Is Social Media David or the Emperor (Part II)?

The following is a continuation of a post that discussed whether social media is the Emperor without clothes or David in David v. Goliath.  This post focuses on brand engagement in social channels.

One of the questions I often get asked is, “How can I use social networks like Facebook and Twitter for my brand?”

And while they teach us in school not to answer a question with a question, I inevitably always do.

“What are you trying to accomplish?” is my usual reply.

Before you engage in social anything, you should have a good answer to this question.  Are you trying to increase brand awareness?  Extend your brand experience online? Attract influencers? Create an alternative communication channel? Obtain lifestyle information to incorporate into your CRM? Make a few sales?  None of the above, some of the above, or…  all of the above?

What, exactly, does success look like?  This is step 1 and the one question that you must answer.

There is no simple answer to the question, “How can I use social networks for my brand?” because a good answer involves your overall brand strategy.  Without proper planning, throwing up a fan page or a micro-blog, in any language, is a one-way road to zero in terms of impact. Facebook, Kaixin001, RenRen, Twitter, Weibo, YouTube, YouKu, etc. — all of the popular social services that have millions of users — are littered with failed attempts by brands trying to authentically join consumer conversations without a clear plan as to how.  Social networks, and the user-generated content each network’s members produce, are not cubs but lions of brand communications.  This is a serious medium, and one that should not be handed over to a junior intern unless you want to deal with the consequences (see Marc Jacobs’ recent situation for what could happen).

Facebook is Like Big Bang

Digital social engagement is new human behavior, and not everyone likes it.  Also, we’re adapting to the variables of this medium at the same time the medium is being formed and changing.  In a way, Facebook is really like the Big Bang — and its resulting universe is still volatile and changing.  However, like the laws of physics that govern our offline universe, it is the rules of human relationships that provide valuable insights on how brands can engage within the online (or social) universe.

To have a better chance at engaging successfully, I recommend understanding the 5 development stages in interpersonal relationships.  According to Wikipedia, these are:

1. Acquaintance – Becoming acquainted depends on previous relationships, physical proximity, first impressions, and a variety of other factors.  If two people begin to like each other, continued interactions may lead to the next stage, but acquaintance can continue indefinitely.
2. Buildup – During this stage, people begin to trust and care about each other.  The need for intimacy, compatibility and such filtering agents as common background and goals will influence whether or not interaction continues.
3. Continuation – This stage follows a mutual commitment to a long-term friendship, romantic relationship, or marriage. It is generally a long, relative stable period.  Nevertheless, continued growth and development will occur during this time.  Mutual trust is important for sustaining the relationship.
4. Deterioration – Not all relationships deteriorate, but those that do tend to show signs of trouble.  Boredom, resentment, and dissatisfaction may occur, and individuals may communicate less and avoid self-disclosure.  Loss of trust and betrayals may take place as the downward spiral continues, eventually ending the relationship.  (Alternately, the participants may find some way to resolve the problems and reestablish trust.)
5. Termination – The final stage marks the end of the relationship, either by death in the case of a healthy relationship, or by separation.

While the stages in this model were first developed to describe adult, romantic relationships, then later applied to other relationships, sociologists have found applicability of this model to consumer-brand relationships.  Social networks have accelerated the understanding of this model because the evidences of these relationships can more or less be easily seen… and over many many relationships, which, by the way, is another reason why understanding social media about your brand is critical.  Not doing so is tantamount to not ever listening to the compliments or complaints of your friend/spouse/co-worker/parent/child/teacher/etc.

Back to engagement: understanding stages 1-3 is critical for every brand manager in order to avoid stages 4-5.  Note that “selling as a hidden agenda” is a quick way to get to stage 4 — either because the other party feels bored by the constant hawking or betrayed from an abuse of trust.

So what are the social network manifestations of stages 1-3?

In the Acquaintance stage — it’s important to establish a positive first impression.  So — you should think, where will people get their first impression, and how positive will that impression be?  Here, you’ve got a paradigm shift.  Whereas in most of the 20th century the ‘where’ and ‘how positive’ first impressions could be largely controlled by a (very good) advertising agency and a (very good) PR agency — that’s no longer the case.  Nowadays, in addition to the controllable sources, the first impression people have of your brand can, and most likely will, come from 1) snippets in organic Google search results (from sites that have user reviews like TripAdvisor) or 2) fan likes/posts/comments on walls.  If you want the maximum prospects, pay attention to the non-traditional sources and make sure you’re making a good impression.

A slight aside — it is completely possible that you have the best brand but no one knows about it.  So one way in which you could gain more acquaintance is through advertising.  In this way — any type of online advertising will do.  Banner, PPC, SEM, social advertising, etc.  Each of them have their own strengths and weaknesses.  For social advertising — if the goal is to gain more acquaintances — then you should make sure you clearly identify whom you want to be acquainted with.  Ideally, the whom should look pretty close to the profile of your ideal customers — i.e. the ones that are going to be most satisfied with your service AND also allow you to declare success if you get the chance to have a relationship with them.  This means that it’s just as important for you to define whom you won’t target (i.e. the type of friends that would raise eyebrows if you brought them home to meet your family).

