Archive for the 'Badvocacy' Category
When it hits the halls of Dilbert’s cube farm, you know it’s becoming pervasive! Just wait and watch a few weeks, and “gossipsize” will become one of those terms you’ll see in Wired’s Jargon Watch. Sounds much cooler than “online reputation management.” Thank you, Scott Adams, for yet another brilliant way to brighten our day.
BTW, if you haven’t checked out Dilbert.com lately, you should. It’s a phenomenal example of using social media to enable a community of advocates to spread your brand. Mix, mash and share to your friends’ delight.
A perfect way to sum up what we’ve been calling Badvocacy.
Thanks to Pete Blackshaw, Nielsen BuzzMetric’s CMO, for this upcomig book due out in July. We’re looking forward to reading it.
Today’s New York Times includes a story about how Wal-Mart’s badvocates are retreating (“Wal-Mart’s Detractors Come in From the Cold”). It’s a great case of why it is so critical to know your badvocates, understand why they badvocate, and authentically respond to and/or act upon their criticisms.
Wake-Up Wal-Mart is a union-backed campaign group that often criticizes the business practices of Wal-Mart. The group claims Wal-Mart offers its employees substandard wages and health care benefits. Wal-Mart Watch is another agency whose mission is to benefit Wal-Mart communities. Three years of pressure from these groups prompted Wal-Mart to expand its health care coverage to workers (although not to the extent the unions would like) and increased its “green” programs. Given such progress, Wal-Mart and these groups have concluded that it is more effective to engage one another on the issues than to live as adversaries.
While both Wake-Up Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart Watch report that they will remain vigilant watch dogs of the world’s largest retailer despite progress, some signs that they are, as the NY Times writes, lowering their pitchforks are:
•Wal-Mart disbanded a campaign-style war room to deal with these groups
•Wal-Mart disbanded their own advocacy group, Working Families for Wal-Mart
•Wal-Mart Watch and Wake-Up Wal-Mart both reduced their staffs
Badvocacy can be deflated when companies are willing to face up to the damage badvocates can cause, recognize legitimate concerns of their badvocates and inoculate themselves from badvocacy by doing the right thing. At the same time, badvocates need to know when they can back off from their campaigns so that future criticisms and actions will be considered credible. Here’s to healthy badvocacy!
Miller Brewing has its own fulltime employee blogging about the beer industry and its arch rival Anheuser-Busch. This is an unusual advocacy platform. Being an advocate for your own company and badvocating or breaking news about your competitor breaks several traditional and social media conventions and can certainly be described as “out of the box” thinking.
Jim Arndorfer’s blog is called BrewBlog and I first read about it in the WSJ. The blog has practically developed into its own news feed and has a fair amount of influence in the beer sector. The Journal article described how Arndorfer scooped the trade publications on a new ale being produced by A-B called Budweiser American Ale. As described, “Brew Blog is the latest and perhaps most unlikely front in Miller’s drive to rattle Anheuser.”
To make it all fair in love and war, Arndorfer also posts negative tales about his own company although my sense is that they are less problematic than the ones about A-B.
Wisely, Arndorfer makes no attempt to hide who his employer is. The blog makes it evidently clear that he is a Miller employee. Transparency rules.
Advocates and badvocates come from everywhere but this one is unusual at best. I had to read the article twice to understand how this actually worked. Gathering information on your rival to be published on a company blog is not business as usual. Something to watch over time.
The blog is particulary interesting to read as talks between InBev and A-B heat up.
At Weber Shandwick, we’ve been warning companies about badvocacy as long as we’ve been encouraging them to tap into the power of advocacy. Badvocacy is simply the act of criticizing companies, brands or products and it’s becoming rampant as social media accelerates (as my mother recently gleefully declared after dealing with a customer service injustice, “You don’t even need to picket the store anymore, you just go on the Internet!”). Highlighting this trend, the Society for New Communications Research recently released the results of a survey sponsored by Nuance Communications that shows that 59 percent of active Internet users use social media to vent about a customer care experience. That’s a lot of venting.
Lest companies make the mistake of shrugging off online critics or dismissing social media as a valid communications channel, the study also finds that the majority of online consumers are using the Internet to research companies’ customer care reputations before making the purchase (72 percent) and choose companies or brands based on others’ experiences they read about online (74 percent). Most consumers (81 percent) believe that blogs, discussion forums and online ratings systems give consumers a greater voice (our own research supports this newfound sense of empowerment: more than half of online respondents say they have more power to influence company success or failure today than ever before).
So even if customers aren’t writing about negative experiences, they’re reading about, and heeding, the experiences of others. Companies can’t hide from badvocacy – they need to recognize that the function of customer service has been forever changed. They need to respond to situations in new and inventive ways that minimize the risk of an unhappy customer escalating his or her problems to the world.
Looking forward to the full report from SNCR and Nuance due out later this year.
My colleague David Krejci has an internal social media newsletter that I really enjoy. It is called Your New Times and I always learn from it. This week’s edition focused on something called Astroturfing which is defined as fake buzz. The article in the newsletter written by “stingray” is about how people fake comments or create controversies on YouTube, Facebook and other sites to make them look like they have lots of friends or visitors or detractors. Using stingray’s definition — Astroturfing is when a public relations campaign seeks to create the impression of spontaneous, grassroots behavior (hence the reference to the artificial grass Astroturf). Astroturfing is a prime example of what we call badvocacy.
