Groupon Lesson: Shock Value = Lots of Publicity for Your Brand. But At What Price?

 

Groupon's Super Bowl Commercial

"Our ads highlight the often trivial nature of stuff on Groupon when juxtaposed against bigger world issues, making fun of Groupon. The last thing we wanted was to offend our customers - it's bad business and it's not where our hearts are."

- Statement from Groupon's CEO in response to the outcry over Groupon's Super Bowl commercial trivializing suffering in Tibet

When you look over the fallout from Groupon's offensive Super Bowl ad, you should ask yourself, could all of this have been foreseen and avoided? Even if Groupon's management was incapable of discerning that such a commercial was likely to offend many people, wouldn't some simple ad testing prior to running this spot have given Groupon a good indication that it was a bad idea? Even more, how could a competent marketer have such incredibly poor judgment to let something like this happen?

First, consider the agency responsible for the creative. Crispin Porter + Bogusky is an agency that has no equal when it comes to using shock value advertising to gain publicity. In fact, they seem to have adopted the old adage "there's no such thing as bad publicity" as their guiding mission. (Of course, execs from Enron, Arthur Andersen and BP might disagree with that kind of wisdom, as well as Lindsey's and Mel's publicists.) They're the agency behind the Burger King campaign that featured commercials using a fictitious band called Coq Roq and the related microsite with girls who looked around 14 years old fawning over the band with the copy "Groupies love the Coq." Not surprisingly, that offended a great deal of parents who regularly take their kids to Burger King (BK later took removed the image in response to bad publicity and consumer protests). Several years ago, I made a post about that Burger King campaign with very similar observations to the Groupon commercial in terms of the campaign's brand recklessness.

When your target market is the general US adult population -- not twenty something males you're trying to get to buy beer, condoms or foul smelling antiperspirant -- and you're using commercials airing during the most watched television broadcast in US history, the 2011 Super Bowl, it's a good idea to get it right the first time and not use that air time to experiment with shock value creative mocking the suffering of a very large group of people that I suspect was never tested prior to running this spot. The incredible amount of negative social media mentions of Groupon as fallout from the commercial, the parodies on late night tv (see below for a hilarious spoof of the commercial from Conan) and even the opportunity this has turned into for Groupon's major competitor, LivingSocial, to take the spotlight in a very positive way, all could have been easily predicted in testing.

Now don't take that to mean that I blame the creative agency for this going out the door. No, even though I think the creative agency deserves some of the blame, the buck stops with the top marketer of the client organization. That is the person responsible for green lighting this creative execution, putting it in front of the CEO and persuading him that it was a good idea. That's a voice that should not be trusted again.

A Social Media Strategy Case Study on What NOT to Do with Your Corporate Twitter Account

What do you do when a good deal of your dissatisfied customers share their poor experiences with your brand with others online? Well, one thing you shouldn't do is turn your social media efforts into a customer service triage unit.

I recently came across one company using its social media efforts to deal with their customer satisfaction issues in a manner that I find such an excellent example of what not to do with your social media efforts, I felt compelled to share the story. One doesn't need to do a study or possess any company sales information to be confident that this company's social media efforts are certain to cause immediate harm to their brand image -- damaging their brand's reputation -- and negatively impacting their short term sales. Consider how their social media messaging is likely to impact prospective customers, journalists and industry analysts.

Hostway is a web hosting company headquartered in my hometown, Chicago. The company has some very vocal (well, in web terms) customers and former customers (or at least a lot of people claiming to be customers, however, Hostway's tweets responding to people claiming to be dissatisfied customers legitimizes these posts, so, consequently, we'll assume that these posters are legitimate customers and not tricky, underhanded competitors -- however, if it were the latter, Hostway's social media activity would be even more problematic) posting some far less than favorable comments about their experiences with the company's service quality on various blogs, web hosting rating and comparison websites and Twitter accounts (beyond Twitter, some sites I came across from page one of a Google search for reviews of Hostway include: http://www.besthostsdirectory.com/hostway-reviews.htm , http://www.webhostingjury.com/reviews/Hostway , http://www.webhostingjury.com/reviews/Hostway , http://www.web-hosting-top.com/web-hosting/web-hosting-top.hostway.com-reviews) . I recently visited Hostway's Twitter page on several occasions over the past month. I would guesstimate that during this period, half or more of Hostway's tweets were addressed to specific customers who had problems with Hostway services (AKA quality issues). Here are some recent posts I gathered from one recent visit to the official Hostway Twitter page on Oct 28, 2010 (I removed the names of the Twitter users being addressed and, for the record, these tweets are addressed to numerous customers, not the same one):

"@(TwitterUser) Can you please provide me with the domain you are having issues with and I will have a rep contact you."

