How a Tweet from A Tradeshow Elicited a Threat
A colleague of mine shared a recent story that I believe illustrates one of the new challenges companies face in managing their brands in the age of the social web. It also points to the importance of building true internal-external marketing alignment in your organization.
Our tale begins at a recent large international tradeshow in Las Vegas where a leading US-based technology company had a major booth. I am sure the executives who authorized the substantial cost to exhibit at the show viewed it as a fantastic opportunity to connect with customers and promote the many great technologies the company produces.
My colleague, who is a well regarded member of the industry, was touring the show floor and happened across the above company’s booth where she had a rather negative experience. She was treated in a very dismissive way, and she left the booth disappointed and a little irritated.
In the heat of the moment she communicated her disappointment and irritation in a rather sharply worded “tweet” on Twitter through her cell phone, then went on with her day without giving it another thought.
The next day she received several urgent voicemail messages from the Director of Marketing from this particular company, demanding a call back. When they finally connected she was admonished for daring to write a negative tweet about the company, threatened that this company could make her life difficult if she ever said another negative thing about them, and then made to feel guilty for putting the Director of Marketing’s job at risk. Apparently the senior executives had been monitoring Twitter and were not happy with what they heard in the “tweet” about the experience in their booth.
In so many ways this experience did not surprise me. Many large companies have been able to manage their brand for decades by using their size and industry stature to intimidate and quickly stamp out potential damage to their brand. These behaviors are often well entrenched in the culture of the organization and employees are encouraged to respond quickly to quiet dissention. After all, isn’t that one of the benefits of being large?
The leveling quality of the social web has shifted the balance of power forever, yet many companies are still caught in old cultural models that no longer work. Customers and employees now have a variety of channels to communicate both positive and negative messages about the brands they come into contact with. Progressive companies are quickly finding ways to harness the power of the social web to create meaningful connections with customers and employees. They are also educating their teams on how to respond effectively to the comments that inevitably will get made in the social space.
How much more effective it would have been for the tech company in our story to engage my colleague about her comment in a transparent way in the social space. They could have thanked her for her feedback with a quick Twitter reply and worked to turn her negative experience into a positive in front of the social community. No company is perfect. We all know that. But seeing a company walk the talk and work to truly listen to a customer is reassuring and allows the company to take the high road and further build the brand.
Here is the irony of the story. My colleague is a new member of Twitter with a very small current following, most of whom are family and friends. Any “damage” done from her tweet was minimal. But this same colleague has a blog that is read by thousands of industry members each week. Hmmm, now that this major tech company has decided to use intimidation tactics over a small tweet, I wonder if they have a much bigger problem ahead from a fiery blog post.
The rules have changed and aligning your team behind what your brand stands for is more important than ever.
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May 6th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
First, thank you for blogging about this occurrence.
My experiences with Twitter and reactions from large companies have been mostly positive. As I’m more of a small fish in the big pond of telecommunications, more of a consumer rather than a player, I’m sure I get treated differently than say a peer in the industry. I also blog and make “tweets” about industry events and products, so I’m probably looked upon as a “customer to satisfy” rather than “someone to intimidate”. But it is good to understand some consequences of social media for sure.
I’ve bashed a big player more than once and believe it or not, the responses have been positive rather than negative. I think this just goes to show the class of the organization I dealt with. And just so there is no mystery, that company was Avid. I gave a “Come on Avid!” tweet regarding their 14-day trial vs. most other editing softwares’ 30-day trials. The response was polite and appropriate, pointing me to a forum post that explained why, because of third-party inclusions in their software, they could not do more than 14 days.
A second slam on them was for promoting an event that was already filled, aka sold out. A few days later one of the execs in charge of the event, from the company who was actually throwing the event, wrote me an email extending admission to said event.
In this “new” day of Twitter, it’s been said that to get any response from a major company, use Twitter because they pay more attention to Twitter than there own customer service line. I have actually found this to be true. You get direct contact to some very high ups in those companies, where under normal circumstances, that would never happen.
