Author: brandconsultantasia
Branding is relational, not transactional. It's about retention, not acquisition. I work with companies and governments to identify and develop the strategies required to build the relationships that ensure ongoing branding success.
I call it data driven branding & it should not be confused with creative driven branding.
I'm also a rugby nut & devoted family man, probably in that order, but don't tell my wife!
Is Pinterest right for my brand?
So you run a small business and you’ve invested loads of valuable man hours developing social media profiles on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Flickr, Tumblr and Youtube.
You were about to relax and then Google+ launched so you created another profile.
That was the easy part. You then started engaging with consumers, prospects, customers both satisfied and unsatisfied, suppliers, potential partners and so on. You posted images, retweeted articles, learned a lot and realised it is possible, all be it for only a few weeks, to run a business on three hours sleep a night.
And now, just as you’ve got into a rhythm, Pinterest has arrived with a label of ‘the next big thing in social media.’
Pinterest is an online pinboard that lets you post images, organise them and share them. It’s a digital scrapbook of images listed under themes such as wedding gifts, favourite foods, redecorating and so on.
The site looks and feels good, with clean lines, an easy to use model that reflects the short attention spans of today and frankly, it’s not very sophisticated, which is probably why it is so popular.
And popular it is. Launched in 2010, it has experienced phenomenal growth. The site had 1.6 million unique visitors in September 2011, 7 million in December and 11.7 million in January 2012. In six months, from July 2011 the time visitors spend on the site has risen from 38 minutes to 98 minutes. Crucially, Pinterest is reported to be driving more traffic to more company websites and blogs than Google+. Linkedin and Youtube combined.
Some companies such as jewelers, wedding planners, furniture stores, clothing retailers and food companies are reporting sensational sales spikes after joining Pinterest.
Currently most of the content is posted by women and it is very USA centric. But what is it about Pinterest that is seeing such rapid growth, is it sustainable and most important of all, should you invest more valuable resources in Pinterest?
Firstly I think the growth is like that of many social sites these days. Early adopters initiate the stampede and then, because of the global nature of the Internet, others follow quickly.
What is also key is that the decision making process for consumers is changing from one inspired by slick corporate messages aired accross mass media to information posted online by friends or associates with similar interests.
If for instance I’m a hiker and I’m looking for accessories for a hiking trip, Pinterest may offer a simple way of gathering information during the research stage of the buying process.
I could find a rucksack or tent etc on a friend’s Pinterest board and review the comments of other hikers to determine if the rucksack or tent is suitable for my needs. If I am going somewhere unusual or perhaps with some hostile terrain, I could look for comments from others who have used the rucksack/tent in the same location or somewhere similar.
I could use the same process if I wanted to go to a new destination and want to see images of the destination, not the hotel produced images but those of people like me.
Like all new social initiatives, no one knows if the growth is sustainable so I’ll avoid that one!
Creative people, and those looking for a job or a freelancer seeking employment are using Pinterest to share samples of my work.
So the final question is, should you invest your valuable time in Pinterest? Basically that depends on your product. If you have something that is visually intersting, unique even then it may be right for you.
It certainly doesn’t take much effort to set up an account and it is easy to create your own pinboard. It also has neat little apps like the ‘Pin it’ button that you can add to your website. Then, if a user likes something they see online, they can add it to their own website with one click.
Of course there may be some copyright issues and this link is to a very good article on the potential legal ramifications of using Pinterest.
Pinterest can also offer you inspiration by looking at images posted by others in your industry.
So my advice is yes, take the plunge, set up a Pinboard and say goodbye to that remaining hour of sleep.
If anyone in Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore or Indonesia has set up a Pinterest page, let us know how you are getting on.
ASTRO makes a small but significant branding blunder
Rugby is an increasingly popular sport just about everywhere. According to a recent Mastercard report, the overall global growth in the sport is estimated at 15% per year.
The main rugby event is the rugby world cup which is held every four years. The first rugby world cup was held in 1987 and attracted a global TV audience of 300 million. Twenty years later, the 2007 Rugby world cup attracted a global audience of 4.2 BILLION TV viewers, and the Rugby world cup is now the most watched sport after the Football world cup and the Olympics.
