11:18AM November 17 2011
Twitter, a perspective-free zone.
By now, most people will have seen the slightly cringy self-promotional video for Sapient Nitro:
OK, it’s not great, but personally I think it’s got an innocent exuberance about it that’s not so bad. Weirdly, some agencies that are great at promoting their clients, tend to be rubbish at promoting themselves. Don’t know why, and there are plenty that are good at it, but there are some real tone deaf duds out there.
Putting that aside for a bit, it was Sapient’s reaction to the reaction, and then the reaction to Sapient’s reaction (wowsers, that’s a lot of reaction) that I find interesting. So, they stick it up on Facebook and, of course, people royally take the piss out of it. The agency community can be quite jaded and bitchy, this is hardly news. But Sapient Nitro broke the golden rule, they started deleting comments and went into a damage limitation meltdown. This led to the kind of collective self-righteous knicker fit that Twitter was built for. People were outraged that their comments had been deleted. One thing about social media is that it gives you the belief that YOUR VOICE SHOULD BE HEARD. The video went on to YouTube and the story morphed from ‘Sapient made a rubbish video’ to ‘Sapient don’t get digital and social media’. Which is a bigger, more damaging story. The next day, Sapient caught up, (http://wallblog.co.uk/2011/11/16/sapientnitro-explains-untranslatable-rap-video/), which is an age in this industry.
What interests me about this whole thing is that social media has amplified our instincts to pile on to a bandwagon and attack others. Every week on Twitter there seems to be a new public enemy number one, whether it’s a shopping centre in Scotland, a Daily Mail journalist (they pop up a lot), Waitrose, whatever. But they’re all treated with the same level of venom. It’s turbo-charged when you get a celeb tweeter like Stephen Fry or Graham Linehan commenting on it. But there does seem to be a startling lack of perspective. Things snowball, language becomes more hyperbolic and somewhere towards the end of the tornado, people start to realise they’ve gotten caught up in it all and start to withdraw.
So, how do brands ride this tidal wave of emotion and humanity? After spending decades controlling the conversation, brands are getting used to a two-way dialogue that doesn’t always go their way. And when it doesn’t, they seem to panic, big time. So, here’s something that I probably shouldn’t say, considering the industry I’m in. There are worse things in the world than people bitching about you on Twitter. People get carried away, say things they don’t mean, it’s fine. The important thing is not to panic. When something explodes, be open, honest and authentic from the beginning. Keep communicating, but don’t indulge abuse. If you’re in the wrong, and you know you are, say it up front and take your knocks. If you’re not, defend your position. But don’t get caught up in the emotion of the comments, don’t panic, keep calm, stick to the facts. It’s all common sense stuff really. Also, there’s an old saying: ‘Never waste a good crisis’. If you can change the story or turn it around, well that’s the prize really. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m working on the big chorus for our promotional video, you guys are going to love it.
