Professional Documents
Culture Documents
4
Typical traits
of brand
democratisation
1
.
In less than 24 hours there were 448,527 tweets about the
incident, within 30 hours 207,000 people had watched the
video on YouTube, at that time the blog audience added up
to 1.2 million, and 1577 blog comments had been written
about the event. Within 36 hours the distribution of the
story had reached 2.25 million people
2
. A few days later the
main press joined in, including BBC news.
1 1lL
conspicuously absent, to the point of not even posting an
official response, or comment, on their own website.
This clearly illustrates the speed in which events online can
take off. This immediacy effect requires organisations to be
not only aware of what is going on, but to be prepared to
act on it, as and when action is required and appropriate.
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to control this
is like trying
to stop waves
crashing on a
beach by
putting your
hand
Lack of control
While organisations can control outbound messages like
press releases and hierarchical platforms of
communication like TV, the digital world is de-centralised
and can less feasibly be governed.
Due to the sheer volume of editing and publishing, in
addition to the low visibility and random areas where
information can exist and be shared on the internet,
attempting to control this is like trying to stop waves
crashing on a beach by putting your hand out.
There is little to stop someone screen grabbing an image
of a brand, editing it, then sharing it with the rest of the
world. There is also little stopping someone from creating
their own mass media through a blog, YouTube or twitter
account, a reality Qantas faced during a recent crisis. The
last thing the airline needed was for the engine failures of
one of its aircrafts to be made public in the same week its
whole fleet had been grounded amid a dispute with
striking staff. The event might have had minimal media
coverage had it not been immediately broadcasted by
the actor Stephen Fry, whose twitter follower volume at
the time placed him in the top 100 tweeters world-wide.
From the plane Mr Fry tweeted, Bugger. Forced to land
in Dubai. An engine has decided not to play". In the
second it took him to press send, over 3 million people
knew of the situation
3
.
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Extremity of sentiment
When a brand is democratised, the sentiment expressed
by the editors and sharers tends to be either very
positive or very negative. The main reason being that the
drivers behind people creating, editing, and sharing are
of an emotive nature.
People are likely to get involved if they a) care enough
about the entity in question, b) feel strongly about the
event or action taken/not taken, or c) see enough value
in being involved with the adjustment, or distribution, of
the entity in question.
United Airlines realised that extremity of sentiment leads
to extremity of effort and action when a Canadian
musician, Dave Carroll, had his acoustic guitar damaged
on a flight and found the airline to be unresponsive and
unwilling to compensate. Dave wrote and recorded a
song entitled 'United Break Guitars' that became a
YouTube hit. At the time of writing this, the video has
been viewed 11,272,705 times
4
. To put this in context, in
8 C
speech had been viewed 5,677,373 times on YouTube
5
.
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Exponential growth
Audience size and type in traditional marketing is relatively
predictable. An expected volume of people, from a certain
demographic, listen to a radio show, visit the cinema, or
drive past a poster at any given time. However, in an
empowered society where the public has access to multi-
directional, highly interactive, real-time communication
tools, there is no such thing as a predictable audience size.
The way information and content spreads is therefore
rarely linear, it is rather exponential, and so is its impact,
as illustrated by some of the examples we discussed
previously.
This exponential growth can, and will, have a direct impact
L
hypothetical, yet realistic, example where a product worth
400 is spoken about negatively online by someone with
125 readers on their blog. With a traditional mindset one
would think the risk of the negative opinion spreading
would be limited to 125, a figure unlikely to threaten to an
organisation. However, if 1 of those 125 people has 35,000
twitter followers, and 20% of them retweet to an average
of 500 followers each, the negative opinion about the
brand can be visible to over 4 million people within
minutes. Imagine if 1% of these people change their
purchase decisions as a result of the negativity, this would
result in 1.7 million in lost sales.
Organisations often remain oblivious to the exponential
growth of communications until it is too late, and they may
forever remain unaware of the lost revenue caused by the
unsupported communication.
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ow a company reacts following a brand being democratised
shapes public perception as much as any other stimuli and
communication managed by an organisation. It is as crucial
to the health of a brand to react and act in an appropriate
way to any events caused by this new reality, as it is to get
the broader communications and marketing mix right.
Organisations who create or represent brands tend to
behave in one of the following ways to uninitiated and/or
uncontrollable events.
z Stay silent/do nothing
z Seek to silence through censorship and/or litigation
z Get involved
Let us look at each of these in greater detail.
Likely reactions
H
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Stay silent/do nothing
Staying silent, or doing nothing is the most common behaviour of all. This
was the case when an advertising campaign created by the English
Conservative party to reassure voters that there would be no national
l
David
C 8
started to circulate. Spoofs of the campaign were created, aided by
mydavidcameron.com, which provided the public with a template of the ad
allowing people to create different versions of the ad using their own
words. To this day the silence around the campaign stretches so far, it is
even unclear which agency actually created it
6
.
No one knows why the English Conservative party remained silent;
stay silent tends to be due to one,
or more, of the following factors.
z Lack of awareness of an event having taken place, and/or of
its importance
z Lack of preparation to ensure appropriate action is taken
z The belief that an event will blow over relatively quickly
z A strategic decision not to act
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Lack of awareness
Being aware requires an organisation to accept the new paradigm
caused by socialisation, and to not underestimate the likelihood of
something happening, or the importance the event may have. In our
experience, organisations tend to place little significance on
uncontrolled external factors potentially affecting their brand
positively or negatively. These companies are also often unaware of,
not only what could happen, but of what is actually already happening
in the public space that presents opportunities or risks to their brand.
