Gatorade takes social media very seriously

The marketing people at PepsiCo, Gatorade's parent company, are taking their social media very seriously by setting up a "mission control" center in the middle of their marketing department's headquarters. This control center allows the company to monitor its brand on social network sites on a 24/7 basis. There are a number of interesting screens reported on the Mashable/SocialMedia website. Marketers like Gatorade want to monitor consumer sentiment in real time in order to evaluate the nature and level of engagement; engagement being all the rage in advertising circles these days. Engagement, you might say, is the new metric (measurement) of advertising effectiveness.

Social Media is Not a Panacea

Just because engagement is the new metric in advertising circles, doesn’t mean all the numbers point upward. There is risk involved when companies and organizations embrace new media; social media are no panacea. Take two recent cases in which Nestles and Kmart were attacked for disparate reasons, but attacked nevertheless. In the case of Nestles, the issue revolved around the company’s use of palm oil in its products for which an attack was launched by the environmental group Greenpeace. With regard to Kmart, the issue revolved around an online coupon that consumers thought could be utilized at any Kmart store; turns out they couldn’t, turns out it could only be used at select stores. Perhaps you wouldn’t think something like this would make consumers angry, but it did. I’ve provide a link to an article on The Consumerist so you can read some of the vitriolic comments. What’s the take away? The good news is that social media provide consumers with a direct way to communicate with the company, and in turn a company or organization can evaluate how they are doing in the public’s eye. On the other hand, consumers and other groups can band together to launch an attack on the brand. For professional communicators, the issue is how to manage all of this. As social media a relatively new for many companies and organizations, it’s important to understand fully their implications in marketing communication programs, and remember that measurement is not always in the upward direction.

Toyota and Tylenol Are Not the Same

A classic case study in the history of public relations is the handling by Johnson and Johnson of the Tylenol tragedy in which capsules laced with cyanide were discovered to be the cause of death of seven people in the Chicago area. Because of J&J’s swift action, pulling Tylenol off the shelves of the nation’s retailers, the company in time was able to bring the product back to market and restore the brand’s image. In other words, they utilized a recall and continuous communication from top management to turn a tragedy into a public relations success story. That was 1983.

Fast forward to 2010 and Toyota, by some accounts, is employing similar tactics in halting production and sales of eight of its vehicles. That action is in addition to the massive recall of several million vehicles. According to one pr case book I consulted, the lessons of the Tylenol incident include: candor with the public, integrity of the brand, proactive leadership by management, and effective feedback mechanisms. So, many companies, including GM, Firestone, Johns Manville and Proctor and Gamble, chose in years past not to follow what in retrospect seems like the commonsense public relations practiced by J&J.

But I don’t think the problem that J&J faced and the one Toyota faces are as parallel as some seem to think. First, J&J’s problem was domestic;  Toyota’s is global. Communication media are vastly different now, especially with regard to the ways in which consumers participate in the process. Just do a Twitter search on the word “Toyota” to see what people are saying about the recall. Or go to YouTube and view some of the myriad videos that have been posted regarding this issue. J&J was better able to control the output of their communication, to offer up their corporate leader as chief spokesperson, and to time their communication efforts to their advantage. With Toyota, the media environment is 24/7. And, everyone is or can be a spokesperson on the issue: the president of Toyota doesn’t command any more presence or authority than Joe the Blogger. In an age of participatory media, it will be interesting to see how this issue unfolds and whether or not it will become a model for a world enveloped by social media, and whether like Tylenol, it will find a place in the annals of future public relations textbooks. 

Social media: Nobody doesn’t like it

Sara Lee has made a foray into social media with a series of webisodes that utilize real moms hawking Sara Lee products. The use of “real moms” lends an air of authenticity, which we know is important for believability. Beyond that, the web series is posted on Facebook, YouTube and Metacafe. Social media are the cornerstone of the “new advertising.” Added to the appearance of the video series on social media websites are blogging and tweeting. Who would have ever thought that advertising would come to this? But these are the tactics of the moment and fit nicely into the rubric of Participatory Advertising, with engagement being the measurement of success. Perhaps it’s these difficult economic times that are driving marketers like Sara Lee toward the use of social media. The use of social media websites with their interactive qualities should provide a good lesson in marketing economics. This is especially important given new tools to measure engagement in the marketplace. While traditional advertising may work well at establishing awareness and it may serve as an important reminder, brands that want to engage deeply with their target markets much utilize social media.