I have to say that this “unnamed” technology company’s (and I think I know who it was) upper management, that was monitoring the tweets, probably wasn’t the problem, as they tried to handle the problem. It was just the individual, the Director of Marketing themselves was the problem. I bet if the senior management knew the tactics pulled by this person, that Director of Marketing’s job would surely be in jeopardy then!
Yes, I truly doubt that Director of Marketing’s threat was any more than the ramblings of an insecure cur dog, who is probably disliked by their peers and underlings and managers. I also doubt that they could have done any damage at all. People are as rich as they have friends and are alive as they can communicate, so it is my opinion that that DM is poor and nearly dead and your colleague is rich and very much alive.
I, too, have dealt with attacks from individuals and in the end it was merely wasted time dealing with them any further. Such individuals just seem to thrive on conflict.
If there is an issue that needs addressing or commenting upon, then it should be stated. The reaction from which, though, tells the story of what kind of company I’ll deal with in the future.
Seems like any actions of any company are now on display in an even brighter microscope. PR, good or bad, will spread like wildfire on the Internet. So I say, mind your P’s and Q’s Corporate America, we little guys are watching (and Twittering!)
May 6th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Quintessential Studios thanks for your comment. I think your last paragraph sums it up. The exciting part of the social web is the ability of the “little guy” to have a voice. I am glad to hear about your positive company responses to your tweets. Many companies are taking advantage of social media to build strong and positive relationships with consumers as you detail. This type of approach is to be commended. I believe that more companies will begin to see the social web as a way to connect with a “customer to satisfy” vs “one to intimidate”. Companies that have strong cultures grounded in their core values will have great success in this area. Thank you for your comment.
May 27th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Kurt,
What a fine example of someone responsible for the marketing initiatives of a corporation feeling so threatened by a tweet, all due to their own staffs very inappropriate actions. I would hope your colleague does blog about the experience, and follows up with it by tweeting links to the article.
Even with a small following of “family and friends”, that’s enough to start a chain-reaction of other tweets, retweets, posts to FaceBook, and of course old-school pre-web word of mouth.
July 10th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
[...] no longer what you say it is! on Marketing vs. Service: Bridging the Gap, Part 1Alan Bleiweiss on How a Tweet from A Tradeshow Elicited a ThreatKarthik S on Company Culture Transforms a Geek into a Rock Starfermata on Company Culture Transforms [...]
July 13th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Great example Kurt.
And you are 100% absolutely correct about ‘damage control’ in terms of knowing how to react.
First off, they should have reacted courteously, as any good brick&mortar store would, and apologise/ask if there was anything they could have done better. Secondly, if they didn’t take that tactic, they should NOT have called attention to the tweet. Here is where an understanding of PR and technology is necessary to have to understand the full impact.
By calling attention to the tweet (which only had a few followers who may or may not have seen and read the tweet), they screwed themselves. The thing about Twitter is that it is a temporary stream of information - some people may or may not see your tweets via follow or search, but the impact is -temporary- since Twitter only keeps a certain amount/age of Tweets around.
July 17th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
The theme of the week seems to be communication (or mis-communication) between companies and customers (or potential customers).
And the lessons always start with someone should have been more mindful about their communication in the first place… then someone else needing to step back and take a breath and be mindful about how they respond (vs react) in the second place before it goes into the inevitable ramp-up.
In a situation like this, one wonders, would human interaction go any better if we had the internal equivalent of the 2second delay used in live television and could edit our remarks before we broadcast them?
August 21st, 2009 at 11:29 am
[...] worth checking out. See what happened when a Twitter-originating comment at a tradeshow got a negative response. It’s not just movie studios being discussed on the instantaneous reactions Twitter has had [...]
August 30th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
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December 10th, 2009 at 9:22 am
[...] Well most importantly this means that Google has a deep understanding of the power of social media. As we know social media are platforms, where people connect with each other and create online communities. These platforms serve as ways communicating and exchange information. There is a big discourse going on about how social media are altering marketing techniques. People use social media to talk about experiences and share them with their communities. These platforms represent streams for Word Of Mouth. We have already seen for example how corporations are making efforts to respond to negative tweets. tweets & responses [...]
March 10th, 2010 at 3:29 am
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