Archive for the ‘social media’ Category
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Brands + Gossip: What Could Go Wrong?
1st November 11
Posted in digital, social media
Brands like people talking about them in a positive way. Brands love when fans adore them and signify that their life is better because Brand X is in it. This is the Pleasantville of marketing. Reality isn’t so generous. Sometimes the product doesn’t live up to the brand and sometimes the brand doesn’t live up to the product.
Questions, speculations, myth and fan expectations can turn a product and/or brand into consumer gossip. Apple announced the launch of the iPhone 4S, still a kick-ass phone but not the iPhone 5 we were all hoping for. What does the ‘33’ stand for on the Rolling Rock bottle? Why are AT&T cell phone signals so bad in New York and San Francisco?
Photo Source: Forbes.com
We spoke with our good friend Nick Denton, self-proclaimed Gossip Merchant at Gawker. We asked Nick how can brands navigate the gossip about them and how Gawker can help them. He brought up three really good points that changed how we view things over here at BBH Labs:
1) Are we listening to the right crazies?
We let people with more time on their hands be more influential. Nick wants this to change. He doesn’t think time is a true metric of influence. He wants to emphasize those that are actually interesting in what they comment about. Why can’t brands do the same?2) Create a safe space for conversations
Earlier this year BBH Labs wrote a post about Social Flings and this particular tactic falls into that camp. Brands need places where they can answer honestly and openly without general fear of attack. Perhaps AT&T invites an Engineer to explain the cell phone signal issues in New York and San Francisco? Lean into the controversy and squelch it. Gawker network wants to be that safe place for brands with a new offering launching sometime next year.3) Brands need to be interesting as well
Brands (or brand hired celebrities) can join the conversation online and be a peer. Brands have a point of view on the world beyond their primary business. One example we like to use is, ‘If Red Bull the brand left a review on a skateboard that was being sold on Amazon we would find that review credible.’ If brands appeared in these spaces it could change consumer perception in a very interesting and unboring way.What do you think of these points? Are we missing anything? Can we look at brand gossip in a new way?
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Effyeahpretzelcrisps
7th March 11
Posted in social media
Author: Emily Woolf (@emii), Strategist, BBH New York
It’s Monday. Almost an average Monday at the office, but today I went above and beyond my routine and made myself a salad for lunch! Partially due to the fact that Fresh Direct came this morning and partially because I’ve been attempting a gluten free diet, this leafy green point of pride made today special and I couldn’t wait to share it with the world. Some may call me an oversharer (cough: @barneyrobinson) and some may make fun of my food Instagram tweets (cough: @saneel), but I wasn’t going to let either rain on my parade. So, I sat at my desk savoring my spinach and beet salad, fork in one hand, iPhone in the other snapping away to get just the right shot, then scrolling through to apply just the right filter to capture the magic of my homemade goodness. And I did. And I sent my color saturated, Lomo-fi filtered picture straight to Twitter. And guess what happened? Within 5 minutes @PretzelCrisps had started following me and had Tweeted at me.
Of course I immediately DM’d back, excitedly starting a conversation with a brand that I had no opinion of about 5 minutes prior.
As you can see, the conversation centered around what they could do for me and they always responded within a minute. All in all, an extremely, and refreshingly human exchange.
This experience got me running around, ducking in and out of offices to tell people about it. Everyone was in awe of @PretzelCrisps’ behavior, as well as how they continued to engage me. It was a quick, powerful burst of brand dialogue, in the vein of a social media fling. @PretzelCrisps just proved that creating a relationship isn’t that hard in a conversational environment when you’re adding to the experience (complimenting me) and not asking much for much in return (an address for instantaneous delivery). They just made a huge impression on all of @BBHNewYork, both as consumers, and as industry folks aspiring to help make brands human.
Kudos and thanks @PretzelCrisps.
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The Wisdom in Community Management
15th February 11
Posted in social media
Source: Scoobay on Flickr
“In recent years organizations have raced to connect with fans and customers in new ways via social media.
Yet, the results have been mixed. Many organizations are struggling to start up communities, while others that have a community aren’t sure what to say or do with them. Meanwhile, a few companies are racing ahead to very productive collaborations yielding new offerings, better service and more sales.
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The Power And Perils Of Participation
18th September 10
Posted in interactive, social media
This post was originally written for the Likeminds blog. More about them here, and check out their Creativity and Curation event down in Exeter, UK, 28/29th October.