The six nations rugby tournament is the second most important international rugby tournament after the rugby world cup. It is held annually between England, Ireland, Scotland, Italy, France and Wales and was watched by over 69 million TV viewers in Europe in 2011.
According to Wikipedia, in Malaysia there are sixteen rugby unions, associations and councils affiliated to the Malaysian Rugby Union and more than 300 clubs and 600 schools and universities nationwide that teach the game.
There are 41,050 registered rugby players in Malaysia (I don’t know who they are registered with), and the country is currently ranked 57th in the world.
There are also countless other rugby players and fans who are not registered but have an interest in the game, such as expatriates from rugby playing countries.
When the commonwealth games were held in Malaysia in 1998, it was estimated that over 50,000 people watched the Rugby Sevens part of the tournament live and 20,000 were at the ground to watch the final, won by New Zealand.
It wouldn’t be too far fetched to say there are probably 250,000 to 500,000 people connected to or involved in some way with rugby in Malaysia.
So it has caused somewhat of a storm within the rugby fraternity in Malaysia to discover that ASTRO, the only satellite TV provider in the country has decided to show only a small percentage of this top class global event live on TV.
One corporate subscriber that spends almost RM100,000 per annum subscribing to Astro was stunned to learn of Astro’s poorly thought out decision not to show the games live and said, “I am shock (sic) to learn of this decision. I don’t get it, why would you not show this popular competition live? We know Astro can do it so why don’t they?”
Another domestic subscriber summed the situation up thus, “I’m sick and tired of the crap they show on Astro and then when something I really want to watch isn’t on live, it really makes me angry and I wish I could change provider.”
An audience of 500,000 is relatively small (although it does equate to about 25% of total Astro subscribers) but this is a lucrative segment with influence and with related content, advertisers would have a captive audience. Such an event should be on the radar of destinations, financial institutions, hotels, automotive companies, schools and universities, real estate agents and more.
One potential local advertiser would be Mastercard which supports rugby on a global scale. Credit cards are sold in many ways in Malaysia, including a sort of hijacking of prospects at petrol stations.
Personally, I would be more likely to be influenced by a Mastercard advertisement linked to rugby than I am by the current tactics.
Astro spends a lot of money acquiring customers but spends little on retaining customers. It may be that because Astro is a monopoly, it doesn’t think it has to listen to its subscribers and it may have a point.
But with a new provider due to launch in 2Q2012, the growing penetration of IPTV providers such as Telekom Malaysia and the growing trend for downloading programmes from the Internet, now may not be the best time to alienate a small but wealthy segment.
What do you guys think?
Some good news for Toyota
Japanese automotive brand Toyota, has had a tough couple of years. Natural disasters in Japan and Thailand caused parts shortages that curtailed vehicle production. The company gained and then lost the crown of top selling car brand in the world.
But one of the company’s many brands has managed to bring a smile to the face of executives at the aggressive automaker that is building factories in Thailand, China and Brazil to catch up with other manufacturers and gain market share in developing markets. The Toyota Corolla has now chalked up global sales of 37.5 million units since production began in 1966 and it is now the world’s best selling car ever.
That means that roughly one Corolla has been sold somewhere in the world, every 40 seconds for the past 40 years. The Corolla’s success can be put down to the fact that it has always been inexpensive to buy, run and service and was always reliable.
Such basic principles are a recipe for a successful brand.
AirAsia brand hits turbulence
A week ago, AirAsia X CEO Azran Osman-Rani announced to much fanfare, a new service between Sydney and Kuala Lumpur.
Soon after, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, (ACCC) an Australian consumer watchdog announced that it has launched a court action against AirAsia, alleging the company is misleading consumers in its advertisements for flights out of Australia.
This follows negative press after AirAsia X recently announced it was ceasing flights to London, Paris, Mumbai and New Delhi and criticism by Neil Warnock, the former manager of Queens Park Rangers football club, owned by AirAsia chairman Tony Fernandes after he was sacked.
Although the company acted quickly and decisively with offers of refunds or alternative travel at no extra cost for passengers who hold tickets for future flights to Europe and India, in terms of customer loyalty, these latest developments won’t do the brand any favours.
Especially as the airline is also copping plenty of flak for it’s opaque charging and poor engagement skills on social media, as seen by this image taken from a disgruntled customer on Facebook.
