— mr. brain

Social media. It will do it to the best of them. Another brand has screwed up, ignored their well crafted playbook, and the result has come around and bitten them in the ass. Yes, again! This time it was Microsoft. Xbox to be precise. They used the death of British songstress Amy Winehouse as an opportunity to shill their Zune store. Shortly after her untimely death this past weekend, the following Tweet was posted on Twitter.

Within the hour, the brand was inundated with complaints and insults calling them crass and classless, and I completely agree. This type of action is akin to showing up outside someone’s funeral and declaring “You know Larry really loved ice cream. How about you buy a few cones from me in his honour”. This situation is completely unimaginable, but just try and imagine if you actually did this. Larry’s older brother would probably give you five across the eye and you’d be lynched in short order. Furthermore, no brand or advertiser with any scruples would ever do this in traditional advertising either. Imagine Goodyear doing a double page spread on the tires Princess Diana should have had on her limousine? Insane, right? Well what Xbox did is no different. Well actually there is a difference, social media isn’t really media. It’s a communications channel complete with direct response. But why? Why would they partake in such a tasteless and weak product push? Especially when we’ve seen things like this backfire so badly for other brands (See Kenneth Cole). It’s either they don’t understand the channel or they simply don’t respect the user base.

Amy Jo Martin of the social media agency Digital Royalty nailed it on the head in her recent article published in The Harvard Business Review, about humanizing social media. Although Amy Jo may have an easier go of “humanizing” social media since most of her brands are actual humans, her principles should be adopted by all brands and advertisers. Amy Jo compares social media channels to a telephone, and not advertising, and in my opinion this is bang on. It really is a communications channel where traditional means of measuring ROI really don’t apply and they really shouldn’t. They should be looked at in the same way call centers or customer services departments are. They are a two way dialogue between a brand and its consumers. And this is where advertising agencies need to step up and push clients to treat the channel as a channel and not a medium. Of course, we all expect brands to use the channel as a marketing and advertising vehicle and incorporate it into their overall marketing mix, but how it’s done is where the issue lies. Too many brands and agencies focus on ROI and not the value of the channel. Trust me, there is gold in them there hills, just not the kind we’re used to. Customer and market insight, brand affinity and advocacy, customer service, consumer feedback are all readily available in social media as long as we don’t abuse it and act accordingly. But if you’re looking for direct sales to attribute to the bottom line, good luck.

And this is the fatal flaw of so many brands and advertising agencies who venture into social media. Hard sells, bombarding customers with offers and trying to capitalize on events and cultural movements in search of ROI are not acceptable practices in social media. I’ve said this so many times in so many boardrooms over the last few years, it’s almost sickening. If you can’t add value to a community you don’t belong there, period. However, if you play nice and don’t count the nickels, I’m positive you’ll get the returns your’re after. Not right away, and not where you’d expect to find them, but they will come. And don’t make me say it again.