We Are Social - Latest Comments in Brands and Twitter

Re: Brands and Twitter

Robin Grant — Sat, 02 May 2009 09:56:07 -0000

and also his Confessions of a corporate tweeter article on Econsultancy

Re: Brands and Twitter

Robin Grant — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 19:07:40 -0000

And for anyone wanting to see Guy in action, have a read of Anjali Ramachandran's post about her experiences with Carphone Wharehouse....

Re: Brands and Twitter

Robin Grant — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 18:30:20 -0000

Hey Amelia

I’m feeling guilty now – I obviously took a deliberately confrontational approach (as a tactic to be interesting, but clearly not nice) above, and it was only after I wrote my post that I saw your quote in NMA’s article about Brands and Twitter (behind a pay wall, but typed below):

Twitter is a conversation, but the conversation must be worth having. People are looking for rules, but while there are different ways a brand can use Twitter, there’s no right or wrong way

Anyway - I'm glad you found the post and comments worthwhile...

Re: Brands and Twitter

Amelia — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 15:23:07 -0000

Robin - love the fact that the Campaign piece sparked such a brilliant discussion (on a side note, I assume that the article is up on the Brand Republic site but I bet that there are very few comments there)
Its always funny reading a quote that you said on the phone down on paper and thinking as I read it that I'm not sure I agree with it (!) When I said "friendly" or "chatty" brands, I think what I really meant was brands that are commitment to having genuine conversations.
I loved HolyCow's comments, I think that he summed it up perfectly, however in addition I think that smart brands will find short-term as well as long-term ways to use Twitter, for example for more sales promotional or competition type ideas as well as more on-going conversations.
Good stuff. Thank you for blogging this!

Re: Brands and Twitter

holycowmarkh — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 07:34:09 -0000

Good piece of self promotion again Robin well done. And as usual everyone is saying the same thing.

So here is my take for what its worth.
1) Successful business is predicated on being useful and interesting.
2) Political and social conventions changes over time. There is a bifurcation occurring fueled by technology which gives people the illusion that they are now in control. The big joke is we always were. We just didn't realize it. And, we are not really prepared to change the big things.
3) Brands are constructed by us and shaped by context. Brands wouldn't survive if we ignored them. Companies would still remain but become irrelevant and their products would remain unsold - like the car industry today.
4) Brands don't Twitter - people employed by companies do.
5) Twitter is no different from any other conversation - its just a platform to do so.
6) Twitter can be used by companies for either customer service or advertising. Smart cpmanies will do both. The successful ones will be useful and interesting.

Re: Brands and Twitter

V A SANCZ — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 02:45:48 -0000

like those annoying ads where people shout out from the tele about NO MONEY DOWN, or pop-ups that expand to cover the entire screen you're reading, i simply push 'mute' or 'close' or 'block' when brands cross the line in my engagement with the media that I choose

the sooner brands accept that they aren't in control of media consumption - the better they will be able to access this space for their needs. Twitter is no exception!

but i think this is difficult for most corporate marketing types to understand, hence their confusion

@anvil

Re: Brands and Twitter

mediation — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 10:51:47 -0000

how not to do it... (although it's certainly on brand)

"Ryanair can confirm that a Ryanair staff member did engage in a blog discussion. It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy corresponding with idiot bloggers and Ryanair can confirm that it won't be happening again. Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves as our people are far too busy driving down the cost of air travel".

full story here: http://consumerist.com/5160...

Re: Brands and Twitter

Guy Stephens — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 06:19:20 -0000

Great post with lots of interesting comments and themes from a wide source of people. But for me, because that's all I am qualified to talk about is how I use it, I am @guy1067 and this represents both me as an individual and me as the Online Help Manager at Carphone Warehouse. Wearing both hats you see me both as a person, and as a representative of CPW and how I engage with customers via twitter on a daily basis. Just because I am at work doesn't mean I engage with other people in a different way. Just because I wear a business hat doesn't mean I suddenly forget what bad customer service is, or how to say 'sorry, that experience wasn't great for you'.

I love twitter, I think it's simplicity offers a huge amount of scope to anyone who is prepared to make the leap of faith and use it. I am still learning my way, learning how it can be used to communicate with other people, learning how it can be used within a work context, learning and seeing...

For me, the key is simply to be yourself no matter which hat you are wearing. The challenge is to try to understand your customer (they are people also after all), what motivates them and then find a way to empathise with them, in what is simply another channel for engagement, then hopefully you are getting somewhere (wherever that might be). Twitter, together with the increasing ubiquity of smartphones, has given me a fantastic platform to provide real time customer service. It's the start of something simply beautiful...I hope I can live up to the challenge!

