Don’t listen to social media experts?!

Here’s why. A bunch of us got on the bandwagon a while ago about the Motrin Moms campaign, the pain killer commercial that portrayed the young mommy wearing her child in a body-hugging sling as trying to be fashionable. Here it is again:

I was one of the many that warned against social media, the manner and speed with which negative brand impressions can proliferate online. The online community, mostly moms of course, were outraged. They spoke of disrespect toward the truly humbling job of raising a child while pursuing a normal (professional) life. Pain is not funny.

Well here’s a pickle, it seems it is. Thanks to PR Squared, I’ve now found that (because of the outrage?) there was a Lightspeed research survey done and according to the results…not many people really seemed to care.

“(Almost) 90% of women had never seen the ad. Once they saw it, about 45% liked the video, 41% had no feelings about it, and 15% didn’t like it. Even fewer, 8%, said it negatively affected their feelings of the brand, compared with the 32% who said it made them like the brand more.”

Now I can think of at least 10 people (undoubtedly there are thousands) that would be grimacing gleefully at this piece of information and with a sarcastic hand on the shoulder share their “I told-you-so” sympathy shrug. I am after all making a living doing exactly this.

So now what? There are tons of these examples of social media gone bad floating around on the internet, but not many research surveys done to support any side of the matter. Do we take the Lightspeed survey as proof and go find a job selling insurance?

Well, no. I think it was Mike Stopforth who once said that if 10% of your target audience is online, then you should spend 10% of your marketing budget online. That to me also means that you should roughly spend 10% of your time managing your online profile (or brand as we call it these days). If 90% of the people then react negatively to your online campaigns, then it simply equates to 9% of your total brand audience (I think. You do the math). Handle the issue quickly and efficiently and move on.

The trouble with this is the following:

1. Few companies employ the (right) tools to quickly and efficiently monitor their online presence.
2. Many companies have no clue who their target audience really is and therefore simply cannot measure their online brand equity.
3. There are too many “jack of all trades” net experts making very fast bucks by doing way too much of the wrong work. Get someone willing to assess your business before he launches his sales pitch.
4. Companies get stuck on the idea of using external channels (other websites, Google etc) to market from when they have a perfectly viable, personal and loyal communications (pdf) channel they could target.

When it comes to online it seems there are no set rules, people abuse their newfound status as content creators and thought leaders and you can very easily be sucked into a digital mud slinging when you could well have spent your time more constructively.