SURVIVING SOCIAL MEDIA
R8 is Audi India’s premium offering. Recently given a facelift, the 1.8-crore dream machine has got rave reviews and also features in the Bollywood film Race 2.
Last month, however, the super car made headlines for a different reason. In a freak accident on the Bandra-Worli sea link in Mumbai, an Audi R8 caught fire in full public view. The blaze on the ground spread like wild fire on social media. “Haha, was it really an Audi or a modified Nano?” and “Bar b q Audi” are just two of the countless digs the twitterati took at the German luxury carmaker on the micro-blogging site.
Audi India, for its part, was quick to point out that “initial reports indicate that the car had been modified” and that “we will investigate the matter further to understand the possible reasons for the incident”, a point that was promptly retweeted by its managing director Michael Perschke.
Forget, for the time being, who is right and who is wrong. On that day, Audi India’s formidable social media presence — its Facebook page, at last count, boasted over 1.7 million likes — was threatening to become a liability that could, at one fell swoop, undo decades-long efforts to build this marquee brand. For Audi to react quickly, sensitively and effectively even as black humour and rumour spread on social networks, almost as fast as the flames that reduced the R8 to ashes, was vital.
Like, Unlike
Welcome to the fast-paced, edgy world of digital media — where crisis is just a click away. Audi India isn’t alone in encountering the flip side of the buzz on social media. From Vodafone and Samsung to Nestle and Subway, many giants have had to eat humble pie, albeit for the short term. Their sophisticated PR machinery could do little when tweet- and like-happy users went on the rampage. Worryingly for marketers, such often-uninformed brand-bashing can go a long way in tarnishing reputation, skewing customer perceptions and impacting sales.
“A brand is no longer what a company says it is to its customers. It is what customers say to each other,” says Sudipta Sen, CEO of SAS Institute India, an analytics firm. It is a crisis that most brand owners and companies are aware of. Few, however, have a surefire way of dealing with it.
As Ryan Holiday, author of Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator, puts it: “The fact of social media is that anyone can say anything about whatever they want. And the truth or falsity of whatever they say is less important than how interesting it is… Companies have teams handling social media and crisis PR, but this is mostly an illusion of security. Because a ru-It takes just a few comments on social networks — which, even if untrue, can go devastatingly viral in minutes — to destroy brand equity that is painstakingly built over decades. Here’s a guide to managing reputation online and salvaging it once the damage is done mour or a meme cannot be stopped. These things take on a life of their own.”
India Inc Feels the Heat
A large Mumbai-based electrical home-appliance firm, which does not want to be named, was recently hit by a barrage of online customer complaints — 30-40 a day. The company, which sells about 10,000 pieces of its merchandise a day, suspected its competitors were planting the complaints, but had no clue on how to handle the situation. Finally, with the help of social media expert Social Wavelength, it put together a plan. With some Web-tracking tools, smart analysis and priority response, they worked hard to resolve customer complaints within 48 hours.
“Soon the tide began to turn. A perception was created that the brand was responsive,” says Sanjay Mehta, founder, Social Wavelength. But a tricky problem persisted. Many “customers” who posted complaints were not too forthcoming about resolving them. It first sent them a strong public message asking for details or withdrawal of complaints. Later, it threatened them with legal notices. “Since then fake complaints have stopped and the number has dropped to 3-4 a day,” says Mehta.
It was different for a large Mumbai-based private bank. It found a sudden rise in chatter on digital media with customers complaining about its website. After internal inquiries, the bank realised that its site was undergoing a systems upgrade. They promptly put up a banner on the website, informing customers of the problem and when the site would be up. The number of complaints dropped instantly.
Similarly, a large telecom operator recently spotted a 20% jump in customer complaints from a particular circle in the online chatter. It immediately started an inquiry and found that there was some problem with the customer-care team in that circle that was spilling over into social media. “The crisis was nipped in the bud,” says Mehta.
The Fear of Digital Media
Consumer-focused firms — for which word of mouth matters — are the most worried. Preetham Venkky, head of KRDS, a social media marketing firm that is also a Facebook partner, says any brand that has an annual ad budget of over 1 crore should be concerned about its online reputation.
Some sectors are more susceptible than others. Venkky says management of online reputation can build or destroy the business prospects of any product or service of which you can make non-recurring purchases — say a mobile phone, hotel, airline, or restaurant. Example: for a hotel, a dip in its Tripadvisor rating by 0.5% could easily result in a sales drop of 8-10%. “That’s why hotels like the Oberoi pay sharp attention to the digital media buzz,” says Venkky.
