Most companies are not prepared for the impact of social media.
CNN Money recently posted this article about Ann Milch, an irate BOA customer who concluded that the only way to get even with the ‘thieving, scheming bastards’ at the Bank of America was to post a scathing YouTube video letting the world know exactly how she felt. At 400,000 views and 6,000 comments, she has received a lot of people’s attention… including the bank’s. Bank of America has since retracted the 30% interest rate (is that legal?) it was charging her and has reinstated the previous 12.9% rate. Good for them.
Whether you agree with Ann and the vast majority of YouTube commenters that the Bank is evil or whether you feel, as some do, that Ann would not have experienced this problem if she had simply lived within her means you have to agree that the impact of a single angry customer can have a significant affect on your brand.
It’s tough to know what makes any video go viral. YouTube is filled with angry rants, this one just seems to have struck a resonant chord. A lot of people are hurting right now. Perhaps BOA is just the lightning rod de jour, attracting the current anger and frustration surrounding these difficult economic times.
These are still early days. If a single video can garner this much attention imagine what would happen if the angry hoards got together. Imagine if the conversation started to spiral out of control and you were not part of it. Imagine if the groups and people that are impacting your brand were all playing in a sandbox that you knew nothing about, and frankly had no credibility in. Imagine if the majority of negative word of mouth about your brand was visual and interactive and the only arrow in your quiver was a press release.
The video above was shot on a hand held camera and posted on YouTube. This video attempts to capture the presentation of the BlackBerry Curve 8350i at a launch party held recently in what looks like a warehouse or really large storage room. The videographer should have invested in a $30 tripod – the Blair Witch Project shaking camera effect started to make me nauseous after fifteen seconds. The sound is terrible – you really have to strain to hear the hollow echo of the speakers voice. There isn’t anything specifically offensive or negative about this video – presumably it was well intended. That said, for all intents and purposes the video is unwatchable – it gives little more than context to the presentation – it’s just too hard to understand.
What’s the point of showing this video? To highlight the new reality for brands. People are creating (unauthorized) content that reference your products and services every day. ’Videographers’ are everywhere, tagging their content and uploading it to video sharing services like YouTube – and there is precious little you can do about it.
Does this activity affect the perception of a brand? Should companies be trying to do something about this? Can they intervene and provide better content that will be found in place of the inferior content? Can they help videographers (like in the above example) by providing better audio facilities at speeches? Should they be aware of their surroundings when they make presentations? Should they anticipate that more and more people will have video cameras and invite those people to come up to the front and guide them on the best way to get high quality audio and video? Should the brand police be watching out for ‘rogue content’ and politely posting responses that link back to better quality information – or would this be too intrusive?
Maybe all this attention is a good thing. Perhaps brands should encourage anyone and everyone to talk about their products and services – regardless of the quality of the content generated and regardless of the quality of the discussion? As long as there is a conversation going on around your product and it is positive, where’s the harm? Sure a lot of the content is going to be poorly written or poorly recorded but as long as your stuff is being discussed, isn’t that the point?