Re: Brands and Twitter

Matt Rhodes — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 05:39:01 -0000

I agree with you, Chris and some others that there really is no right and wrong here. The great thing about Twitter (and other emerging communications tools) is that things are moving quite quickly. The growth over the last year has been quite phenomenal (data from Compete.com shows that visits to Twitter grew 1,227% in 2008) and the mass media interest in the UK has seen a sharp rise in the last few weeks alone. This means many things, but it mainly means more users, and different users. Twitter is a medium that is changing rapidly before our very eyes. As a social network, it is really defined by the people in it and the connections they make, so as the number of users grows and changes so the role it plays, the behaviours that are acceptable on it and the uses that brands can make of it will change.

This means a couple of things:

1) That your best strategy is probably to keep things simple (often the best strategy in so many things). Be open, honest and truthful online. Act in the way you expect those who follow you to act. So be yourself, upload a photo, follow people back who follow you, talk honestly and openly, respond to (at least some) people who message you, respond to people who talk about you, develop your own voice. So rather than developing a long and complicated Twitter strategy, make a simple one. One that centres on people and being yourself. This makes it easy to replicate and to get more people across your business on Twitter. Please let's not start making up characters if you're looking for actual, real, ongoing engagement. Your people are your best representation of your brand after all. Get people at all level to join and trust them to get it right (with maybe some guidelines and a bit of coaching and knowing that if things go wrong it's not the end of the world because...)

2) We don't need to worry too much about getting it 100% right first time. In a medium that is changing so quickly as Twitter - where each group of new members uses it in different ways and subtly changes the experience of all other users - we can afford to be innovative. Try new things. Work out how best to use Twitter to communicate with customers not by building long and complicated strategies but by setting up some core aims and principals and then just trying it out. I'm a big believer that brands should experiment more and Twitter offers the best kind of environment to do this. It's rapidly changing so you can change with it. Try things and if they fail try something else. And if you're doing this as yourself people will forgive you. You're playing according to the same rules as them, even if you are representing a brand and have clear brand and business objectives for using Twitter.

Finally, Twitter really is about one thing: voyeurism. That's why it's best to be yourself. People are more interested in hearing the same message and thoughts from an individual than they are from a brand or a fabricated character. That's also why Twitter really is a threat to traditional media, and really will let brands and celebrities take more control over their own image. But that probably deserves a different blog post.

Matt
FreshNetworks

Re: Brands and Twitter

Ciaran — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 04:39:57 -0000

"a key part of what makes {Twitter} the crack cocaine of communication right now (addictive; likely to induce a certain amount of narcissism & vertigo)"

That quote has made this entire post/comment thread worthwhile (not that it wasn't already) - brilliant!

Re: Brands and Twitter

James Whatley — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 04:04:50 -0000

<grin>

Very Good.

Re: Brands and Twitter

nrieke — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 02:37:51 -0000

Wow what a great list of replies on this post - I think you are really on to something. Agree with most, except John. As Twitter is opt-in, everyone can chose to follow or leave the brand alone. That is the beauty about it. And for "not wanting a conversation" - well in many cases it might just be information or listening to what they are saying - e.g. media brands. Looking at celebrities - I think they do see themselves as "human brands" behaving just like it - and are great examples for the more virtual ones. From my pov: it is a matter of time, we still do not know if this will be of any value in 24 months - but if brands dont look out they might also miss out on this. As I am based in Germany I just put a post together for my blog (http://iblogforbrands.blogs... and there is almost no interesting written stuff in German. It is mostly US- or UK-based Twitterers and Media commenting on the medium and the brands using it. From our perspective: way too early to have a final view on it.

Re: Brands and Twitter

Mel Exon — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 21:02:47 -0000

The phrase 'learning to speak human' keeps coming back to me reading all of this. Surely Twitter simply gives a brand a channel and a chance to show it can?

How you go about it is clearly crucial. Useful, entertaining, nice (Faris' oft repeated mantra for earned media) are good watch words, without doubt.

However, any brand - if only it chose to be - could be all of those things in any interaction with its audience. The difference with Twitter and a key part of what makes it the crack cocaine of communication right now (addictive; likely to induce a certain amount of narcissism & vertigo), is the fact that it combines 'one to one' with 'one to many' in such a unique way. Engaging with people personally, yet in public, offers a brand the chance to accelerate perception in its favour. Somewhat sadly, a brand or corporation behaving in a human and approachable way still reeks of the new and is noteworthy. This reminds me of a favourite quote from the cluetrain manifesto, the topic of a hotly debated post here from Robin earlier this month:

http://wearesocial.net/blog...