The former AirAsia fan says the image was taken down after 10 minutes when he posted it on the company Facebook page and he has since been barred from posting anything on the AirAsia Facebook page!
According to the ACCC, AirAsia’s website did not include all taxes, duties, fees and other mandatory charges when advertising fares on certain routes from the Gold Coast, Melbourne and Perth. In Australia if a company wishes to advertise part of a price, it must also advertise one total price for the product or service.
Brands are defined by the economic, experiential and emotional value they deliver to customers. Fail on any of these counts and your brand will struggle. The disgruntled Facebook customer and customers like those in this article have undone a lot of the work AirAsia has done to build a people friendly brand.
As Low cost carrier brands grow, charging extra for food and entertainment may be acceptable on short or medium haul routes but many consumers see it as unfair on long haul routes so strategic changes need to be made if they really do want to build brands.
Building a brand in the consumer economy is more than the CEO and Chairman tweeting all day. It requires a strategic plan with processes to deal with reputation issues and a willingness to engage with consumers who raise positive AND negative issues on and off line.
The reality is that AirAsia probably had little choice in cutting unprofitable routes to India and Europe.
But what it should have done was have a strategy in place to announce the changes and a plan to communicate with existing ticket holders to inform them and work with them to solve their personal issues in as seamless manner as possible.
A Facebook page with direct access to a community director and suggestions for alternative routes or airlines and how to go about booking flights would have been a tactical initiative to show the airline cared.
Such an effort may be a relatively time consuming and expensive initiative but in the social economy, one that is imperative and one that will pay retention dividends.
The Chinese are coming
Here’s an interesting thought for all destinations currently writing or reviewing their long term brand plans.
Despite the global economic meltdown, the SARS issue, Terrorist bombings in Bali, Spain, NYC and other places, the UN World Tourism Organisation writes that, “in spite of occasional shocks, international tourist arrivals have shown virtually uninterrupted growth: from 25 million in 1950, to 277 million in 1980, to 435 million in 1990, to 675 million in 2000, and the current 940 million.”
These figures have been helped, on the whole by tourists from emerging markets. Thanks to a booming economy in the 1980s, the Japanese were the first non European/North American country to have an impact of the travel industry. This outbound tourism programme was actually driven by the Japanese government which launched what it called the “Ten Million Programme” to double outbound tourism departures between 1986 and 1991.
Many Koreans also travelled overseas in the 1990s when their economy boomed and we shouldn’t forget the Arabs who have always travelled, especially to Europe and the USA.
But it is the Chinese that are really going to impact the travel and tourism industry like never before. In 2002 ‘only’ 10 million Chinese travelled overseas and those tourists spent US$15 billion.
Between now and 2021, The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) predicts that up to 125 million Chinese will travel overseas and they will contribute US$100bn in overseas spending.
Chinese tourists are already making an impression in Singapore where they spend on average S$1,200 (RM2,880) each, 20% more than the average international traveller. In 1H2011, the Chinese spent S$969mil (RM2.3bil), making them the second-largest spenders behind Indonesians, who spent S$1.33bil (RM3.19bil) in the same period.
At the height of the ‘Ten million programme’, about 17 million Japanese travelled overseas. But it felt like they were everywhere and many newspapers wrote rather negatively about the arrival of the polite, shy and wealthy Japanese.
Imagine what it will feel like with over 100 million mainland Chinese interacting with the local populations in London, New York, Rome, Madrid and other cities not used to the less demure ways of middle kingdom residents!
So as you work on the research for that brand plan, should you be looking to the traditional source markets of the West and investing in 5 star resorts on white sandy beaches or gleaming shopping malls with designer labels and perhaps a casino and theme park?
Despite falling sales, Volvo still trying to use advertising to build its brand
Sadly, too many firms believe, or are led to believe that the way to build a brand is through advertising or, more specifically a series of advertising campaigns that are ever more creative, cutting edge, out of the box, off the wall or any other cool catch phrase your agency cares to throw at you.
If the budget is large enough, and it seems too many companies have too much money to play with and no accountability as to how it is spent, then the best thing the agency can do is buy lots of expensive TV air time, ‘wraparounds’ for publications, preferably daily newspapers because lots of people read them so the eyeballs will be high, above the fold pop ups on websites and lots of other expensive high profile spots.
