and genuine.  People are constantly being blasted and overwhelmed by advertisements everywhere they look.  Why would anyone want to follow a company that is simply pushing ads at them? Companies must be able to casually join the Twitter conversation by sounding genuine and personable.

This presents a challenge that businesses face when operating a company Twitter account: You must be able to converse casually with your followers while spreading brand awareness and increasing revenue.  It is a balancing act of being transparent and open with your followers on a somewhat personal level while still advancing your business goals.  While many companies have succeeded at this, others have not.  Below are two Twitter stories.  One story is about how one company got a little too personal and another of a company who came out looking like an inauthentic corporate advertisement.

Many companies will try to connect with their publics by tweeting about current events that their following is interested in.  Many companies hire a social media representative to help aid in connecting with their constituents but this can be dangerous.  Kitchen Aid, a kitchen appliance and accessories company, tried to connect with their followers during the first Presidential Debate of 2012 this past Wednesday.  They tweeted the following: “Obamas gma (grandmother) knew it was going 2b bad! ‘She died 3 days b4 he became president’ #nbcpolitics”.  While Kitchen aid claims that this was one of their social media representatives trying to tweet on their own and accidentally tweeting on a corporate account, the tweet caused uproar.  The tweet was quickly removed but it still serves as an example of what happens when corporate tweeting gets too personal.

When companies are on the opposite end of the spectrum they can be seen as just another advertisement and turn off their followers.  Snickers candy bars tried to boost their sales and awareness by paying celebrities to tweet about them.  The tweets were not well received and “Do you really need money that bad” and “I’m not on here to be advertised at” were among the responses that they received.  It seems as though even by trying to use celebrities as a medium to communicate with your publics, a blatant advertisement can be spotted by the average Twitter follower and is anything but appreciated.

Dan Entwistle, of the Telegraph, takes a look at five of the biggest social media ‘fails’ in the recent years, including Skittles’ mishap of poor mention monitoring, and Microsoft’s Facebook polling fiasco. Emphasizing the importance of never underestimating the wit of consumers, this article shows off precedents you definitely do not want to follow.

-Pierce Gulley

DELETING COMMENTS, DELETING CUSTOMERS: CHAPSTICK FAILS ON FACEBOOK

In the article from Adweek, “ChapStick Gets Itself in a Social Media Death Spiral: A brand’s silent war against its Facebook fans,” Tim Nudd details how ChapStick failed to respond to negative comments on their Facebook.

ChapStick’s Controversial Ad

ChapStick posts an image on its Facebook of a girl doubled over the back of a couch with her bottom in the air. At the bottom of the image read the text, “Where Do Lost Chapsticks Go?” The image was intended to generate comments answering the question.

When a blog posted that the image was degrading and that ChapStick had been deleting critical comments, more people commented on ChapStick’s Facebook page and saw their comments being deleted. Then users began commenting on why their comments disappeared and ChapStick deleted those as well.

ChapStick had used the same image in an ad with the tagline,”Be Heard at Facebook.com/ChapStick.” This infuriated people even more.

The whole issue blew up when people who weren’t even fans of their page began bashing them on Facebook. ChapStick finally took down the image post and added another post with an apology and their reasoning for deleting comments: to comply with Facebook’s guidelines. The damage had already been done however. Users were venting on other platforms, a Facebook page was created by the original blogger to house all the negative comments that ChapStick could not delete.

Catharine Taylor, from Social Media Insider, explored ChapStick’s website and provides useful insight in her article, “Read My Lips“. She found that the parent pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, was running the website for ChapStick and that they had a legal disclaimer stating that they are not responsible for the content of third party sites, like Facebook.

The lessons learned are to never silence your critics because they will find a way to publicize their views. If you are providing a platform for user feedback, monitor it closely and respond to comments in a way that builds trust with your customers. Lastly, do not let your legal department run your website.

-Brian Scholl

FED EX: BE SURE TO PLAN FOR THE WORST

Mega corporations are always at risk of crisis.  With the new social media landscape, they barely have control over their brand.  People say what they think, and if they are given reason to say things that are negative, the company can barely control the backlash.

On December 20, 2011, a FedEx delivery man was caught throwing a computer monitor over a fence.  In the 21 second security video, the man is shown taking the package from the back of his van and walking along the gate that surrounds the home.  When he reaches the door he carelessly throws the obviously fragile computer monitor onto the driveway on the other side of the gate. The man didn’t miss a beat, or even try to ring the doorbell.

The video sparked negative customer reviews, comments, articles on the Daily Mail, Huffington Post, the Chicago Tribune and more, and general discontent directed toward FedEx.  Adding to the list of grievances, the customer said he was home when the monitor was delivered.