In the Build Up stage — the trust and caring begins for both parties in the relationship.  For brand managers, it’s the make or break stage.

[In Part III, the final part of this series, we’ll look into how brands can make Build Up a successful stage for them, leading to Continuation, and what that means to the bottom line.]

Caught in a Bad Hotel

Most social media stories nowadays are about customer engagement.  This post is about employee relations in the 21st century, and what happens when social media enters the mix.

A few weeks ago, a video called Don’t Get Caught in a Bad Hotel was posted on YouTube.  It was a flash mob covering Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” music video which is currently the most video of all time on YouTube with 214M views.  The video was created by workers fighting to get affordable healthcare and a fair contract at a number of hotels in San Francisco.  In the 3 weeks it’s been posted, the video has garnered over 175,000 views and been covered by a number of news outlets, including the Huffington Post.  In fact, when one currently searches the hotel on YouTube the video is the first to come up.  The 10th result in organic search when Googling the hotel leads you to this story about the flash mob.

We see a lot of things about social media and customers.  But brand managers should look internally first; any brand that doesn’t have a social media policy for their employees may be at risk of an intractable PR crisis, particularly one who treats their employees poorly.  Workplace rants by employees are becoming major headaches for companies.

In the past, what happened inside companies were kept behind closed doors.  In this age of self-expression, what happens inside make headline news on a fairly regular basis.  Take for example, Hon Hai Precision Technology, the world’s largest contract manufacturer of electronics with customers like Apple, HP, and Dell.  Its Foxconn Technology Group employs more than 400,000 people in Shenzhen.  Since the beginning of this year, 13 employees have attempted suicide, with one leaping to his death hours after the Chairman had visited the factory promising to increase safety.  The blog world either condemns Foxconn’s working condition or point to the stress of trying to make it in China today as the main reasons why these suicides occurred, but that’s all speculation; no one really knows why.  Though ZDNet points out that the suicide rate is low in comparison to the China population average, Foxconn is still in the process of training more than 100 mental health workers, as well as making changes to improve its employee relations.  But will it be done fast enough to save lives?  And when will this impact Foxconn’s customers directly?  For example, hurting Apple (which just recently overtook Microsoft in market value) in the same way charges of sweatshops and child labor violations continue to tarnish Nike?

Part of the measurement for brand value is employee morale.  As every employee contribute to the brand experience, high morale should equate to a better brand experience, and leading to higher customer satisfaction and both customer and employee loyalty.  Social media about employee relations and working conditions therefore affect not only your current employees, future recruits, but also, your customers today and prospects tomorrow.

Paul Hogarth of the Huffington Post asked his Facebook fans whether they, upon seeing the “Don’t Get Caught in a Bad Hotel,” would boycott the hotels listed, and here’s a very revealing response:

“It will be seen by a lot more people than your average – ‘what do we want and when do we want it’ protest – because as much as I am pro union and will support boycotts, I don’t forward info on every single boycott because seriously, nobody would read my reports if I did. I saw the YouTube video and then saw that the Palace Hotel was part of the boycott list and canceled my reservations for tea at the Garden Room. I probably would not have found out about the boycott if it wasn’t entertaining enough to go viral, and I definitely wouldn’t have posted it in my [Facebook] status and then five of my friends probably wouldn’t have posted in theirs …”

Last year employees at a Domino’s Pizza were fired and faced criminal charges for improper food handling as a result of their prank video post on YouTube.  Though Domino’s didn’t do anything to provoke this, it was humiliated and eventually had to respond via YouTube to do damage control; and their brand suffered in the immediate aftermath.

Assuming brands treat their employees fairly, it’s still much better for them to have a communications plan in place already, as opposed to having to scramble on the fly to come up with a plan when something unexpected erupts.  As was the case with Domino’s, it only took 2 thoughtless workers, a lack of social media guidelines for employees, and a slight hesitation in response time to tarnish the brand.  Since then, social media has only gotten bigger and employees… more expressive.  Take the time to craft a plan and talk to your employees if you haven’t already.  You don’t want to get caught in a social media storm without a plan.

Social Profile and Customer Service

Hoteliers: suppose Justin Bieber, the fastest rising international pop star, comes knocking on your door in the following way, what would you do?  (see video below — it’s only 46 seconds)

You would:

1. Do nothing
2. Respond privately to Bieber and invite him to come back
3. Apologize to Bieber publicly
4. Respond with humor to Bieber publicly
5. Fix the revolving door then assure the public what happened was a one-off

Justin Bieber currently has over 4M “likes” on Facebook, over 2.6M followers on Twitter, and has 2 videos on YouTube with over 100M views, one of which, “Baby features Ludacris” is currently the 3rd most viewed video of all time on YouTube.

