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Panel preview: ‘Does My Sh*t-Talking Really Help Your Brand?’
“Does My Sh*t-Talking Really Help Your Brand?”
5 p.m., Saturday, March 13
Hilton D
Customer service (and how to provide it well online) is a topic that pops up in several panels, including the subject of this preview as well as another one we’ll be featuring soon, “Customer Support in a 140 Character World.”
For “Does My Sh*T-Talking Really Help Your Brand?” we spoke to Ivan Askwith, director of digital strategy for Big Spaceship, a New York-based firm where he “Helps clients havigate the digital landscape and understand emerging behavior.” He’s got a master’s degree from MIT’s Program in Comparative Media Studies and has been a media analyst for the school’s Convergence Culture Consortium.
American-Statesman: We’ve all heard examples of ways that social media has helped companies (Dell, Whole Foods, etc…) but have there been any instances where social media has damaged a brand irreparably? Is that even possible?
Ivan Askwith: In general, it’s hard to imagine a brand being damaged beyond repair, because brands can hold their breaths for a long time, and can invest a lot of thought and money in changing their meaning… so even if a brand took serious damage, it’s hard to imagine that would shut them down for good.
That said, I don’t think that “social media,” in general, is what can damage a brand. Despite what a lot of marketers and advertisers seem to think — that social media is just a new, interactive, engaged channel for messaging — the real impact of social media is that it turns brands into something akin to people. People don’t have slogans (most of the time), and they can’t stick to scripts and isolated tactical objectives. Relationships aren’t just about what we say, they’re about how we respond — or don’t respond — when other people talk to us. And the risk that brands face when using social platforms is looking self-centered, indifferent and disinterested, even when they’re not.
Being in social spaces inevitably makes brands more transparent, for better and for worse. That means that if your brand doesn’t have more to talk about than itself, it will look self-centered — or, even worse, it will just look boring. The question isn’t how brands can “use” social media, but how brands have to change, at a deeper level, to be authentic when engaging in public interactions. If you can’t get past thinking that social media is just a targeted space for messaging to brand loyalists, you’re pretty much going to look like an (expletive).
One other point: “brands” themselves can’t really, fully engage in social media. Unlike television ads and Web sites, which sometimes seem to just appear in the world fully-formed and beyond question, brand participation in social spaces most often comes down to individual choices that individual people make, and make publicly. And those people have faces, names and titles.
So even when an exceptionally bad decision is made, and consumes respond, there’s a fall-back solution: distance yourself from the person who made a bad call, apologize and demonstrate your commitment to making better choices in the future. It’s like high school: people might push you into lockers for a few weeks, or give you silent treatment, but eventually they’ll get over it.
To circle back to your question: I don’t think brands risk damaging themselves beyond repair when they use social media badly. They do risk becoming irrelevant, or revealing just how unaware they are of the social conventions and expectations that govern interactions in those spaces.
What do you hope audience members will be able to take away from the panel to help their own branding efforts?
Well, each of the people on our panel will probably have a different answer to this question, but there are a few things I hope the panel will accomplish.
For one, we need to get past the outdated idea that social media is about reach, awareness and impressions. If people are talking about your brand 24/7, but everything they’re saying is negative, you’re not necessarily winning. In fact, you’re probably losing.
What we really need when brands engage in social channels is a clear understanding of how people behave in those spaces, why, and what brands can do to make their experiences better. We all talk about how social media is great for “building relationships,” but relationships have to consist of more than subscribing to a newsletter. I’d hope that this panel helps people think more carefully about what their brands are doing in social channels, and leads us to ask more meaningful questions about what we’re accomplishing, and how it is — or isn’t — helping.
The Web’s inherent anonymity seems to foster negativity. Do sites like Facebook, where someone’s identity is more clear, make it easier to weed out those kinds of drive-by Internet attacks? Is that good news for companies who are nervous about social media?
To the first part of your question, the answer is “yes.” Sure. It’s more difficult to make anonymous comments on Facebook, so there tends to be less trolling.
