These campaigns have created an unprecedented change in the relationship between customers and brands: the customer loves the brand for acknowledging and appreciating them; the brand loves the costumer for providing crowd-sourced, marketable brand love and free broadcasting. More and more organizations are using this kind of participatory marketing that social media platforms allow for, and they should.
Except when they shouldn’t.
An organization that probably should not jump on the conversational marketing bandwagon is the New York Police Department. A couple of months ago, the NYPD unintentionally started a worldwide conversation about police brutality with this open-ended tweet:
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The tweet heard round the world #myNYPD[/caption]Intended to be a crowd-sourced photo collection of happy citizens and NY police officers, the #myNYPD campaign quickly spiralled out of control as people began sharing images and anecdotes of police clashing with citizens in countries around the world. The social/PR disaster highlighted the risks involved in launching a discussion-based social media campaign and the lack of control a brand/organization has over the direction of a conversation it starts.
Before deciding to execute a conversational campaign, an organization first needs to think about all of its product and service offerings and the inherent emotional response people have to those products and services. Do those products/services evoke negative feelings? Are they somehow unpleasant, uncomfortable or controversial? Just because many organizations are using conversational campaigns successfully, doesn’t necessarily mean it makes sense for any organization to do one. For mission critical organizations like banks and government agencies, which often find themselves at the center of controversy, opening up a conversation on social media can be extremely risky business. If issuing parking tickets and arrests are in your repertoire of service offerings – it’s probably not worth the risk.
On the other hand, for more light-hearted brands whose products and services evoke mostly pleasant and positive feelings in people, a conversational campaign is more likely to be a huge hit than a potential risk. For example, Oreo’s Snack Hackathon, which feature’s consumer-submitted “Snack Hacks” via a Tumblr blog, is a campaign that comes with very little risk comparatively.
No matter what an organization’s products/services are, three main areas of focus need to be part of the development of a conversational marketing campaign:
- Risk Assessment –Asking “If this conversation were to head in negative direction, what would that look like?” is a critical part of developing a conversational social campaign. What does a bad direction look like? What does the worst case scenario look like? How many bad directions could there be and what is likelihood? Every decision comes with risk, of course, and there is always going to be some element of “you never know.” But every possible potential risk factor should be identified and thought about.
- Sentiment Analysis – Social listening tools such as Crimson Hexagon or Sysomos often come with a hefty price tag, but they are crucial for big brand to use when developing a conversational social campaign. You need to understand what conversations people are having about your brand before you insert yourself into those conversations. If there is a significant amount of passionately negative discussion happening about your brand, it may be too risky to launch a conversational campaign.
- Contingency Planning– After identifying risks and understanding existing sentiment, a contingency plan can be developed. In the event your campaign takes an unexpected turn, how will you respond? What resources will a good response plan involve? Beyond action from your social/community team, your PR team and even C-level members of your organization may need to be involved in the preparation of a contingency plan.
Of course, no matter how well you plan, there is always going to be some element of “you never know” on social media. While brands enjoy the innovative marketing power that these digital channels have grown to provide, every businessperson needs to keep in mind that social media is still the tool of the masses. It’s the place where smaller, unpopular voices get heard alongside the bigger voices, and the place where people go to participate in democracy and start grassroots movements. You can’t be 100% sure what will happen when you open up a conversation to a worldwide audience, so think it through and plan smart!
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