Last
week saw Starbucks India heavily criticized for deleting a negative post from
an aggravated customer on their Facebook page. What started as an offline
incident .i.e. of a disgruntled customer who had a rough experience at their
Delhi outlet, resulted in a huge online uproar because the customer in context
resorted to leverage social media, to get the brands’ attention. For more
details on the incident you could read here: http://goo.gl/jpbVg
This
incident brings to light a question that are big brands really suited to take good
advantage of social media, or is that right reserved only for their smaller
counterparts. Social media has given people an outlet to discuss things that
weren’t possible in the offline world. From a brands perspective, conversations
and campaigns initiated by them need to as edgy and GenY relevant as possible,
for them to get the best traction. For e.g. Maybelline
initiated a conversation on Twitter using #doesntlastlongenough for their
upcoming lipstick, that lasts for as long as 14hours. The hashtag was very
cheeky and got 4000tweets and trended for 14hours.
Now
what if the same thing was done by a really big brand or from a brand belonging
to a category that attracts greater conversations, like a tech or a high end
luxury brand? My take is, the tonality of conversations with the respective
hashtag would have drifted more to the negative and neutral front, than the
positive front than the brand would have desired. The unwanted negative
conversations could then become a reputation issue, sparking off crisis control
efforts.
In
layman terms, people notice when a giant moves and hence big brands by their
very nature need to be more aware and cautious about their initiatives. All
their initiatives need to be filtered with a refined sieve, to ensure that the brand
personality and reputation is intact.
The
point of conclusion is that, there are different rules to social media usage
for big and small brands and brand custodians must account for the same before
giving a go-ahead to their online initiatives.
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