In China, there are bands of online citizens who seek out those they think have done wrong. These online vigilantes described in The Economist (half advocates and half badvocates I presume or perhaps it’s impossible to distinguish between them) are on the look out for “renrou sousuo” or “human-flesh searches.” A fairly well-known situation in China was an online photo of a young woman hurting a kitten with her stiletto heels. Once Internet mobs outed her identity, the woman’s name as well as other people’s were posted online and jobs were lost. Maybe she deserved to be found out, but these bands of outraged individuals can strike hard and deep. These Internet gangs can be doing the right thing by identifying wrongdoing but can also get carried away with their net-citizenry. Since this vigilantism has gotten out of hand at times, China has several amendments in proposal stages to inpose fines or jail sentences.
These incidents can happen anywhere. Wonder if the term “human-flesh searches” comes from the expression of extracting a pound of human flesh from people you think have done something wrong. Maybe it is the same no matter the language. However, interesting insights on advocacy or badvocacy on steroids.
10.17.08 is the Day the Page Stood Still.
At least that’s what may be in store for Facebook, if the site’s protest group 1,000,000 Against the New Facebook Layout! has its way. The group, which already boasts 2,769,709 members as of the writing of this post, is asking members to tune in, stand up, and log out of Facebook (as it were) over the weekend of October 17-21 to protest the social neworking site’s new makeover.
“We are just beginning the process of moving people over to the new Facebook and saying goodbye to the old Facebook,” wrote Mark Slee, product manager for Facebook, in a September 10 blog post on the site. “We set out to make Facebook simpler, cleaner, more relevant, and easier to control. With your feedback and participation … we believe we’ve gotten to the best Facebook yet.”
A few million users don’t quite agree.
Will the online backlash succeed in restoring the beloved old layout? We’ll soon find out. Let’s just hope they don’t unleash the social networking equivalent of Gort, the giant indestructible robot (pictured above) from the 1951 classic sci-fi film “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” That movie was about an alien visitor and his giant robot counterpart who visit Earth to warn us of our imminent doom if we do not stop our warring and destructive ways. Not so far off the mark, actually, to the current online situation. Facebook beware.
Film studies side-bar: I could be wrong (and often am on these things)… but I believe Gort is actually supposed to symbolize the fearsome, uncontrollable power of technology to destroy mankind. The case of Facebook potentially destroying itself? Or, thinking of the current financial meltdown, unfettered capitalism destroying our economic system? Gort-on Gecko?
Either way, we’ll all have a chance to see a new and improved ominpotent robot this December when a remake starring Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly and Mad Men’s John Hamm hits the theaters. None, unfortunately, in the scene-stealing role of the big bad machine.
As I have traveled to many destinations over the past several months, one of the most often discussed topics is the U.S. election. Everyone has an opinion on who would be the better individual for president, Obama or McCain. From taxi drivers, waiters, store owners to clients I meet, the U.S. election has caught everyone’s attention. Everyone advocates for one or the other. My waiter this week told me about his brother who lives in the U.S. and why Obama is the guy to end the war and restore the global economy. All of this election fuss has made me wonder how unfortunate it is that my fellow planet citizens can cast a vote for our presidency when the global stakes could not be higher. Imagine my excitement then when I opened up my Economist this week on my flight back home from Amsterdam to see that the world can have a say. Go to www.economist.com/vote2008 and advocate for your favorite candidate for the U.S. presidency. The Economist is also going to provide us with an electoral map in proportion to each country’s population. You can also see how the different countries are voting….McCain is leading in Georgia, Andorra and Macedonia. You will be able to see the world in red and blue after all the votes are in. Get your vote in before November 1st and advocate away!
OK. You’re driving down the road. The conditions are treacherous. But not enough to slow you down yet. Suddenly, something causes you to swerve. You fight for purchase but the wheels don’t hold. And you find yourself careening out of control in a white knuckle skid.