Of course no advertising campaign would be complete without a couple of high profile billboards in high traffic areas to create awareness of the product with as many people as possible, irrespective of who they are and whether they are interested in or can afford the product.
Volvo is the latest automotive brand to launch yet another new car with a creative campaign across at least print and digital media. This latest campaign expects us to believe that a Volvo is hiding a beast inside.
The above the fold digital campaign is being used to launch the new V60, T4 and T5 range and features intrusive hover or pop out ads on The Malaysian Insider and possibly other news sites. Interestingly, once the Volvo ad on The Malaysian Insider closes, there is an expandable ad for BMW beneath it!
Back in early 2010, Volvo ran a new creative campaign for the new Volvo V50 with the tagline, “There’s more to life with Volvo.” Later that same month Volvo ran another campaign featuring a man and a woman wearing parkas sitting in a pile of snow and staring at a snow covered landscape (don’t forget we’re in Malaysia which sits pretty much on the equator!) with the headline, “Volvo owners get more out of life.”
Even more confusingly, at the time there was a Volvo billboard outside my office with the tagline, “Winner of fuel efficiency award.”
In 2011, Volvo launched a new version of the S60. This time they encouraged us to “get naughty with it.” The ad claimed there are ‘naughty cars everywhere’ and that ‘naughty cars go everywhere’. The box ad features the price of the car and two links to either get naughty with the car or test drive it.
You can read more about this campaign in my post of last year which is here.
The fact of the matter is that these campaigns are not working. In 1999 Volvo sold 642 cars in Malaysia. In 2009 Volvo sold 550 cars. In the same year, Peugeot sold 1,258, VW 885, Mazda 1,444, BMW 3,564 and just to put things into perspective, Toyota sold 81,784 in the same period.
In 2010 Volvo sales increased to 839 but this was below the target of 1,100 set by the CEO. And in the same period, VW sold almost 4 times as many cars (2,810) as the year before. Mazda increased sales from 1,444 in 2009 to an impressive 4,325 in 2010. Even Peugeot increased sales from 1,258 in 2009 to 2,562 in 2010. Mazda and Peugeot do very little advertising in Malaysia.
So these creative new campaigns are obviously not working. So what should Volvo do?
1) Develop a plan to identify and target the right consumers
2) Create content that will resonate with your consumers. Better still, get consumers to generate the content.
3) Separare the acquisition strategy from the retention strategy
4) Integrate all activities across all platforms don’t just launch ad hoc tactical campaigns and hope they work. They aren’t.
5) Invest more in sales and post sales communications
6) Volvos are safe, they can’t be safe and wicked. We like the fact they are safe but we appreciate you want to attract new segments but please, keep it real or you will lose existing segments and not attract new ones.
Implementation of any creative campaign should take into account the fact that consumers are no longer impressed with well executed, high quality, brand driven commercials. Because they don’t believe what they read anymore. In Malaysia 86% of participants in a survey said they no longer believe what they read in advertisements.
A brand can no longer rely simply on ads to sell products. An integrated brand strategy is crucial to successful branding. With a recession coming, Volvo needs to get it right and get it right soon.
By the way, whilst Volvo is trying to tell us the Volvo is actually a beast and that a Volvo is wicked, Volkswagen is pushing it’s park assist in Europe. Have a look at this enjoyable <a href="
Volkswagen – Tiguan – Park Assist II (ENG) from AlmapBBDO Internet on Vimeo.
” target=”_blank”>video made for iPad.
2012 must be the year you develop a social media brand strategy
Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed bin Talal 
has twice been named as one of the smartest and most creative investors in the world by Forbes magazine. He’s also been called the “Saudi Warren Buffet” because of his impressive track record with his investments.
He first came to the fore with a signficant investment in Citibank in 1991 and now has interests in a diverse portfolio that features stellar brands such as Apple Inc, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, George V Hotel in Paris, Songbird Estates (Canary Wharf), Time Warner, News Corp., Walt Disney, Euro Disney, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, Motorola, Hewlett Packard and Kodak.
So when someone of his calibre announces, as he did just before Christmas 2011 that he was taking a US$300 million stake in Twitter, the world pays attention.
