The social media landscape is littered with companies who have failed miserably at social marketing. The poster child for failed social marketing programs being GMC. The concept of letting buyers make their own Chevy Tahoe commercial probably sounded like a good idea. Nobody at GMC thought about how to handle “negative” ads. So when consumers and/or environmental groups put together ads that focused on the environmental impact of the Tahoe, GMC pulled the offending ads. Not quite a two way communication.
Some companies like DuPont made the decision that they not participating in the discussion is better than participating badly. In a recent article in B2B magazine, Gary Spangler, platform e-business leader, Electronic & Communication Technologies at DuPont, said:
“We monitor online media, blogs and forums for both positive and negative comments” …But Spangler said DuPont is deliberately not joining these conversations because it cannot commit the resources needed to do it well. Not doing it well is “fairly risky,” he said. “If you don’t join conversations carefully and very transparently, you create a negative word-of-mouth about how your company might be adversely trying to influence those conversations,” Spangler said.
At the opposite end of the spectrum from GMC are companies willing to engage in a two way conversation and learning from their mistakes. For example Dell, who got off to a bad start when it launched its blog in July.
“The Dell blog reads like a corporate brochure,” said Steve Rubel in his Micro Persuasion blog. Rubel is senior VP of the Me2 Revolution division at Edelman, a PR agency. Rubel said Dell’s “lack of candor” will set it back, exhorting Dell to “Be real. Walk the talk.”
After the inauspicious launch of its blog, Dell has made some remarkable strides to improve its communication and “walk the talk”. When it announced that it was recalling over 4 million batteries last month, Dell thanked the blogosphere for helping to get the message for the recall out.
“We know these conversations are happening around the world,” said Bob Pearson, VP-Corporate Communications at Dell. “If people have negative issues, we want to be right in the middle of it. We’re getting a lot of benefit from hearing what people like or don’t like. Is that a change? Yeah.”
Three major brands and three different approaches to having a two-way communication with consumers. Is your social media marketing approach more like GMC, DuPont or Dell?