But there’s a more important insight hidden in this question, and I hope that our panel will explore this as well: brands shouldn’t be thinking about how to prevent people from making negative comments about their brands. If someone cares enough to make a negative comment, they’ll find somewhere to do it — they don’t need the brand’s help. And if they really want to say something, odds are they’ll still say it, even on a brand’s Facebook page.
The question is, what should brands do when negative comments surface? Delete them? Ignore them? View them as opportunities to convert, or at least show respect toward, antagonists? There’s no single right answer, but the different options have different consequences, and the choices you make will be factored into how your brand is perceived.
So to answer your question head-on: if brands are nervous about social media, the solution isn’t to find safe spaces. It’s to address that anxiety, figure out what’s causing it, and make intelligent decisions about how and why to move into social channels at all. Again, the most common problem brands face in social media isn’t losing control — it’s retaining control and realizing that no one cares enough to hang out with them.
Are companies that do controversial campaigns (Burger King, Skittles), ultimately winning out with the attention they generate?
Depends on how you’re evaluating success. They’re certainly getting noticed, but is that actually helping their overall perception? Depends on what the campaigns demonstrate about the brand’s larger set of values and goals. To use a recent example, Southwest Airlines got noticed after the Kevin Smith fiasco, but probably would have been just as happy if no one was talking about them.
To their credit, though, Southwest — which has a great appreciation for the uses and abuses of social channels — benefited from the chance to respond to Smith’s complaints through social channels. They got caught making a mistake — something that used to be a lot less public — but in the aftermath, were able to apologize and make amends.
What kinds of expertise are the different panelists bringing to this discussion?
The thing that excites me most about this panel, actually, is the range of opinions and perspectives we have represented in the discussion.
My work at Big Spaceship — and before that, with the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT — focuses on understanding behavior in digital spaces, and helping brands learn to participate in those spaces and add value, rather than dominating and interrupting them with traditional messaging. I don’t think of what I do as “advertising,” but a lot of my potential clients do — so I find myself discussing and debating these topics on a near-daily basis.
Sam Ford, from Peppercom — and an old colleague and friend from the Convergence Culture Consortium — tackles the same challenges in the world of public relations, another area that (like advertising and marketing) is transforming in the face of social media. Advertising gives us one way of thinking about the value of social media; PR gives us another, which I think is often more useful. Sam is also a leading academic voice in fan studies and anti-fan studies, which provide a useful angle for thinking about these questions.
Emily Yellin adds another critical perspective: a deep knowledge of customer service. A terrific journalist and author, her book — “Your Call Is (Not That) Important To Us” — gives her first-hand insight into how companies are beginning to use (and misuse) social media to handle customer service. Which raises an interesting question: how does customer service differ when it’s conducted in public channels, rather than on private hotlines?
Michael Monello, from Campfire, also brings an interesting perspective to the discussion. As one of the original creators of the “Blair Witch Project” — which was more notable for its use of digital media to build and activate fan communities around the film — Mike has strong thoughts on how brands and the public can work together.
Finally, Amber Case — who, as a “cyborg anthropologist,” has one of my all-time favorite business cards — brings a range of perspectives. Until recently, she worked on digital strategy and PR for Wieden + Kennedy, which gave her a first-hand look at the challenges that global brands face in social media. Her broader background as an anthropologist gives her a unique approach in deciphering the possible meaning of social behaviors and relationships.
All in all, an incredible group of thinkers and experts. Combine that with the range of opinions and ideas that are always in the room at SXSW — since we’re hoping to open up the mics just a few minutes into the hour, to make it a full-on discussion — and I’m optimistic. I think it’s going to be a great conversation.
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By Sam Ford
March 3, 2010 4:08 AM | Link to this
First, thanks to Omar and to Ivan for helping get the ball rolling for our discussion in Austin next week. Ivan, you raise an interesting point. Broadcast and print advertising has allowed companies to take on this veneer of one-way authority, but the way we actually experience brands is through human experience, whether that be the retail purchase, the social relationships in and around a brand, or the B2B relationships we have. Too many brands see conversational spaces as new pipelines for their same messaging, when this is a more fundamental change than that. To your point, part of that is a shift to a more transparent and responsive brand, and the idealist in me thinks this environment forces brands to ultimately be more ethical, if nothing else than for the fear of getting caught.