Ulysses & The Sirens by Herbert Draper
Don’t get me wrong. We’ve argued long and hard here in favour of brands embracing new behaviours if they’re to drive real cultural and commercial impact. To invite participation; to get out there and allow their customers in. And in terms of audience appetite for this, we’ve even gone as far as to question whether Jakob Nielsen’s 90:9:1 rule – that states the vast majority of visitors to any website are only there to lurk – will hold water for much longer in this post last year.
We’re going to continue arguing the case for new behaviour, not against. Nonetheless, there have been a couple of instances that have given us pause for thought recently. Read full post
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Screw Relationships, Let’s Have a Fling; On Brands & the Privacy Debate
18th May 10
Posted in culture, data, social media
Author: Saneel Radia (@saneel), Director of Media Innovation, BBH New York
I’ve written about social media flings before, but all the recent buzz about privacy issues got me thinking about this subject again. Brands are obsessed with friends and fans in social media environments when a much more relevant (and achievable) goal would be a less committed relationship: a fling. Why ask so much from a consumer when most brands fail to deliver on expectations anyway? The number of brands I’ve met with an editorial calendar and iterative community management strategy is so few, I can count them on one hand. Yet, the gathering of fans / followers / cults prods aimlessly on, justified via the value of earned media. The idea of talking to a million people whenever you want — that’s just too good to not pursue, right?
I just don’t get it. Maybe I’m too demanding as a consumer, but I have a tough time with the “in or out” invitation posed by most brands. I was talking to @hashembajwa about this recently and he cited the following example: “I love and am loyal to Virgin Atlantic, but that doesn’t mean I want to hear from them at any point other then when I have London on my mind.”
That comment really struck me. For him, it was about context. And that’s really what a fling is. It’s like a camp friend— that kid you were super close with at camp. You couldn’t imagine a scenario at camp he or she wasn’t a part of. But, once you got back home, regardless of promises to call and write, it didn’t happen. It just wasn’t relevant to stay in touch back in your normal life. But hey, next time you were at camp, you two picked up right where you left off, no? That’s the perfect camp friend.
So why aren’t brands OK with relationships like that? Context isn’t such a bad thing. It’s what good media planning is all about. And if the main arguments for these ludicrous fan numbers I hear brands chasing is rooted in earned media, it seems only rational they would evaluate said media based on quality, as they do with all media.
And that’s the rub.
You see, context of any kind is where brands face the privacy issue square in the face. They need to know as much about a person as possible to have these flings. Most brands on Twitter, for example, wait until you’ve called them out by name before @-replying because they fear otherwise their tweets will be viewed as spam. It’s the same expectation you’d have as a consumer in Facebook. What if a brand waited until your status was relevant to them to reach out to you? “@hashembajwa, I see you you’re excited about dinner in London, would you like some help planning your trip? – Love, Virgin.” Scary for many people. But enticing as a brand. And that’s why most brands are going to sit quietly while Facebook takes its lumps and sorts out privacy on their behalf. I guess they’ll depend on creating their own context via campaigns, but that’s pretty darn hard.
So, if you’re a brand with something at stake here, would you step in? I can’t imagine brand managers want any part of that conversation, but I think it’s important they have one. Without some understanding of what the pros and cons of the privacy issue are, Facebook is left alone as big, bad brother. In reality, lots of brands would help consumers tremendously if given the opportunity via this type of context. Yet no brands are stepping up, even as a collective, to help consumers understand if there is another side to the privacy issue. How can we expect consumers to make an objective decision about something when they aren’t hearing any upside?
Because, talking to a million fans about camp while they’re in school might feel like a relationship, but I’d argue making out with them while they’re at camp is a lot more social.
Or at the very least, it’s more fun.
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Status of Africa: the Facebook app with a difference
10th May 10
Posted in creativity, social media
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So what exactly is a Chief Culture Officer?
21st April 10
Posted in culture, social media
I first met Grant McCracken a long long time ago when he was writing on the anthropology of consumer culture.
Grant (@grant27 on Twitter) now splits his time between his academic research into the anthropology of American culture, and consultancy work with big brands focusing on the area of the role of culturally aware visionaries and leaders within organizations.
His most recent book is Chief Culture Officer. McCracken argues that every company needs a chief cultural officer to anticipate cultural trends rather than passively waiting and reacting. CCOs should have the ability to process massive amounts of data and spot crucial developments among an array of possibilities; they will be able to see the future coming, no matter which industry they serve, and create value for shareholders, move product, create profit and increase the bottom line.
In this video, brought to our attention by We Are Social’s Nathan McDonald, McCracken outlines in brief what a CCO is, and why it matters.
Challenging stuff; who is the Chief Culture Officer in your business (or which group performs this function)?
Do you think you need that function in the first place?
Did you *ever* have someone or a group performing that function?
Who does it well, which companies?
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