The Next Engine: Beyond Campaign Thinking

Looking at this rather amazing photo on flickr I’m quick to interpret it thus: armageddon for brands that have been so sorely attacked in the public domain that they must slink away into the night.

One thing is for sure: whether you and your stake-holders like it or not, with the ever increasing advent of self-regulating mediums like blogs, chatrooms, messageboards, status widgets, shout-boxes, groups and feed aggregators, the forum for public disapproval is growing at an exponential rate. At some point you either have to reflect on it, deal with or disavow the criticism, or shape up and reemerge as a more palatable organism. Hint: I believe there are agencies out there who are primed to help you do that.

Obviously, the bigger you are, the more you might think online negativity targeted at your brand won’t have much of an impact - to which I would just like to say ‘codswallop’. In-fact, the larger you are in the public eye, the more likely it is that negative opinions will spread as fast as any internet meme and cover you like a plague.

You know when things are getting really bad when Wikipedia features entries specifically about criticism of your company. Lest ye not forget that Wikipedia is one of the highest ranking sites in the Google algorithm, cropping up in nearly every search for anything you can likely conceive of, and chances are that Wikipedia entries will live forever, in some shape or form.

Almost as damaging can be videos on sites like Youtube where perturbed customers share their experiences and opinions. Worst case scenario is the video will ‘go viral’. When looking at such videos on Youtube, pay particular attention to the number of views that are listed, and then do the math on how quickly ‘no such thing as bad press’ becomes just a gibberish thing you say at parties when there is nothing real to say.

Naturally, there will always be spurious trolls - and there are a few ways of limiting the damage trolls can do or else they can be ignored, but it pays to recognize that not all detractors are just being asinine. It’s been 2 years since Dell responded to “Dell Hell” with an official blog with corporate transparency as the theme and followed up a year later with an even more democratic feedback forum where anything goes, and overall it does appear to have changed public perception of the company, for the better.

Another tactic is to give more power to the positive influencers - people who already support and encourage whatever it is you do - perhaps by way of social media networks built around your brand like the newly launched network for GM’s Saturn brand built on the Ning.com framework; or by giving them more chances to interact with you on a creative level like the PBS Nova project ‘Car of the future’ where users are given the ability to produce their own mix of PBS documentary video clips. Another hot way to branch out to your customers right now in perhaps a more traditional sense (but using modern tech) is using twitter as a kind of public relations/customer service interface. Jetblue has been using Twitter for a while to update their customers and the online shoe-store Zappos is using twitter even more extensively to track all kinds of public and internal conversations.

Bottom line: you have to pay attention to people, not just the FTSE 100, and you can no longer see people simply as either ‘potential buyers’ or ‘outside the target’ - because in the internet age, everyone and his uncle has a potential to either boost or bomb your brand and you’re going to get feedback whether you encourage it or not. So what are you doing still reading this? Get out there and start monitoring conversations and learn when it is appropriate, and in what way you should respond. If nothing else this is just another branch of the marketing strategy you already have in place - just make sure it gets the focus it deserves or you might see yourself on the receiving-end of a backlash that no PR company can reliably put to rest.

Really all it takes is some level of corporate transparency, a dash of non-traditional creative thinking, and certainly a commitment to non-shady business practices. This is customer satisfaction 101; the rest, as they say, will follow.

Tags: Advertising, Church of the Customer, influencers, marketing, Social Media, Strategy