Digital Media - A Double Sided Blade

Hi guys. Let's have a talk about trends today. We have trends in fashion, music, news, climate, and almost everything we do. The current trend in marketing is of Digital & Social Media Marketing. Every company has an interest in this area and many are already investing heavily on this. And the number of additions are increasing daily.

Although there are many advantages such as low cost, ease of use, etc which were discussed in the earlier blogs, digital marketing is not smooth sailing all the way. One often forgets the main aspect of digital marketing. That is,

• It is open for every one freely.
• The customer dialogs are more important than the brand announcements.

Sometimes companies just start on digital marketing activities & get some one to post a picture or an update like every month, & call it digital marketing. It is digital. But it is calling for dissaster. This can be from many different ways.

For example this is a video that got very famous regarding United Airlines. While on a tour with the "Sons of Maxwell" band the musicians found out that the baggage handlers have rough handled the luggage so that one of their expensive guitars was broken. Even though they complained to various levels no action was taken to compensate them. And finally they produced this song and it become very popular and although it looks entertaining, the negative sentiment created would have been a nightmare for the Airline. This is how social media reacted to a bad customer service.

As explained in this blog by Jessica Farrelly the layoff of employees at HMV became a major issue. The reason behind was that the employee responsible for handling the corporate Twitter account also got fired. And the company had no idea who was doing what. He simply tweeted "We are tweeting live from HR where we're all being fired! Exiting !!" And this tweet started trending & created an instant uproar. Although the company sent a few tweets later to rectify the "Firing Everyone" image, the damage was already done. So you should always know who is handling your digital campaigns & check that they are up to the task.

This below video is what the outcome was of a prank video done by 2 Domino's Pizza employees  some time back. Although they insisted this was only a prank and no real harm was done, the posted video went viral & created waves of complaints. In the video they show to put the cheese used in the sandwiches in their nose, clean themselves with the material used to clean the kitchen equipment, sneeze on the food, etc. Both of them lost their jobs as a result and the company was under a lot of fire as well.

So it may be a simple prank, or a missed/delayed customer complaint, or even the access given to the wrong person. But the outcome can be devastating for the company. Digital media is not something one can control 100%. But regularly monitoring & moderating the customer dialogues is very very important in order to protect your company's reputation in such instances as explained above. 

Your comments are much appreciated.. :)