Ahmed Reda Halawani, Executive Director of the Prince’s Kingdom Holdings company said in a statement, “We believe that social media will fundamentally change the media industry landscape in the coming years. Twitter will capture and monetize this positive trend.”
“Fundamentally change the media industry landscape in the coming years.” I’m prepared to go one step further, I believe that social media is the media equivalent of the printing press, the radio and the Television – all arriving at once!
So if you are CEO of a Malaysian SME and you still haven’t invested resources into social media, I suggest you do so and do so quickly.
But before you do what many do which is to copy all the content on your website and paste it onto your Facebook page and think that is a social media strategy, I suggest you also invest some time in learning about how to use these channels.
Because social media is about relationships. And Malaysian SMEs have, on the whole over the last two decades or so, focussed not on relationships, but on selling their products at the cheapest price.
That’s fine when there is significant demand for a product and you can always produce it cheaper than someone else. But unfortunately today, someone somewhere is producing just about everything cheaper than Malaysian firms.
And this places Malaysian SMEs at a disadvantage, especially when multi national corporations are taking notice of Malaysia and beginning to invest significant marketing dollars in the country.
The good news is that social media, used correctly can actually save SMEs a lot of money because firms can create awareness, gain customers and, most critically retain them across social media platforms for a fraction of the cost of investing in traditional media such as TV, radio, Outdoor and others.
But it is important to develop a social media strategy before embarking on the exercise otherwise resources will be wasted, reputations may be affected and you could be worse off than before you started.
Here are 11 elements that must be included in any SME social media strategy
1) Determine your goals and your target market.
Obvious I know, but too many companies are trying to use the same tactics online as they did offline, ie trying to use the same ‘one-size-fits-all’ communications campaign to create awareness via a series of tactical campaigns. This will not work on social media.
2) Raise brand awareness by creating an online game or contest and hosting it on Facebook.
Tourism Malaysia has spent a significant amount of money on Facebook competitions that have generated many online column inches of comment. Despite limited investment in the content, the activities were executed well. However despite hundreds of thousands of new Facebook fans, tens of thousands of engaged users, significant traction in the social-media space, it is unclear what the actual campaign goals were.
3) Give free stuff away!
I don’t know how Tourism Malaysia will use the data it generated from the Facebook campaign, but to build a database that can be turned into brand evangalists in the future, it might be worth offering prizes for content shared with other users across platforms such as Youtube, Twitter and so on. This can be then be leveraged to gain more brand traction.
4) Use crowdsourcing to determine strategy
Back in 2009, Vitamin water wanted to launch a new brand. In an exercise that Gap management should have emulated, they binned the traditional qualitative and quantitative research via focus groups and intercept surveys. Instead the company turned to social networks and sought the opinion of consumers in a real world, real time environment to decide on the name of the new product. Over 1 million people participated in the project and they got close to celebrities employed to spike interest in the project.
5) Don’t delay your decision, you are already being talked about!
Conversations about your brand are already happening on social media. Embrace the conversation and get engaged but a word of warning, don’t try to use the platform as an opportunity to push your products onto consumers.
6) Don’t be afraid to revise your marketing message
Perhaps once, twice, three times and even more to make sure you engage the right consumers with the right content and don’t generate negative feedback from your audience. But if you do generate negative feedback, address it in an honest and transparent manner and see the conversation all the way to the end, no matter how distasteful.
7) Comments are good
One website we were asked to audit recently didn’t allow comments from other users yet increasingly, consumers are looking to comments rather than actual articles for the data that will influence and determine their decision making.
8) Remember your core message and don’t go too far away from it
Being genuine and transparent and sticking to your overall image is very important.
9) Tell the truth
Target Rounders is a subsidiary of the US retail giant. It is an online group that you sign up for & you get points for marketing a product. They come up with new products & then everyone on their list finds fun ways to promote it for “points.” The company launched a Facebook campaign that utilized a lie created to gain more fans and a larger community! Unfortunately consumers spotted the lie and the project died.
10) Creativity is effective in social media
Prior to launching the much anticipated Shark Week, the Discovery Channel sent a jar that appeared to include a death notice to new media types.
The jar included a note that read, “This jar holds a story – the story of a single tragic incident that needs to be unlocked. Dive in, investigate the evidence and discover what lies beneath the surface of frenziedwaters.com.”