The correct answer? Any of them, but more importantly, before you chose your answer, did you:

• Click on the link to see Bieber’s Wikipedia entry?
• Check out his Facebook fan page?
• Look at what his most recent tweets were about?
• See if he tweeted about running into the door?
• Watch all or part of his video?
• Google Justin Bieber to see if you can find out anything else about him?

If you did, you’d find, among other things, that Justin Bieber regularly creates mobs with his appearances.  In New Zealand the crowd of teenage girls knocked down his mom at the airport upon his arrival.  He is sad because Twitter changed its algorithm so that he’s no longer a trending topic which he has been for a long time.  And also, several articles have already covered his unfortunate head kiss with the revolving door.

Although Bieber is only 16 years-old, his entire life is digitized in an accessible way that allows someone to easily understand his personality, fan base, actions, aspirations, and why he’s become such a phenomenon.  Some of the content come from Bieber himself, and some are collaborative content from people who either know him or think they know him.  Nonetheless, the Radisson Blu in Frankfurt can get to know Justin Bieber quickly with the aggregate information that exists.

To summarize, Justin seems to be a wonderful and talented human being, one with passionate fans.  He was discovered on the internet as a result of his mom uploading him singing onto YouTube.  He has been praised as being down-to-earth and homemade, not manufactured like so many other pop stars.  His wipeout was covered by the Associated Press, HotelChatter.com, and was on the front page of MSN.

Justin was very gracious about his own unfortunate encounter with the door.  In his own words:

i think my head still hurts from running into that door…haha. only thing u can do in times like that is laugh at yourself…and laugh hard    3:07 PM May 20th via web

In the age of social media, the question isn’t which customer do I have is a “Justin Bieber.”  The real question is, what is my brand doing to get to know every customer as though s/he were Justin Bieber and actively incorporating his/her public social profile to provide better service in a non-exploitative way?

Justin Bieber may share a lot in his social profile, but not a lot is needed to gain a better understanding of a customer.  Every service provider in the travel industry should incorporate looking into public social profiles as a standard part of their operating procedure for customer service (and for that matter, employment as well!)

As for Radisson Blu in Frankfurt, given what we know about Bieber, any of the responses listed above would have been fine.  Because Radisson Blu Frankfurt has a Twitter page, a Facebook fan page, and is already active in social media, at least from a guest perspective, I think a public response would be great and appropriate given Bieber’s (and his fans’) preferences for this medium.

Viral wedding video generates revenue

A little over a week ago I passed around a video that featured a couple’s wedding entrance.  At that time, there were a little over 10,000 views of the video on YouTube.  I wanted to share the video with my friends because I had found the video to be quite entertaining, as it was an entire wedding party having a great time introducing the bride and groom, grooving down the aisle in a church to a pretty hip song.  They were having a good time genuinely, and though a bit goofy and dorky at times, was a nice break from the usual gloom and doom news.

Fast forward to today.  The video of Kevin and Jill’s wedding entrance has gone from 10,000 to 15M.  The song has been identified to be Chris Brown’s “Forever,” which enjoyed a windfall from the exposure despite the fact that the song was released more than a year ago.  The success prompted Google to blog about it, citing encouraging numbers that are sure to make Brown’s label very happy given his recent problems.  Among impressive chart numbers on both Amazon and iTunes, according to Nielsen SoundScan’s report for sales ending July 26 Chris Brown’s “Forever” was downloaded over 50,000 times.

The couple, not wanting to benefit directly, have instead set up a website that directs traffic to donate to charity at http://www.jkweddingdance.com.

Here’s the video below.  Enjoy.

Another successful viral video campaign

Last week a well-respected hotel chain stumbled in creating viral videos that were insensitive instead of funny.  Enough’s been said about that so let’s move on to something more positive.

Gillette’s new campaign surrounding the idea of “manscaping” is funny and effective. In research they found that 1 in 3 men shaved parts of body other than their face, and before they ran the campaign they tested the videos for with both men and women to ensure that they wouldn’t be offended.  The videos have a cartoon character teaching you how to shave different regions of the body.  The result is a viral video home run, of which the most popular in the series has already garnered over 600,000 views in 2 weeks.  You can probably guess which region that particular self-help focuses on.

The campaign is clever and brilliantly help Gillette establish their brand with younger males at the time when Gillette is expanding its product line beyond shaving to personal hygiene.  By using YouTube, Gillette is where these consumers are.  To draw them to Gillette, it focused the content of the video on something younger males would relate to (when you factor in age, I’d bet younger men shave other body parts more than older men, so the figure is likely more than 1 in 3 younger men could relate to the videos).  Finally, by making them short and funny, Gillette enabled the early discoverers to then spread word of the video through their social networking channels such as Twitter and blogs.

It’ll be interesting in the following days to see how the humor of manscaping translates across cultures.