communicate magazine - quentin langley

Brandjack

How to lose the social media battle

Sometimes things go wrong

• The market

• The environment

• Customer relationships

• The question is, how do you handle it

What if he was your customer?

Or this guy

How about this one

Or this woman

Who are they?

• What do these people have in common?

• Access

– To the media

– To politicians

• But what specifically got them on my list?

This guy too

2006

Dave Carroll

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

The response

• 150,000 hits on day one

• United phoned Dave the same day, offering compensation and asking to use the video in training

• Half a million hits in 3 days, 5 million in a month, now 9 million

• United’s share price fell 10% - $180 million –in four days

United Airlines

You’ve been Brandjacked !

Nestlé

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HS_JZgjB1Ws

Nestlé

• Nestlé asked YouTube to remove the video on copyright grounds

• Narrative shifted to discussions of ‘censorship’

• Nestlé’s Facebook page was besieged with complaints

• They folded in 8 weeks

• Same company has resisted formula milk campaign for almost 40 years

Nestlé

You’ve been Brandjacked !

BP

• Greenpeace planning its ‘new logo’ contest from over a year

• Backed by stunts like closing BP’s service stations

• Campaign ‘recalibrated’ to take account of Deepwater Horizon oil spil

BP

• Anonymous fake Twitter feed @bpglobalprrun by ‘Leroy Stick’ – pseudonym of comedian and satirist Josh Simpson

• Maintained consistent quality output

• Safety is our first priority. Well, profits then safety. Well, profits, then image, then safety –but it’s right up there.

• Ten times as many followers as @bpamerica

BP

You’ve been Brandjacked !

Twice!

How can business respond?

• L’Oreal – Vichy

• June 2005 – launched a fake blog by ‘Claire’

• Exposed within an hour as fake – but L’Oreal had announced this in a press release

• Pleaded naiveté and asked for forgiveness

Turning a bad blog good

• L’Oreal launched a real blog in which the Vichy team participated openly – real names and photos, and allowing genuine comments, bad and good.

• Brought in an external blogger to work with their team

• Widely praised for openness, engagement and transparency

Imagine

• Imagine if BP had told its 100,000 staff to log onto Twitter and deliver three corporate messages

• Volume metrics through the roof

• Sentiment metrics would have been excellent

• Credibility and trust - ZERO

Imagine

• If BP had asked its 100,000 staff to engage openly and honestly on Twitter, Facebook and in blogs

• Some criticism

• Some praise

• Where would the balance have lain?

Trust

Credibility is inversely proportional to control

Jeff Jarvis

Questions

Welcome to the new world

• Companies which engage openly and transparently will prosper

• The rest will fail

• Engaging with your staff and with local communities is your first step