The jar also included a large warning sign, shredded swimming trunks (no doubt belonging to someone who was eaten by a shark), and a detailed obituary dated for a future date at the time of the campaign.
Participants were intrigued and as a result spent a lot of time researching online before realising that the Discovery Channel was behind the whole thing. Nevertheless, the right people were soon talking about the show and building interest.
11) Write a social media policy
For most firms, their social media policy consists of restricting access to social media. But this isn’t the way forward. Used properly and by the right people, social media can be a very effective and inexpensive marketing tool for brands. But there are always going to be risks associated with a new tool so the best defense against abuse is to create a policy for usage.
Social media is making companies be more sharing, collaborative and transparent, not just externally but internally as well. Including employees in the policy development process will create internal advocates for the policy and improve morale.
The social media policy should be more about what employees can do and best practices for social media use versus all the things employees can’t or shouldn’t do on social media.
When shrewd investors such as Prince Alwaleed bin Talal are taking stakes in social media you know it is here to stay.
To stay competitive, Malaysian SMEs are going to have to invest more in developing brands. Social media, used correctly will save them large sums of money communicating those brands to consumers and other customers.
Effective use of Twitter to build your brand
This article first appeared in the 29th November print edition of The Malaysian Reserve
Earlier this week at the launch of the 1Malaysia Social Media Convention, the Prime Minister of Malaysia Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak announced that the Barisan Nasional (BN) was developing an army of BN friendly cyber practitioners to engage consumers online.
The PM said at the launch, “As a party that wants to be relevant, we have to change according to the change in time”. The Malaysian Prime Minister should be applauded for his grasp of the importance of Social Media because there are over 12 million Internet users in Malaysia and Social Media is responsible for one third of the web traffic in the country.
The Prime Minister understands that social media has transformed people’s behaviour, their expectations and how they like to express themselves. Unfortunately, although the Prime Minister is aware of the importance of Social Media, most corporations appear oblivious to the impact of Social Media on consumers and the way they learn about and share information on products.
This may be because up until recently companies have been able to manage their communications but this is changing and today, consumers no longer respect or trust slow, opaque, bureaucratic, dictatorial corporations and the structured PR and advertising they like to push out across traditional broadcast media. In fact a recent study noted that a staggering 86% of Malaysians don’t believe what advertisers tell them in traditional ads!
Consumers are fed up with the automated voicemail that greets them when they call with a product or service issue. Especially as many corporations use the inevitable waiting time to try and sell something else to a customer who is often seething at the company and is not in the right frame of mind to be sold to.
Today, consumers expect, no demand to be able to talk to the right person at the right time.
Today, successful organizations are the result of being human, responsive and transparent. And consumers will communicate with these companies across open and transparent social media communities such as Twitter, Facebook and others.
So over the next few months we’ll talk about some of the most likely social media tools you can use to communicate information about your brand and how those tools can be used for businesses such as yours.
This month we look at Twitter, what it is and how you can use it to build your brand.
Worldwide, there are now 100 million active Twitter users and daily Tweets are over 250 million. Most top actors, athletes, politicians, businessmen and artists are active on Twitter.
Every news, current affairs and sports programme proudly displays its Twitter account name. Global events anywhere in the world break first and spread faster on Twitter. While CNN is showing 2 day old sports’ scores on its ticker tape, Twitter is providing those who are interested with ball by ball updates live from the next days play.
Barack Obama has 11.2 million followers, Datuk Seri Najib Razak has 295,000, AirAsia has 245,000, Amazon has 149,000, Firefly has 47,000 and the numbers are growing fast. In Asia, Indonesia has the most subscribers to Twitter whilst there are about 1 million in Malaysia.
It is important to understand that Twitter is not another Facebook. Facebook is best described as a few to a few social network created with a goal of sharing personal information and life related stuff with friends. Only once two people ‘friend’ each other can information begin to flow. Twitter on the other hand, is a one to many social network that allows me to say follow Firefly to keep abreast of their offerings yet they don’t have to follow me back to make the relationship work.
Twitter allows prospects and customers to instantly connect with you. Brands are no longer defined by the campaigns created by marketing and PR departments within companies. In the social economy of today, brands are defined by consumers or more specifically the experiences those consumers have with brands.