To deal with a crisis like this one, a corporation needs to have corporate social media policies to be enforced by professionals.  Monitor this kind of activity in real time, and respond to customers concerns.  Fed Ex did a great job at responding by posting a video, featured below, that apologized directly to the customer and all of those who have had issues with Fed Ex.  They did all that they could, and even though the viral video of the delivery man had more hits than their apology did, they performed their due diligence to the utmost.

-Daniel Benn

REACTIONS AND RESPONSES: HOW THEY REALLY AFFECT YOUR BUSINESS

Although a company may not realize it, social media, can easily make or break a brand, especially in the case of consumer packaged goods.  A key example of this occurring is in the case of PepsiCo’s Tropicana. According to both a critical study, “Tropicana: Social Media Teach Marketers A Branding Lesson,” and “Study of the Impact of Changes on OJ Demand,” Tropicana faced an enormous challenge in 2009 when they decided to rebrand their already iconic packaging. The larger than life orange and straw combo was ditched for a more “natural” look in order to compete with Coca Cola’s “Simple Orange”, despite the fact that consumers identified with the current design.

The new packaging featured a large glass of “freshly squeezed” juice, an orange color scheme on every container regardless of pulp, and the words “100% Orange Pure and Natural” directly in the center of the container. The Arnell Group, the company responsible for the redesign, also opted to change the cap of the bottle to imitate half of an orange and reflect the squeezing of natural juice when opening the container.

Because of the readily available communication made possible by social media, Tropicana’s response to their redesign was immediate. They quickly learned that consumers did not like the new packaging at all, and that they had ignored previous positive feedback on their old design. Consumers called the new design “Ugly,” “Generic-Looking and Cheap,” and continuously state it was reminiscent of a no-name brand. The sales of the brand plummeted 20% in the first month that the new product was on the shelves. Their failure to react or listen to customer input from the beginning led the company to make a poor decision in ruining a strong branding image. Although the company had invested approximately $35 million in the new design, they eventually heeded customer complaints via social media and switched back to the old packaging by the end of the year. Although this was the smartest decision in response to negative feedback, the switch cost the company approximately $27 million.

A recent article by Forbes, “Why Ignoring Social Media Complaints Is a Huge Mistake,” looks at many common blunders made by companies in regards to their corporate transparency. Author Roger Dooley points out that it is much easier to keep an existing customer than search for a new one, however companies often to fail to do this. They neglect to respond to even positive tweets or posts about their brand, which can lead to a negative opinion of the brand because of the lack of transparency. Dooley points out that the most effective tool a company can have is an apology. When a customer is unhappy with a brand or corporation, a simple “we’re sorry” is often enough to provide quality customer service and keep the consumer loyal to the brand. According to Dooley, 50% of consumers only give the brand one week to respond to a question before ceasing business with that brand. In Tropicana’s case, they eventually responded to complaints – but it took nearly a year to implement the original packaging. If they had remained transparent from the beginning, paid attention to and responded to customer attachment to the straw-in-orange, perhaps the company could have saved a lot of money and retained much of their fan base.

-Jen Parravani

BASIC MISTAKES OF SOCIAL MEDIA YOU SHOULD AVOID

When an emerging technology has as much momentum behind it as social media, the temptation is to focus on the success stories, and to let ourselves get wrapped up in the Buck Rogers gee-whizz-ness of it all. However, as with any new frontier, there are still many perils that must be acknowledged, understood, and avoided. The biggest risks are naturally incurred by the players with the most to lose – in the case of social media, those players are the Fortune 500 businesses that are taking their first tentative steps into the social media wilderness.

Fortunately, the lessons learned by corporate social media pioneers can help the next wave of adopters find their way to successful planning and implementation of an effective SM strategy. In the Forbes’ article “8 Most Common Mistakes Fortune 500 Brands Make with Facebook Content,”  Michael Matthews describes eight pitfalls commonly suffered by large corporations who are struggling to promote themselves. For instance, many companies fail to establish a credible online personality that is clearly distinguished from the mass-media brand. A company’s online persona has to be human, something that consumers can relate to personally the same way they relate to their other online connections. Another common mistake is to begin an open-ended conversation that doesn’t relate directly to the needs or expectations of the online community.

Matthews’ fourth mistake to avoid is allowing online conversations to drop off when companies fail to reply to comments. Some social media marketing mistakes discussed by Matthew Ellis also mention the importance of replying consistently to posts. Ellis points out that allowing conversations to drop off without prompt replies to posts makes a company look disorganized, disengaged, and uncommitted to its online community. Rachel also touches on this in her article about clothing brands failing to respond on twitter. In the Forbes article, Matthews stresses the importance of treating brand ambassadors with special care, and not like mere coupon-hunters. They are truly special members of the community, who help sell the brand, and often understand its relevance to the community better than internal marketing staff do.

Finally, don’t forget to market. While its important to keep the company online persona authentic, the reason for being online is to help pad the bottom line. If your Facebook page isn’t driving traffic and, ultimately, sales, there is not much point in having one.

