What does a brand learn from criticism? Mostly nothing

It’s more than three years now since everyone started to evangelize new media and, basically, to preach social media theories and strategies. What do brands understand? Some of the companies get the point: it’s good to be there and it’s better to join the conversation, reply and be proactive. Most of them understand social media as the medium where they get criticism. Their answer? None. Or worse: they’re reactive in a negative way.

When it comes to brands and new mediums, some are fascinated by the huge potential of spreading the ads (more or less, because we’re talking mostly about PR here), but most of them are afraid.

You don’t control the conversation

When it comes to traditional mediums, it’s all about budgets. Advertising budgets. A company like Vodafone will not have problems with television channels, nor with newspapers, as long as they spend tens of millions of dollars on a yearly basis. When a newspaper gets a few hundred thousand dollars a year, they won’t publish anything bad about the brand.

When it comes to blogs and news websites, it’s different. First of all, money comes through intermediaries. Second, both blogs and news websites have user comments sections bellow every article. Users are reactive when it comes to problems they had. I had lots of problems with Vodafone for example. No Vodafone employee from the Communication department ever left a comment saying “Dude, we’re try to solve your problem as soon as possible and hopefully, none of our clients will ever face something similar“.

The basic rules of PR

The biggest fear of a company is getting negative responses. Which is normal. The problem is they don’t react. If a negative article is published in a newspaper, all of their PR department people will have a “communication crisis situation” and they will all start making PowerPoint presentations. Tipically. They’ll start sending press releases and all problems will end.

This kind of reactive response to a crisis situation is normal, but it won’t be applied on the internet. Why? Because internet is some sort of a Wild West for most companies. They don’t understand it and they don’t want to. This is why most of the big corporations still have their 1990′s websites up and less running.

…but you can control the topic

I said it before: you can’t control the conversation, but you can control the topic. There will always be unsatisfied customers who are going to criticize you as a brand. That’s why you have to be there and help them out. Offer them straight answers and work with your client service department to solve all the problems. It’s going to cost you more, but you’ll have satisfied clients that will recommend your services to others.

First rule: never fight with the users. Be positive and explain them why there’s a problem and try to figure out something with them. Involving your users/clients/customers will give them the illusion that they’re part of your organization and they’ll feel important to you. That’s a huge plus for your image. Being reactive will make them angry.

Example

Vodafone makes an advertising campaign. Their message says that the mobile internet coverage is 90% of the country. My mobile connection is HSDPA. 20 kilometers away from the capital city of the country, every phone has signal losses. We’re not talking about internet, we’re talking about call service. Zero to two lines of signal, phone calls dropped out of a sudden. In the margins of the city, the same problem, which “we do not intend to solve too soon“.

And other stuff like that. But they advertise coverage while their coverage sucks. This is the pure truth. It’s true, it’s the best mobile internet service connection in the country and has the best plans when it comes to money. But I seriously think about dropping my subscription and go to another operator where coverage is a quality service, though internet speed is lower.

What happened?

I wrote on my other blog about my issues with Vodafone. What happened? The PR officer called me and asked me why didn’t I explained to him the problem. Why did I wrote on my blog? Well, because I don’t want to solve my problems through the PR department. As long as I pay for a service and I have problems, it’s not reasonably to solve my problem and leave others behind. It’s a matter of principles. They will solve my problem, but not the others’ same problem. It’s not OK.

They decided to stop advertising on my blog and stop answering my q’s. That’s not OK. The good answer was: “We’re sorry for the inconvenience, we’ll take this matter to the tech department and promise to help“. That would’ve made me give them a PR bonus on my blog: writing a new article in which I would say how cool they reacted. It didn’t happened. Why? Because… they’re scared.

But they’re still advertising mobile internet and coverage, Facebook and Foursquare. Though they can’t handle it. Well, Google is forever. That’s going to hurt some day.

PS: The thing with companies is that instead of feeling inspired and try to inspire from user generated solutions, they don’t give a crap. I understand procedures and stuff, but once in a while, you have to open your mind. The cartoon above says all about how a online PR strategy should look like. Photo credits go to Hugh.