You may not know what you’re doing, but your customers do! If the time to act is now, does that mean it’s too late to plan how your brand will “play well with others?” What happens if/when you blow it?
Have you heard about Motrin? Johnson & Johnson’s well-known brand of over-the-counter pain reliever had offended mothers with a marketing campaign centered around moms who “wear their babies”… a tongue-in-cheek reference to neck and/or back pain caused by baby-carrying devices. Immediately after the campaign launched, in mid-November 2008, the brand took a major beating. Motrin was accused of spreading derogatory messages and, in a crime many marketers may deem far worse, of not understanding its target audience. AHHHHHHH!!!!
Moms (and their readers) twittered, blogged and emailed their frustrations. “A baby will never be a fashion statement,” read one angry tweet. Perhaps, even more on the minds of moms was the lack of immediate response from Motrin. By the time the company did respond, hundreds of moms had voiced opinions, thousands had commented, and millions had seen the newest campaign now framed in an unseemly light. Where was the voice of Motrin?
If Johnson & Johnson had been listening, the company could have been on top of the furor within the first hour. Instead, conversations continued on, chipping away at the brand. Eventually, 24 hours later, J & J yanked all forms of the campaign and publicly apologized.
Consumers are conversing about your brands whether or not you are tuned in to the chatter. The social wave is upstaging traditional customer relationships as we’ve known them. From ratings to social bookmarking to blogs to collaborative computing, social technology has become a mainstay not only on the consumer side, but on the business side, as well.
I realize that asking senior management of major established firms to loosen its grip on customers is not the easiest sell to make. The concept of owning customers does seem to be fading, though. Companies barely own their products anymore, let alone their customers.
With the social web, peer-to-peer conversations about products and services outweigh marketing efforts. In the past, it was easier for organizations to dictate their reputations and content on the Web. Until 10 years ago, web-based content had limited value to customers… all they could do was look at it. Now, they’re able to access it, contribute to it, edit it, and share it. Often with whomever they please.
And, it’s all so new! As consumers tweet, poke, rate, nudge, throw sheep, and vote their way to “social media expert” status, companies have a lot to look forward to. You never want a bad thing to happen to a brand, but, as with anything else, there’s nothing like bad news to spring you into action. It is a leap of faith for a lot of businesses, but the risk of not diving into this pool headfirst would be the biggest mistake.
Excerpted from “Strategy and Social Media” by Lauren McKay in June issue of Customer Relationship Management magazine.
About Wendi McGowan