The power of bloggers when it comes to consumer issues is widely documented. Single posts, even as little as 140 characters, can bring companies to their knees. To be at the mercy of those with an internet connection is daunting when you’re a product, brand or organisation. Last week saw Dominos have to go into reactive PR overdrive after a video made by two employees adding their own unique toppings, received several hits in no time at all. Amazon found itself on the receiving end of accusations of homophobia for its (mis)categorisation of literature.
As blogger, Stella Duffy points out, ‘Amazon’s ‘glitch’ equates LGBT sexuality with porn with adult material.’ Amazon themselves put it down to an “embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloguing error” which saw 57,310 listings banned from their catalogue for a temporary stretch.
Consumer complaints ‘going viral’ can be a plague like spread that represents the ultimate nightmare for companies. It is often said in politics that if you don’t kill a story in 24 hours then things must be REALLY bad.
It is how you react to these instances that can make or break a reputation. For example, when EA Sports released their latest Tiger Woods golf simulator game there was a bug found by many gmae players which saw players able to walk on water – a basic graphical error, a simple misjudged code -but this was enough to irk ardent gameplayers. How did EA react? They went viral. They produced a video of Tiger Woods walking on water and playing the seeming unplayable water shot. 3,052,876 views later and voila…everyone is happy.
What about when companies, in their quest to target a market, take on social networking from the off. Harnessing the power of Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and more by offering the product for free, upfront and letting those internet types get full free use of the product in order that (hopefully) they write positive things about the product in question and we all rush out and buy one because we know that the internet approves.
In this instance, Ford are taking a risk by allowing the most hypercritical and brutally honest consumers of all, those who blog, have a say on a product which costs a fiver shy of ten thousand pounds and is aimed at the twentysomething market. The new Ford Fiesta, as heavily advertised in the television advert of the car driving through a slick urban landscape in all its ‘Hot Magenta’ glory sound tracked by Pluxus and their song ‘Transient.’ 100 cars have been loaned out to young internet using drivers and they have been asked to report back to the online world their honest feelings, thoughts and experiences of the vehicle.
Not just a savvy way of advertising the car in it current form, Scott Monty, Global Digital Communications bigwig for Ford Motor Company comments:
“Let’s not forget that this is a full year before the car even goes on sale in the U.S. That means that the feedback we get (we’ll also be doing regular surveys, polls and interviews) will be shared with the engineering/design team to further improve the car for the U.S. Market.”
However, as LitmanLive.co.uk writes, social media marketing opportunities are not the reserve of the young:
“Most interactive marketers know that young consumers are very engaged in social media, but many fail to appreciate that the same social tools can also be used to reach older users. Recent Forrester research shows there are a significant number of European baby boomers – adults aged 43-63 – who already read social media on a regular basis, and another, slightly smaller subset who are already uploading their own content, like videos, onto the web. Marketers can take advantage of this by offering them value with useful information and support provided in a social context.”
The public are not the enemy of those with products to sell and targets to meet and should a company drop the ball then the online world will certainly hear about it. It is how companies harness the new hypercritical consumer audience and their penchant for filming themselves, Twittering and blogging that will alter the commercial landscape.