Lack of preparation
Lack of awareness and understanding is one of the key reasons for
organisations not being prepared to handle situations caused by brand
democratisation. Another key reason is lack of internal processes and
resources to act appropriately. We will discuss this, and how
organisations can prepare, later in this paper.
The belief that an event will blow over relatively quickly
As it is impossible to accurately predict the volatile nature of brand
democratisation, the belief that an event will blow over relatively
quickly can only be out of hope rather than reason. In fact the whole
view of events being linear and judged in terms of time-based damage
is concerning. The reality is that even if events do blow over quickly,
damage may still have been done, as we will see later in this paper.
Strategic decision not to act
There are cases when doing nothing and staying silent is the most
suitable behaviour for an organisation. One strong reason for silence is
to avoid litigation. We recently worked with a travel aggregator who
had no choice but to not respond to people criticising their partners,
such as hotels and airlines, even when such criticism had a negative
impact on their brand, in order to avoid legal retribution.
Another reason for staying silent is to avoid what are known as 'flame
1
Whatever an organisation does in a flame war will not be good enough
to satisfy those who a casting the flame, often known as 'trolls'.
Lack of action could also be due to the fact that an organisation does
not see the event in question as significant enough, thus not
warranting action. This is only acceptable if the entire outcome of
brand democratisation has been taken into consideration and been
understood.
/
silence provides a space easily filled with public opinion, and is a lost opportunity to
balance lies with facts; negativity with positivity.
12
Seek to silence through censorship and/or litigation
It is tempting for an organisation, when faced with external disruption caused by brand democratisation, to
try to silence the people or organisations involved through censorship and/or litigation. These attempts,
however, are often fruitless, and in many cases result in damaging the brand and its credibility.
Nestl chose the route of censorship
when one of their Facebook fan
pages received thousands of
complaints about the company's
alleged use of palm oil from
deforested areas in Indonesia. As the
page attracted a swarm of comments
accusing the multinational food giant
of unethical practices, an
administrator of The Nestl page
attempted to address the influx by
writing, "We welcome your
comments, but please don't post
using an altered version of any of our
logos as your profile pic - they will be
deleted"
7
. It is hard to imagine a less
suitable time to
contributions, or to prioritise the
design of your own logo, than in the
middle of a social media crisis.
We have been present at several
meetings where litigation is the first
call to action proposed by senior
management to combat actions
against their brand from the online
public. And although we do not
condone criminal activity, we do feel
it necessary for organisations to
understand that people's opinions of
from
legal fact, and thus may require a
different approach.
One could imagine that when
Jose Avila made furniture out of
FedEx boxes, he perceived
the boxes to belong to him.
Proud of his work Jose created a
show the public his creations. Instead
of recognising a true fan,
or the possibility to
use the event as a brand building
opportunity, FedEx attorneys used the
take down provisions of the
Digital Millennium Copyright
Act (DMCA) to force Avila to
take the site offline, accusing
him of lL
copyrights and trademarks, breaching
his contract with FedEx by using the
cartons for purposes other than
shipping, and potentially misleading
consumers into believing that FedEx
approved or endorsed Avila's
8
. It is arguable that FedEx
could have chosen a somewhat more
harmonious approach. Perhaps
viewing his fanaticism as a positive
trait would have propelled others to
love FedEx more. They could have
given him more boxes and amplified
his creations. They could have run
competitions to see what other things
people could do with FedEx boxes.
They could have offered to pay for
him to go to furniture design classes,
in case he wanted to increase his
expertise in furniture design. UPS on
the other hand, a competitor to
lL lL
litigious leaning and provided Avila
with boxes instead, maybe even
running a A
UPS we believe our customers have
the right to choose how to use our
W
Litigation, although sometimes
necessary, is a time consuming and
expensive way to fight this paradigm
shift, and one that has often proven
unsuccessful. Despite the Recording
Industry Association of America
successfully suing Napster on the 7
th
of December 1999, leading to
Bertelsmann agreeing to pay the
National Music Publishers Association
$130m in August 2007, digital
distribution of music online still
thrives today and legal action could
ultimately not stop the disruption of
business model
9
.
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End Notes
1 S M C 1
2 Source: ABC distribution statistics of the newspapers covering the story
3 S S l C u P S
4 S S u A 8 C L M L Cn, 24/7/2009
5 Source: YouTube, BarackObamaDotCom channel, 30/12/2011
6 S M 1 n C
7 Source: guardian.co.uk, n l - L l
8 Source: Wikipedia, FedEX Furniture
9 Source: Wired.com, Dec7 1999: RIAA sues Napster, David Kravels, 7/12/09
10 S 8 v L 8 A L l1
11 Design and Art Direction is a British educational charity which exists to promote excellence in design and advertising
12 Source: Wikipedia, The Best Job In The World
13 S C C88 M C
14 S S u A 8 C L M L C
15 Source: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seriously_McDonalds
16 S M PCAx Mu C S C 8 C W
17 Source: Mail Online, McDonald's issues Twitter denial after hoax poster saying blacks will be charged extra goes viral, 13/6/11
18 Source: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seriously_McDonalds
19 S C C n ! l
20 A social commerce website focused on handmade vintage items, as well as art and craft supplies
21 S WA8C 8
22 S 1nW 8 P 1 L C u C 8 M 11/10
23 Source: http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=112671288743140&topic=158
24 S A S l 1 u W W S L P88 -line, 28/1/10
25 S WA8C 8