Are you heading into a ditch? Is a crash inevitable? Not if you do what’s counterintuitive. You heard right. You’ve got to go against your natural tendencies and instincts. And follow this one fundamental rule:
Accelerate and steer into the skid.
The reason why has everything to do with physics. And the explanation is pretty cool. As long as your front wheels are skidding, you have no directional control of the car. So turning your wheels in the direction of the skid allows the wheels to actually start rolling in the direction of motion again. Only once the wheels are rolling can turning them affect the direction of the car. Note to you wonks out there: this situation is technically known as “oversteer.”
You can learn more about it from the Ask a Scientist feature on the University of Chicago’s Newton BBS site (where I got this explanation from) or from driving sites like edmunds.com. Or you can give it a whirl yourself. Please just not in midtown Manhattan where we work. Or anywhere near our clients. Or anyone else for that matter…
So where are we going with all this “don’t drive like my brother” car talk? It just so happens to be a fitting aphorism for marketing when the road gets rough and rocky. And it’s safe to say we’re experiencing economic hardscrabble the likes of which we’ve never seen in our lifetimes.
Sergio Zyman once remarked that “marketing money is like fuel in the car.” Take the fuel out, he said, and the car skids to a stop. Even more apropos, research on past recessions–and we’ve had seven of them since the Great Depression–shows that businesses that maintain aggressive marketing programs in a downturn outperform companies relying on cost-cutting measures. In fact, history also shows that retrenching and divesting slows momentum and leaves room for competitors to grow. So there’s a relationship between recessionary marketing spending and long-term growth.
Said another way, businesses and brands would do well to “steer into the skid” during the hard times like today. Just ask Jack Neff from AdAge, who wrote a great piece in May highlighting how previous downturns provided big upsides–and some big category-changing, margin-improving innovations. Like airline loyalty programs, fast-food value meals, the IBM personal computer, Crest Whitestrips and Axe Body Spray. All born during economic set-backs, Neff points out.
This even goes for the mighty iPod, too. Date of introduction: just over a month after September 11.
So what can marketers do? What’s the GPS equivalent of steering into the skid and staying the course when we’re clearly off-roading? Or feel like we’re driving blind?
My colleague Cathy Calhoun, consumer marketer extraordinaire, recently put her sage and savvy mind to this task in a speech to a group of CMOs. And I promise to see if she will share her insights with us. That is, once I can break out of the heart stopping, skidding paralysis of watching the markets crash further and further each day. Parenthetically, the tips section on edmunds.com says that driving experts call this “target fixation.” That is: focusing on your impending doom instead of taking proper evasive action. They say this will result in a crash. OK, I got that now. Just might need some more practice…
In the meantime, we welcome your thoughts and experiences about how marketers can steer into the skid to not only avoid this economic crash but gain real advantage for their businesses and brands.
Special thanks to Cathy Calhoun, Co-Head of Weber Shandwick Consumer Marketing, Isabelle Papoulias of McCann Erickson New York, and Alan Kercinik of Weber Shandwick Chicago for sharing their research, thinking and insights on this topic.
Prince & Associates conducted a very timely survey that underscores what we have been saying about charming advocates and neutralizing badvocates. It is reported in the WSJ. More than 8 out of 10 rich investors plan to switch financial advisors. The sample was among investors with $1 million + investible assets. No small change. Strikingly and alarmingly, a hefty 86% plan to tell other investors to stay clear of their advisors. Rich investors are turning into badvocates nearly overnight. Not that I can blame them considering the financial disaster hitting both the rich and poor and all those in-between. Only 2% of investors (nearly no one) is likely to recommend their current financial advisor. Yikes. It gets even scarier. The survey found that “highly regarded well-known brands” are more likely to be the ones that people want to take their money away from. Investors who keep their money with smaller niche firms are more satisfied with their lesser known firms because they probably get better service and experience less staff turnover. Badvocates are upending Wall Street as we speak. Maybe this redefines the word “bailout.”