Mahesh Murthy, founder of digital marketing firm Pinstorm, says listed companies with large market value are always concerned about their online reputation because any dent there can have a significant bearing on stock prices.
India’s internet user base is burgeoning so fast that marketers have a reason to worry about online clout. Consider the numbers: there are 150 million internet users, 71 million monthly active users (as of quarter ending December 2012), about 15 million on Twitter, apart from 3.2 billion watching online videos (as of June 2012). A clutch of online influencers like bloggers and activists has, meanwhile, emerged, leading the crowd and shaping perceptions.
A Different Beast
Unlike traditional media, social media is a twoway channel with no moderator or gatekeeper. This makes it difficult for companies to control damage, says Vishal Sampat, founder of Convonix, an internet-marketing firm.
It is also instant media — therefore, the swiftness with which you respond is critical. Even a small, seemingly isolated incident can escalate into a gargantuan crisis within hours. Global sandwich restaurant chain Subway realised it recently when an Australian teenager sucked it into a crisis (see Subway: Footlong Crisis). Companies, instead of working five days a week, suddenly find themselves keeping a 24x7 vigil. This calls for an attitudinal shift.
Also, companies are terrified of the fact that a damning story can never be deleted. “With social media tools, any message has the potential to amplify beyond geographical limits and across timelines,” says Ramesh Srivats, MD of TenTenTen Digital Products, a digital media marketing company.
Digital media demands honest and transparent behaviour. If companies lie, they can be caught easily. When the Audi of tech entrepreneur Vishal Gondal was taken for a midnight joyride from the service station and the dealer denied it outright, all Gondal had to do was put out the GPS logs of his car’s movement on social media. “The Web uses the wisdom of the crowds. And the crowd can easily see through lies,” says Gondal.
Happy to Help
Seeing the growing demand for online reputation management, a clutch of service providers such as Pinstorm, Convonix and Social Wavelength are offering to help clients deal with social media. Mehta founded Social Wavelenth about four years back; today he claims to be the largest in India with a 150-strong staff in four cities and over 60 clients, including Intel, HUL and Tata Housing.
SAS Institute offers social media tools to companies to analyse and derive meaningful insights from online chatter. It has seen a growing interest from Indian firms, especially in telecom, automobile, banking and consumer products sectors. “Our tools provide real-time feedback for marketing campaigns and flag areas of improvement to enhance customer experience. I see them gaining a major traction in the future,” says Sen.
Public-relations firms see management of digital media as a logical extension of their services. Sharif D Rangnekar, CEO of Integral PR, says more and more of his clients are asking him to manage online presence. Already, 10-20% of his new business deals come from digital media. Six months back, he set up a separate division to help clients monitor their brands online.
New York-based Kevin King, who leads the global digital practice of the PR firm Edelman, is seeing big global growth since 2008. The digital business has 800 staff, 100-plus clients and has expanded from $14 million in 2008 to $91 million now (15% of the total).
Online Eyes
Most Indian companies are new to the online juggernaut and start thinking about managing their digital presence only when a crisis pummels them. However, some have already put in place a well-oiled machinery. ICICI Bank, for instance, has put together a 10-member team to manage its digital media strategy. The team prepares a fortnightly report of all the relevant chatter and information they gather online and uses that to finetune its digital strategy and address customer issues.
Last year, it launched its Facebook page. Initially, there were many complaints. “With prompt handling, the percentage of negative chatter dropped from 24% last January to under 5% now. These days we often have happy customers posting thank-you messages after their issue is resolved,” says Sujit Ganguli, general manager, ICICI Bank. The bank now works with an outside firm to track online chatter.
India’s telecom biggies Vodafone and Airtel too have woken up to the hazards — along with the opportunities — of social media. “This is an instant medium. You have to keep your eyes and ears open all the time,” says Anuradha Aggarwal, senior vice-president, Vodafone India. With a dedicated social media team and a well-structured strategy, the company says it is able to respond in less than 30 minutes of getting complaints online.
“When we started [monitoring social media] the tonality of mentions was 70% negative and 30% positive. Today we have been able to reverse the trend,” says Bharat Bambawale, global brand director, Airtel India. During crises like network outages, for instance, Airtel’s social media reach has helped it in keeping its customers updated real-time.
“Probably, the most humbling thing we have learnt is that sometimes all it takes is a simple sorry [to fix the problem],” says Bambawale.
:: Malini Goyal ET130210
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