Get it right and you’ll build a brand. Get it wrong, and consumers will ensure your brand fails.
One of the reasons for Twitter’s success is because consumers got fed up with the automated responses they were faced with every time they contact a company.
Twitter is a popular platform to disseminate news about your company. If you have set up your Twitter account properly, Twitter is a dynamic and inexpensive platform for you to post information relating to your brand. A well planned Twitter strategy can help keep prospects and existing customers abreast of new developments and engaged. Beware however that it is not a broadcast medium and you must know when to stop. Constantly sending out the same message will have a negative impact on the brand. It’s also important to respond to comments from consumers related to your announcements.
Twitter is an excellent platform for sourcing actionable data. Twitter lets you find out priceless information about your customers – their opinions of your brand, what they like and/or dislike about your brand, what they think of your competitors, recommendations for improvement and much more. Twitter gives you an opportunity to improving your business, often without the need for costly investments.
Twitter helps you to humanize your brand. Twitter allows you to reach, communicate and engage with consumers and match your product attributes to their requirements for value whilst other companies are publishing generic ads in newspapers or attempting to convince consumers with PR.
Twitter lets you send the right message to the right people immediately. By using groups, lists, communities and other Twitter features effectively, Twitter lets you distribute news, make announcements, inform or create awareness of special offers to the right people in real time. No more waiting a month for the magazine to come out or 24 hours for the newspaper (assuming they have the space).
Being active and effective on Twitter communicates a company at ease with technology. Being a part of the Twitter community shows that you are moving with the times, that you embrace technology and are an open and transparent organization.
Twitter case study
A frequent business traveler between Malaysia and the UK was a loyal user of Budget Rent a car. But after a 13 hour flight, the business traveller was forced to wait two hours for a pre booked car. He stayed with Budget until on another occassion he received a bill for £86 because he forgot to pay the £10 congestion charge. So he decided to look for another car hire company for his next trip to the UK.
Using a price comparison site he came across Sixt, a company he had never heard of. The company offered an attractive pick up and drop off within a 5 mile radius of the nearest showroom. But when the businessman was booking the car hire on line he couldn’t find out any information on the pick up service.
So he turned to Twitter and asked for help. Within 5 hours the MD and CEO of Sixt had both contacted him with a request for his email address so that the @Sixt customer service team could get in touch.
Arrangements were made with customer service for the pick up and as a nice touch the car hire company upgraded him to a premium car. The experience was seamless, quick and pleasant. The businessman then shared, across multiple social media platforms details of his experiences and I am now sharing his experience with readers of this Blog and across Twitter, Facebook, Stumbleupon and more.
What was the cost of the positive buzz and acquiring this new, influential customer from a competitor? In terms of time perhaps an hour at most. Financially, next to nothing.
A tactical fail for a major brand on twitter
Qantas has had a bad run of luck recently and has also made some questionable corporate decisions. Especially in relation to the ongoing wage negotiations with the Transport Workers Union that is threatening further disruption to the Aussie carrier.
The most recent Public Relations disaster is related to an attempt by the newly formed social media unit to implement a social media campaign.
The Twitter campaign asked users to describe what would be their “dream luxury inflight experience” and use the hashtag #QantasLuxury to generate traction.
The airline probably thought it would generate comments related to Spas, champagne and top quality service.
However, Aussies known for their acerbic wit, jumped at the chance to lay into the beleaguered national carrier. One of the first was, luxury is “giving yourself a pay rise whilst grounding your whole airline and taking local jobs offshore”.
Another example “#QantasLuxury is feeding a family of 5 on pittance they pay their ground staff while Alan Joyce is on $94k a week”
Cherry Pizza came up with “#QantasLuxury is sitting in your first-class lounge chair, watching a failed social media campaign get out of control.” How right she was!
The misjudged campaign was an unmitigated disaster and in an effort to end the suffering, two hours after launching the project, Qantas thanked users for their tweets. Unfortunately for Qantas, social media doesn’t work that way and 36 hours later the topic is rumoured to have generated 14,000 tweets, the best of which are featured in a presentation on slideshare and the topic is still trending high on Twitter.
It didn’t help that the prizes offered were a set of Qantas pyjamas and an amenity kit!
brandconsultantasia.com 