"In just a few more years, the current homogenized "voice" of business - the sound of mission statements and brochures - will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court."

Several years after the cluetrain manifesto was written, if Twitter encourages a few more brands to step out of their corporate straitjackets to properly engage with and solve the problems of individuals, surely this should be a cause for celebration.

It will be fascinating to see what happens as Twitter shakes down and matures into the mainstream over the coming months. To Aki's pragmatic & wise point, which brands really have it in them to sustain the potentially herculean task of managing a brand's micro blogging presence on an ongoing basis? How many will really think through what they can most compellingly offer in this space? And I'd add, how will brands, or the rest of us for that matter, cope with the surge in numbers and cut through the accompanying noise?

Very simply, when an audience responds to this type of interaction with a brand, ultimately, if not immediately, the brand owner must find a way. A (potentially rich & wonderful) Pandora’s box has been opened…

Re: Brands and Twitter

Robin Grant — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:58:24 -0000

I don't know - but I can tell you Robin doesn't get much sleep either ;)

Re: Brands and Twitter

Ciaran — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:16:05 -0000

"everyone hear" - everyone here, obviously. This is why I'm now going to bed or my conversation will become incomprehensible.

Re: Brands and Twitter

Ciaran — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:14:43 -0000

I don't think I'm confusing anything (I don't have to be friends with a person to have a conversation with them) or that the quote is a herring, red or otherwise (because whilst everyone hear would never dream of 'interruptive' marketing, the things that many people describe as conversations in the wider industry are just that). I totally appreciate what is meant by the Wizard of Oz metaphor, and to a certain extent agree. I just believe that this constant use of the word conversation is starting to deprive it of any meaning.

Like I've said before, I agree with a lot of this stuff, and tend to preach it too. But there's a danger that people in social media will come to be thought of as the new snake oil salesmen of the marketing world (taking that crown from SEO - the other area I work in) if there are too many genarlisations.

So I don't think that taking a little bit of care in the language we use, or the claims we make, is too high a price to pay to avoid that.

Re: Brands and Twitter

Robin Grant — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:45:34 -0000

Ciarán - I think perhaps you're confusing conversations with friendships?

Your quote from Danny Sullivan is also a red herring - of course a stranger interrupting a conversation between you and a friend is obtrusive - whether they have a commercial agenda or not.

However, I'd like to be able to initiate a conversation with the waiter about my specialist dietary requirements and I'll also appreciate the value when they proactively engage me in conversation about today's specials. In fact I really feel like the Sea Bass now, when all I came in for was a salad...

Re: Brands and Twitter

Andrew — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:01:18 -0000

i think that the twitter face of the brand should represent their positioning personified. it offers a direct conversation between what the consumer perceives as the "essence" of the brand and the consumer themselves

Re: Brands and Twitter

Ciaran — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:22:01 -0000

"We want to converse with them, individually, like people do."

I agree with many of the sentiments here but am slightly concerned at this one: I agree that, if I decide I do want something from a company, I want to have that question answered/problem resolved by a human. But it doesn't mean that I'm in any way keen to have a 'conversation' with most brands and I do worry that we're making this word meaningless when we use it to describe most interactions between people & companies.

As Danny Sullivan (I presume the same one who's commented above - Hi Danny!) said a while back:

'“Getting into” conversations. Yes, how we enjoy that. You’re in a coffee shop talking with a friend, and suddenly along comes the spokesperson for an artificial sweetener, just wanting to have a chat.

Go. Away.'

Obviously Twitter makes it possible for people to have conversations with brand representatives, but let's not start to think for one minute that this means anything other than a minority of people actually have any desire to.

Re: Brands and Twitter

Dan Thornton — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:14:25 -0000

Unfortunately, I'd totally disagree with your comment - I've had a problem with the hosting of my blog, and wanted to get a quick response, so I contacted them via Twitter, and had several replies, an email, and a phonecall within 24 hours.

Engagement doesn't mean thinking that a company is my best friend.

Engagement means that a company might be willing and able to respond and assist me in continuing to spend money with them when I have a question or complaint. Or be willing to highlight the things they do which are exactly what I'm looking for at that moment, because they listened.

And a TV advert can send shedloads of people to a website - the trouble is that it can't make them buy anything once they're there - and the traditional media is still mainly based around display advertising - which means that traffic is actually costing them a shedload of money if it isn't clicking on more advertising.

60,000 people isn't a landslide in terms of traditional advertising reach. But if you've got 10,000 of them feeling positively about Starbucks and sharing that with other people, then it's worth more than a TV spot increasingly ignored by people who are also viewing their phone, surfing the net and chatting to their friends during the TV ad break (Unless they're on the toilet or in the kitchen).