-Paul Heitsch

HOW THE GAP FAILS TO CLOSE THE DISTANCE IN SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media allows for big businesses to reach their consumers easily and efficiently, however with the millions of users on these different social media sites, it is becoming increasingly difficult for companies to keep up. In the article, “Exclusive Study: Big Brands That Fail on Twitter,” Courtney Myers looks into the use of social media as a customer service tool, and what she found was less than spectacular.

Big brands are using twitter as more of a billboard, than a conversation place, and it is directly related to their customer satisfaction. Conversocial, a tool that helps brands manage their social media mentions and interactions, was able to track over 8,000 mentions of ten major brands in the U.S. to see how well the conversation was flowing. In the time period used to collect data, only 13% of the mentions received a response. Even though some comments did get answered, many brands took over two days to respond, or didn’t monitor their feed over the weekend.

The majority of the mentions were direct complaints or suggestions seeking an answer, but were not attended to by either social media staff or customer service. The Gap was one of the worst offenders as all mentions and interactions were left unanswered, but still visible for other consumers to see. This leaves a huge hole for consumers to continue a negative conversation that ostracizes the brand.

Instead of using Twitter has a billboard to blast consumers with advertisements, the ‘social media customer service team’ effort is coming to be a necessary tool for big brands. Having a large team of workers trained to answer customer’s questions and also deal with customer service issues like returns and exchanges will prove extremely beneficial to the company’s sales and reputation.

Mike McGrail of The Social Penguin Blog, discusses the “Ten Things a Brand Should Never do on Twitter.” This list discusses timely responses in its third rank, while also mentioning the importance of proper grammar (number nine) and the use of automatic Direct Messages (number one).

 

-Rachel Chesno

HOW UNILEVER SOLD CEREAL BARS WITH FACEBOOK

Many brands try to spread awareness of their products or services on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites.  Some are successful and others are not but Unilever hit the jackpot with social marketing when it promoted its Marmite cereal bars on Facebook.

Facebook features advertisements that are placed on pages of a certain target demographic.  In an effort to target their ideal demographic a company can choose to be shown to only a certain age group or gender and then advertise more effectively.  This is an advantage over regular television, print and radio advertising because you cannot know exactly who is receiving your message.

 Unilever aimed their advertisements on mothers and adults in the UK between      the ages of 16 to 44.  The ad offered one free cereal bar per person and included  a list of names of Facebook friends who had already received theirs.  Unilever benefited from this because not only were the advertisements utilizing the reach and selectiveness that only Facebook could provide but they also made use of  the social benefit of Facebook by showing users that their friends were already fans of the product.

The campaign was responsible for 21 million impressions in two weeks, 10% increase in Facebook connections and 33,000 samples distributed. Unilever was the first fast moving consumer packaged goods company in the UK to utilize this strategy but surely they will not be last given their success.

Unilever did not stop there with advertising using social media and on Facebook.  Here the Vice President of Global Media Innovation at Unilever, Babs Rangaiah talks about how the internet has changed “everything consumers do.”  At 3:38 he talks about a Dove womens soap wesbite that can be customized by the consumer to make it more fitting for them.  At 4:12 he talks about a campaign for Axe Body Spray targeted at 16-24 yr old males that allows them to select an Axe female model to be their alarm clock.  Really interesting and groundbreaking stuff

-Pierce Gulley

HOW COCA COLA SPREADS THEIR BRAND WITH “HAPPINESS”

The best way to use social media is by creating an emotional relationship with your brand, and Coca Cola has done this very well.  Last week, in the “Coca Cola Social Media Strategy” post, the focus was on the company’s general use of social media, mainly Facebook.  Recently, they have gone much further.  They invited billions of people around the world to “Open Happiness” in their global integrated marketing campaign, which served as a promotional tool, and an outdoor and print advertising medium, which included digital and musical components.  This program rolled out successfully in markets around the world beginning in 2009 and has continued up to present day.

The first test was on a single college campus.  Since, they have spread Happiness vending machines across the globe, and as you can see in this video, Oslo Norway.

Now, they have gone ever further than vending machines.  Their more recent projects include rigging convenience stores to surprise unsuspecting Coca Cola drinkers.  In this video, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a Happiness truck circles the city streets and hands passersby small Coke gifts.

The simple goal of the Happiness campaign was to make people slow down from their busy routines, and share a laugh (and hopefully a Coke) with others.  They made it into a game, and dropped loads of extra money giving away not only free soda, but merchandise, sodas, and a surfboard (see 2:04 of the Rio video above).  Coca Cola created their own success by creating strong emotional ties whenever one sees a Coke.  Not only among those who get the gifts from the vending machines, trucks, and stores, but those who watch the viral videos and subscribe to Coca Cola’s fun campaign.  That is the way to use social media successfully.

-Daniel Benn