Remember playing broken telephone? Remember the sometimes completely garbled message that results after the original idea has made a few rounds? Now multiply the effect by thousands and you get a picture of the minefield of opportunity and risk companies face when attempting to craft a successful social media campaign.
Social networking is having a powerful effect on spheres of influence and consumer behaviour. In one way it has levelled the playing field when it comes to drawing attention to a product or brand. A mention on a popular blog can reach thousands more than a series of pricey TV ads or giant billboards. On the other hand, these platforms have no allegiance to a particular brand or how they communicate messages about it.
Think tank Gartner released stats last month showing the majority of consumers rely to some extent on social networks in deciding how they spend. In its survey of nearly 4 000 people, the firm identified “salesmen”, “connectors” and “mavens” as key influencers in brand awareness and viral marketing.
While the former two are the best at linking groups, spreading messages and persuading people to spend, mavens are the subject experts people go to for advice, and are just as happy slating a product or company as giving them an endorsement.
As exposure on digital channels begins to trump the slickest conventional media campaigns, marketers have to rethink their strategies and messages, at the same time realising much of this lies beyond their control.
Letting go
With the benefit of low barriers to entry that social networking offers comes the reality that once people take an idea and run with it, there's no guarantee of the end result. This leaves companies both salivating at potential viral marketing opportunities and unsure of how to best go about it.
Some try to target specific personalities in the hope they'll leverage their extensive range of connections to spread a good word. Chevrolet, for example, recently invited influential social media figures, in addition to the usual motoring journos, to its launch of the new Spark, in an effort to generate social networking buzz.
But as the Gartner findings show, this could just as easily backfire: these aren't paid-for celebrity endorsements, but attempts to gain the backing of 21st century information brokers. It does, however, illustrate companies' desperation to control a brand message that, upon entering the social media realm, can replicate in numerous, sometimes unwanted ways.
Fine if there's a joke to be had, but we want to be in on it.
Lezette Engelbrecht, Copy editor and journalist, ITWeb
The fact that social networking is a force of its own means a campaign's promotional overtones can be replaced completely by those of the community disseminating it. As people become increasingly active in creating, as well as consuming content, marketing messages can fall victim to doses of digital graffiti, as users add their own interpretations `a la spoof YouTube videos and the like.
An ill-planned campaign that doesn't ring true to the audience can easily become the subject of ridicule, proliferating based on infamy rather than ingenuity.
Cell out
Take Cell C's latest marketing stunt, featuring local comedian Trevor Noah, which saw Noah going from foremost critic to “chief experience officer” in the space of a week. The ruse started when a video clip of Noah lambasting the mobile networks, focusing in particular on Cell C, was posted in late July. A few days later, Cell C splashed an apology to Noah across the Sunday weeklies, with Twitter and co buzzing about this refreshing development in a sector famed for shoddy service.
The next thing you know, Cell C has, surprise, surprise, a whole new logo and brand image, with a consumer protector and complaints site, TellTrevor.co.za, to match. Noah, and Cell C's other “CEO”, Lars Reichelt, pooh-poohed claims that the whole thing was an elaborate hoax, stressing that the video posting was “coincidental” and that Noah was working “with Cell C, not for it“.
Perhaps the only thing they were working on were the nerves of the digital community, who increasingly felt they were being taken for a ride.
Cell C may have successfully used the social media universe to stage its PR spectacular, but it stands to lose the very audience making up a large chunk of its target market. It's one thing not taking yourself seriously, it's another when it's your customers and your whole campaign professes to do the opposite. “We're interested in what you have to say” is the marketing line, but the walk is far removed from the talk, with the operator smugly taking the reins and saying: we'll take it from here, thank you very much, you just sit back and marvel.
Talk to me
What Cell C failed to understand was that the core principle of social media is engagement. Fine if there's a joke to be had, but we want to be in on it. If you're going to run things on the digital community's turf, it might help to remember who's ultimately in control.
The thing about social media is its capacity for offering what traditional media cannot; the dynamic and interactive “right-here-right-now” quality that speaks directly to a consumer's needs.
Perhaps this is why the recent Old Spice campaign was such a hit. Yes, Old Spice, of mainsail and man-smells fame, launched an ambitious attempt to breathe new life into a crusty brand by getting ex-athlete Isaiah Mustafa to make around 200 funny YouTube ads in response to Twitter queries. They made the rounds on almost every social media channel imaginable both due to their immediacy and humorous personal engagement.
The clue is in the name - social media - it's about society, listening to people, and while it may be a bit much to expect communication from oh, a mobile company, Cell C went on about customer needs when the whole thing was really about its own cleverness.
That just doesn't wash when consumers are increasingly fed up with the very thing prohibiting the effective functioning of the social platforms Cell C is leveraging - unreliable networks. Anyone in the biz can tell you, shout as loud as you want, generate as much Twitter traffic as you want, stuff people as full of new promotions and promises as you want, but what it comes down to is service.
This will act as the litmus test as companies experiment with this challenging, but potentially lucrative environment, where the impact of advertising can reach across continents in seconds, and see a brand lose face in an equal space of time.
With the jury still out on the success of Cell C's stunt, and its complaints site barely a week old, time, not Trevor, will tell if this was a marketing coup d''etat, or if consumers will be left having the Lars laugh.
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