And while it's possible to spend some money to help utilise social media, it's also perfectly possible for one person to manage an account in a fairly reasonable percentage of their working day.

Simple fact is that companies who are using social media as part of their business strategy will either be able to provide enough evidence to show it has been worthwhile, or they'll stop doing it. And so far there are a lot of companies getting results that suggest it isn't going to stop any time soon.

Re: Brands and Twitter

Katy — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:55:44 -0000

The 'right' way to use twitter should be the 'right' way to treat any customer. Listen to them, respect the environment and situation, and do as you would be done by. Be interesting or useful, or ideally both. If you want a conversation you have to make it worth my while to converse with you.

As to the notion that it's only worth investing in conversation on a personal level for high-ticket items, and not for toilet tissue - brand equity has value no matter what your products, and a lot of people buy toilet tissue. Zappos sells shoes. Not designer, exclusive shoes, but regular shoes for the likes of Joe or Jane public. But their customers are still valuable to them - and if a lot of people like their brand and buy their shoes, they make money. And for every person they've had a 1:1 one with, there are plenty (like me) who've never engaged in conversation with Zappos themselves, but have heard good stuff about Zappos, and that they really value their customers, and think better of the brand for it. And maybe go on to consider Zappos over another shoe retailer when they come to buy a pair of shoes, because they trust they'll have a good experience (and that if they don't, they won't be left high and dry). I'd certainly be surprised if Zappos consider their investment of time and resource in one-to-ones grossly inefficient.

Re: Brands and Twitter

Box Network — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:12:54 -0000

nicely done robin. not sure what all the metaphysical twatter's about either from the 'brand gurus'. i think the old chestnut 'a lack of charisma can be fatal' neatly sums up how to get the most out of social meeja...

Re: Brands and Twitter

AlastairDuncan — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:01:52 -0000

Tweet or twaddle? It's quite simple for 'brands to invade' social spaces, they simply allocate resources and have a go. Overlaying overwrought strategic thoughts to it is a bit premature, especially as tweeting is an emerging behavior that is really about keeping up with what's going on through people and information feeds you follow. Would I follow the diet coke break on twitter? Probably not, but there's nothing wrong with dropping diet coke break tweets into the public timeline. (Come on, laugh, I know you want to). I did a whole lot of research last year into 'can brands be friends', running a seminar at Cannes and another one at AdTech which concluded that brands aren't really ever going to be 'real friends'. They can be trusted, liked, loved, used and be a status reference for the individual, but I'm not going to reply to @kleenex what I'm pissed off about today or how sad I was when my dog died. Maybe that's just me. I would, though, believe Kleenex might be a brand that 'stands for' being a shoulder to cry on, and seeing a good Kleenex tweet reported might just support that belief. Brands that stand for something tend to do well in 'conversational media'. And believing in a brand tends to be a result of a much broader communications and product consideration than simply being on Twitter.
PS I don't represent Kleenex in any way, just an example.

Re: Brands and Twitter

David Peck — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:50:15 -0000

Real. Believable. Authentic. Genuine.

Re: Brands and Twitter

john v willshire — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:36:56 -0000

Evenin' all

Reading all the brilliant views and thoughts above, it's clear that the Twitter's got us all thinking overtime on the 'why, what, hows...' of it all.

I kind of think it's really healthy that people in companies are talking to people outside. The great 'unpicking' of mass one-to-many communications fascinates me.

i keep likening it to the Wizard of Oz... when Dorothy et al traipse off to see the big ol' Wizard Industries Inc. they find a one-size-fits-all, broadcasting headpiece at the end of the room. They don't get on well at all.

Then however, thanks to Toto's curiosity, they find that the Wizard isn't this all-powerful fella at the end of the room... he's just a guy behind a curtain.

But it's the individual conversations he has with each of them in turn that helps everyone out... they each solve the problem that was vexing them personally, and as a result they're all much more likely to return to Wiz Inc. in the future as a result...

...well, if he hadn't floated off in a hot-air balloon, but that's another story.

Anyway, my point is this; brands aren't like the Wizard anymore, we know they're just people behind the curtains.

We want to converse with them, individually, like people do. Because we increasingly do that with people across the world, be they our friends or people at companies that do speak to any customers who want to chat (like ASOS above).

Companies don't have to try and channel everything about their company into a single one-to-many conversation anymore; they can just let all of their people (from marketing to accounts to the receptionist to the CEO) talk to people.

Any company who doesn't trust their own people to be the 'voices' who represent their own community has got bigger problems than whether or not to have a twitter account or two I'd suggest...