I wonder how it can be stopped or found out. If anyone knows, please let me know. I am always interested in how to combat badvocacy.
Nielsen Online recently released a study that finds that blogger buzz around sustainabilility grew by 50 percent in 2007. Early 2007 buzz was dominated by global warming, but issues such as renewable energy and resource conservation increased.
The study also reports that corporations that greenwash their advertising and PR will quickly turn bloggers into the dreaded Badvocates. Sustainability bloggers’ number one greenwashing discussion topic is “contradictory actions.” As most companies know these days, there is no hiding from Badvocacy, so they need to be sure their messages are consistent with their products and services.
Here is some interesting evidence that badvocacy exceeds advocacy. If you go to Fortune’s Most Admired Companies section on the Fortune web site, you will find that people post their thoughts on whether the top most admired companies deserve the kudos or not. Fortune asks readers: What do you think of the corporations on Fortune’s top 20 Most Admired Companies list? Should they be in the top 20? Tell us what you think. The best replies will be published here, and possibly in a future story on CNNMoney.com.
As of this writing, there were 156 postings. We did the analysis one week ago when there were 129 comments. Over one-half (54%) of the comments in our analysis about the top 20 most admired companies were negative vs. over one-third (38%) which were positive. The remaining 8% were neutral. The comments are pretty interesting and are certainly a peek into what people think about companies. As our research on advocates and badvocates shows, badvocacy gets spread more frequently.
As an example, here is a positive one about Costco:
“I was a 20 year kid when I started working for Costco. Almost instantly I was looked at as a celebrity in the town I worked. People would stop me on the street and ask me about Costco and tell me about their love of the store. In the eight years I worked there I was wa paid well and given full time employment. I worked in the regional office and learned more about the company then I ever thought I would. I know that they are not perfect and have some improvements to make but they do a good job taking care of their employees despite pressure from Wall Street to limit their compensation. I personally met the CEO. I bought in the company philosophy that the member comes first and I felt good about making sacrifices for company (like time away from my family and not getting everything to make my work life better). Costco is truely an innovative business model that could treat their employees a lot worse but they don’t because they chose not to. Needless to say I drank the Kool-Aid and 4 years away from the company I still shop there every week just to remember how it tastes. If Costco doesn’t deserve to be there no company does.”
Here is a negative one that is referring to recent problems that Southwest Airlines has had with the Federal Aviation Agency about flying planes with safety concerns:
“Southwest + FAA = Not a trusted top 20.”
Badvocacy often rules.
Starbucks has now joined the growing list of corporations that have recognised the power of putting customers in the driving seat. In the last few days they have launched Mystarbucksidea which like Dells Ideastorm asks customers for ideas on how to improve their offering and then gives them the chance to vote. So if you want a free cup of coffee from Starbucks on your birthday or free Wifi access in all Starbucks stores, click on the link above and vote!
It’s an interesting experiment and one that I’m sure will work. It’s a lot better engaging openly with your customers on your own turf, than fighting a rear guard action on somebody else’s
When the bulls run in Pamplona every July, who gets gored–and dozens always do, some fatally–is indiscriminate. Herd of terrified animals… stampeding for their lives… stay clear. Got it.
It’s harder to fathom the herd panic this past week of the most sophisticated investors in the world, Wall Street sharpies, which led to the unprecedented Fed-backed “controlled demolition” of Bear Stearns. Perhaps better than bankruptcy, perhaps not.
So why did they run? Was it a wild implosion of confidence as one opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal put it today?: ”As rumors of Bear’s troubles started early last week, counterparties stopped trading with Bear seemingly as quickly and carelessly as they had traded with it before.” Or was it a more rational response to temporary market failure, as another opinon piece in the same paper suggests?: ”Bear Stearns made the error in these skittish times of relying on short-term borrowing, in the form of of overnight repo agreements, to finance its holdings of mortgage-related secuirities.” You can read the full pieces here (if you subscribe).
There’s a stampede of opinions out there. And we’re interested to hear what you think. By the way, for a great review of the overal credit crisis and how we got here read David Leonhardt’s ”Can’t Grasp the Credit Crisis? Join the Club”
Having spent some time in Spain myself (as a younger, more foolish man), and seen a charging toro or two up close, you won’t have to guess where I stand. There’s nothing rational about a locomotive of panic. Or the shockwave of badvocacy that sent counterparties, creditors and even loyal Bear customers running for the exit doors a few short days ago, and vaporized billions in wealth. This was madness and mayhem like on the streets of Pamplona during San Fermin. People got trampled.
Here’s hoping Fed Chariman Bernake proves to be one helluva a matador. He appears to be for now anyway. One thing’s for sure: volatility will continue to be the norm as will huge tilts in word-of-mouth and confidence.
What’s also clear is that aggressive communications responses, like the one led by Richard Fuld at Lehman last week, will be required. But that’s a topic for another post.
