Social Media Overview & Case Studies

Keith Feighery: Digital Media Strategist

Overview of social media

• Combination of social interaction and digital media

to:

• Communicate, engage, develop and be part of

communities

– Internally and externally for organisations

• Create and share content and information across

networks

• Build and extend social networks through interaction

• Listen and participate in discussions, threads and

develop ideas and relationships

• Learn from community (crowdsourcing)

Benefits of social media

• Listening– Crucial to hear what the public is saying about you

• Both positive and negative

– The web now operates in real time – Brands need to hear what is said about them in real-time

• Engage with Customers– Once you know what is being said about you – you can then interact directly

• Benefits– Build real communities online and offline

– Build long lasting relationships and trust with customers

– Instant polling and research opportunity with customers

– Reduce customer acquisition costs

– Increase customer retentions

Associated risks

• Loss of control of the conversation– Two way communication

– Openly negative transmissions

• Brands criticised for using social channel as a marketing or PR conduit

• Can be a difficult persona for brands to adopt– Reveal a human voice of a corporate identity

• What it is that voice?

• Starting – and then not following through – Inevitable criticism

Social media platforms Where Brands need to listen and

create a presence

Social Media Landscape

Platforms to concentrate on

Twitter

Blogs

Social Networks

Video Sites

Photosharing Sites

Professional Networking

Bookmarking, Sharing & RSS

Collaborative Sharing

Recent Irish case studies of brands

engaging with social media

Bord Gais

• The Big Switch Campaign (TheBigSwitch.ie)– Contacted over 100 influencers before launch of BigSwitch

campaign

– Well received by blogging community – lots of open & public praise

– Set up Twitter and engaged with community

– Community participated in Video campaigns

– Allegedly Bord Gais PR company advised against (protecting interests?)

• Then they lost 75000 customer details• Reverted back to boilerplate PR

• Lost a lot of credibility with community

The Big Switch

Pat The Baker & Bebo

• Unlikely brand to become a template on how to run a social media campaign

• Engaged with their audience (very well)– Blogs, updates, conversational, responded to comments

and questions as they happened

– User Interaction –

• Allowed and encouraged user feedback – solicited their opinions using Polls & questionnaires

– User generated competitions

• Design related (skins, characters), video and merchandise (T-shirts, bags)

– Social capital as well as economic rewards

Pat The Baker

FBD.ie

• Employ a community manager– Engages in conversations on Blogs, Twitter, Forums,

very public presence

• Provides a personal face to the Brand

• Involved with the IIA and chairs on the social media community group

• Participates on IGOPeople

• Launched new website at end of May 09

• Gets a lot of positive feedback from online community for participating

FBD

Listening Online

Listening Tools

• Using third party tools brands can listen online to what is being said about them– Typical Channels covered include:

• Online Forums

• Blogs – Post and Comments

• Twitter

• Social Networks

• Video Sites

• Photosharing sites

• Wikis

– Operate on an Alert system

• Close to real-time notification systems

• Single View of brand and can manage conversations within the Third party tool

• Brands can avail of Free tools and utilities• Do not get single view of brand mentions

Case studies of brands not listening

and managing digital crisis

Domino’s

• Domino’s Pizza Video– Two employees posted video of them “interfering” with food

production

– Posted on a Friday night

– Circulated around Twitter, YouTube and social web over weekend

– No response from company until following Tuesday

– Video received millions of views and large volumes of commentary

– Eventually company release PR statement – not very satisfactory

– On Wednesday President responds with Video – generally, well received

– Classic case-study in failure to respond immediately

Domino’s

Amazon

• AmazonFail– Amazon remove thousands of gay and lesbian literature

from ratings system on a Friday evening

– Outrage amongst online community over weekend

– No response from Amazon until following Tuesday

– #Amazonfail hashtag in top 5 trending topics in Twitter

– A lot of commentary about mismanagement of issue from Twitter and Blogosphere

– Eventually Amazon release a boilerplate PR release –calls incident a “technical glitch”

– Brand tarnished by incident – search Amazon on twitter to see comments – #Amazonfail now part of digital lexicon

Amazonfail

Ryan Air & “Idiot Bloggers”

• No time for bloggers– Blogger notices technical glitch on RyanAir site and blogs

about it

– RyanAir employees respond in heavy-handed fashion

– Affair generates publicity both online and offline – RTE news, Irish Daily newspapers, Blogs

– RyanAir release a harsh press release – calls bloggers “idiots”

– Incident picked up internationally (NY Times, Guardian. Skynews etc…)

– RyanAir position seems to be all publicity good -regardless

Ryan Air & “Idiot Bloggers”

Customer Advocacy & User Generated

Content

Burger King

• Embraced the “BrandJacker” - @theBkLounge&

@whoppervirgins on Twitter

• Considered top 40 best Brands online -

Mashable

• Kudos from Advertising Age and LA Times

• No “Cease and Desist” letters form Burger King

• Crispin Porter used the BKLounge character to

generate conversation – online and offline

Burger King

Snickers “Cease & Desist”

• Snickrz! – set up by agency Poke– Allowed users to upload Snickrz logos

– Very popular – 80,000 users - lots of traffic on Twitter

– Inherently used by Snickers customers who liked the brand

• Mars (Parent Company) issue and enforce a “cease and desist”

• Site has now been taken down - #snickersfail on Twitter

• Should have either co-opted or allowed it to continue

• Recent forays by Mars into social media such as Skittles – show lack of understanding of web– Caused a lot of negative publicity

Snickers

International case studies of brands

engaging with social media

Zappos

Dell

Ford - FiestaMovement

Customer Advocacy & User Generated

Content

Skittles

Whole Foods

Walmart

Starbucks

Thank You