New Zealand Marketing magazine

Blood on the tracks

by Michael Carney

Originally published in NZ Marketing March-April 2010, page 100

It was The Nightmare Before Christmas for Eurostar, operator of the trains that normally zip between France and England, when more than 2,000 passengers were trapped in the tunnels after five trains broke down on December 18, 2009.

In a fascinating confirmation of where today’s consumers now look first, many of those affected turned to Twitter for updates. Unfortunately, Eurostar wasn’t active on Twitter and didn’t even own the obvious Twitter accounts ‘eurostar’ or ‘eurostar_uk’, so it was saying nothing. But its customers certainly were. There’s no cellular service in the ‘Chunnel’ but many used Twitter to describe their experiences once they emerged and the comments were not encouraging. Those due to meet passengers and some of the 31,000 due to travel also started tweeting (largely negatively) about the situation.

Eurostar had no social media crisis control programme in place, but the team from We Are Social, an outside supplier that handled a small marketing campaign called ‘little break, big difference’, passed on any news it could and fed questions asked in social media throughout the day to Eurostar’s crisis team. Once confirmation came through, a FAQ post was spread via the networks.

So why wasn’t a major operator like Eurostar prepared? The need for a real-time social media response programme and crisis plan was discussed when We Are Social came onboard, but adapting its existing processes had wider implications across the business so it decided to start small with a promotion and learn from the experience.

Have to be there

Consumers now expect major brands to be present and active on popular social media platforms and are surprised, then disappointed and ultimately angry about a lack of real-time response. This expectation is unfair and unreasonable. But it’s today’s reality and companies need to get with the programme. Consumers might once have turned to the radio or TV. But now they swipe at their iPhones or tap their keys. It’s real-time customer service, 24/7, and woe betide the brand that doesn’t turn up.

It’s not everybody—yet

Not everyone is equally immersed in the social soup. As cyberpunk author William Gibson famously noted: “The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed.” And that’s particularly true of social media: 60 percent of US Facebook users are aged under 35 (according to iStrategy Labs). The most surprising thing about social networks is the speed of their adoption. Globally, according to Nielsen, the time spent on social media sites was up 82 percent, year on year, by the end of 2009. In New Zealand, Facebook overtook Trade Me in mid-2009 to become the second most popular website for Kiwis. In the second half of last year Facebook continued its acceleration and by early 2010 the social network was breathing down the neck of the perennial number one, Google (in Australia, social networks took the crown off Google during Christmas week, 2009).

Websites Most Visited by New Zealanders

Rank	Website	Shares of visits
1	Google NZ	8.42%
2	Facebook	5.78%
3	Trade Me	3.99%
4	Windows Live Mail	2.92%
5	Google.com	1.87%
6	Youtube	1.82%
7	MSN NZ	1.67%
8	Yahoo!xtra	1.39%
9	NZ Herald	1.08%
10	Gmail	10.3%

Sources: Hitwise NZ, Website Visits for the week ending 16 January 2010

Talk to me

Social media isn’t only defined by crisis or revolution. Much—indeed, most—of what takes place is far more prosaic and mundane. But sometimes, consumers even talk about topics near and dear to the hearts of marketers. According to the UK Social Media for Brands report (June 2007), 80 percent of social media users have either chatted about, commented on or reviewed a brand or product on an online forum or social network.

Marketers in every business sector are waking up to the fact that consumers are turning to a whole new range of experts for guidance—each other —which means there’s a whole new constituency to inform, entertain, educate and interact with. Again, it’s totally unreasonable, but it’s life in 2010.

These developments haven’t gone unnoticed, of course. In a recent study (The Evolved CMO, conducted by Forrester Research and Heidrick & Struggles), the tools that chief marketing officers wanted to learn more about were blogs, social networks, wikis and other facilities that enable consumers to comment on and influence others about brands or products. Another study, of travel marketers, showed 62 percent are planning social media initiatives in 2010, up from 20 percent in 2009.

Carpe diem

Social media is hot. And, to benefit from it, marketers need to get past some of their major fears, which, according to the E-Tailing Group’s September 2009 survey, are brand degradation (“people can trash my products in front of large audiences”), competence (“I am using outdated marketing/merchandising techniques”) and competitive (“the customer’s inclination to leave their site to find a more socially-engaging site.”)

To borrow a cliché, feel the fear and do it anyway. Your business is at stake.

Michael Carney is a veteran marketer who can be found sharing his views at www.marketingweek.co.nz