The Big Brother Department!

My last post highlighted the power of social media as a great tool for evangelist marketing. However it is a double edged sword, because just as these tools allow people to spread the word on how great a service is, equally they can engage in Reverse Evangelist Marketing REM (I just made this word up, because amazingly I could find no word that represents exactly what I mean. I didn't want to use terms such as "damaging brand name" because this could be done maliciously, whereas by Reverse Evangelist Marketing REM I mean someone who has genuinely had a bad experience with a company and is informing others for their benefit rather than any personal gain. If I am missing a very obvious word that could be used here please tell me!).

I will now describe 3 occurrences in last few weeks where I've noticed that people engaged in REM. But the important aspect is that in the first two cases, the company concerned were paying attention to the social media tool used and attempted to resolve the issue asap so as to limit damage to the brand. In the third case the company only became aware of the situation and attempted to rectify it when it had made the news. Furthermore their attempts to solve the problem were then seen as disingenuous as it was obvious they were only doing so because they had received such bad press.

1. Cubic Telecom

A customer used twitter to express his disappointment at his new maxroam sim card arriving in the post damaged and included picture of the package. This would appear to indicate that it was the courier services fault. But regardless within minutes Cubic telecoms CEO @patphelan had directly contacted the customer through twitter and offered a replacement at no charge. This REM incident soon resulted in converting this customer to an evangelist, and sure enough once product arrived, he conveyed his happiness at the amazing customer service of Cubic telecom on twitter.

2. Celebrity Blogger

TV personality @stephenfry recently tweeted (used twitter) about his dissatisfaction about a companies customer service. A while later he tweeted again saying he'd received a personal phonecall to resolve the issue. he then tweeted that he felt like a bully, because he had that much power, that he was getting special attention other customers don't get.

3. United Airlines

A musician (Dave Carrol) travels with United, they break his guitar, refuse to offer any compensation for months. He is so frustrated with their attitude that he makes a song called "United Breaks Guitars" (is catchy and funny), which currently has almost 4 million views on youtube and has been in many news stories. Once the story breaks United offer compensation. The singer declines seeing as they are only offering now that the story has made them look bad after months of ignoring him. This naturally has led to terrible press for United Airlines.





These events happening close together got me thinking, and I decided that due to the power of social media and in particular celebrity bloggers, every company should have a Big Brother style department where they can easily track everything that is being said about them on the web (both good and bad). I then had an experience that many people are probably used to, you come up with a great idea, look around, and it already exists! in my case I envisaged a dashboard which would track youtube/twitter/blogosphere and all comments mentioning my company would appear. Unfortunately for me the marketing company Crispin Porter + Bogusky had already created pretty much the same thing, except looking even better than I'd imagined. They currently have this cool dashboard as their homepage, and have also created similar versions for some of their biggest clients; Burger King, Domino's, Microsoft.


*What the web is saying about Microsoft in one dashboard (click to enlarge)

Having seen that the technology to literally track your brand image online is available, I think it is imperative now for all companies to set up a big brother department where they can effectively track what is being said about them. Companies spend so much money on establishing a brand that it would seem crazy that up till now, they had little or no way to get a universal view of what people really think about their company (focus groups don't give exact honest picture). I am not sure though if the Crispin Porter website is the way to go. For example the Microsoft dashboard has a lot of negative comments and parodies of their commercials. Personally I think these dashboards should be kept in house to quietly track what customers think, as oppose to having it as your homepage. By tracking REM and solving the issues you can ensure that your company is much less likely to receive bad press because you are placating the customer before their complaint becomes widespread. If United Airlines had been tracking social media they would of been able to at least try to reach an agreement with Dave long before he was national news.