"@(TwitterUser) is there something specific you had issues with that we could try to fix?"

"@(TwitterUser), did you get a solution?"

"@(TwitterUser) Sorry for your recent issue. Has it been resolved? If not, would you like to have a rep contact you?"

"I will have a technical service representative contact you to resolve your issue.@(TwitterUser)"

"Hi There, sorry for your slow connection. If you DM me with your domain name I can have someone look into it. @(TwitterUser)"

"@(TwitterUser) A tech support representative will be contacting you to resolve your issue."

These three were one after the other:

"@(TwitterUser) A technical support representative will be contacting you to resolve your issue."

"@(TwitterUser) A support representative will be contacting you soon."

"@(TwitterUser) We'd love to help you. Direct message me your domain name, and we'll look into it."

Members of the media, industry analysts (media and industry analysts frequently subscribe to tweets from companies they follow) and potential customers researching web hosting firms will see these tweets and certainly have a very poor impression of the company (can you say, run?). Even a loyal customer may question his or her loyalty in light of all the customer service issues prominently displayed on Hostway's corporate Twitter account page. These communications can create the impression that it's only a matter of time before a customer has serious problems with Hostway's services.

Now, I'm certainly not saying that Hostway should run and hide from its problems. Not at all. I have always been a believer in honest, truthful communications that reflect the true customer experience (appropriate expectation setting is critical to achieving customer satisfaction) and I do believe it is reasonable and can even be a good idea to intelligently address areas where improvement is needed (although not one customer at a time, stated publicly). However, no one is going to be impressed by Hostway constantly tweeting promises about how they are going to fix this or that individual customer's problems with their services -- especially when a customer is likely to be tweeting after unsuccessfully trying to use the company's regular channels to resolve these issues. Hostway's tweets aren't wise corporate communications and they certainly doesn't build trust with the public. Even more, it can come off with all of the sincerity of an abusive spouse pleading, "Come back to me, honey. I promise I'll never do that again." An promise to fix something at a future date (AKA an unfulfilled promise) is really not going to impress anyone, no matter how clever you think you are at spinning it. That's not a serious social media strategy or tactic. It's more of a suicide mission.

Instead, Hostway should be focusing their energy on working one on one, direct messaging with the people tweeting and posting about their problems and poor experiences with their company and seriously get to work at fixing the underlying problems that resulted in its customers posts. Hostway shouldn't be talking about what their going to do -- they should do it and work at making their customers extremely satisfied. Giving dissatisfied customers a multitude of public promises to fix a multitude of service problems doesn't benefit customers or Hostway. Instead, if Hostway focuses on satisfying these very vocal customers -- and works diligently at fixing the underlying problems that caused their dissatisfaction in the first place so that other customers will avoid the same experience -- some of these very vocal, dissatisfied customers are likely to tweet about their positive experience with Hostway-- which is far more valuable than Hostway's own tweets could ever be. At that point, it would make sense for Hostway to publicly address those customers using Twitter, as those can be considered testimonials.

So, what should Hostway be tweeting about?

Improvements -- with specific attention given to measurable or quantitative improvements in areas that matter to customers and prospects. Areas like server uptime, speed of issue resolution, customer satisfaction in the form of survey results, infrastructure improvements and any staff additions...along with customer testimonials that speak to improvement or reflect high quality. All of this should be real, honest and consistent with the customer experience, otherwise customer dissatisfaction can be expected (a brand needs to walk the walk before it can talk the talk -- the customer experience always trumps promotional messaging, so it's wise to be honest). Largely, Hostway should use hard, tangible results that speak to the quality of its services and favorable customer satisfaction ratings and feedback (that reflect the average customer's experience) where possible and use highly credible third-party sources/ratings on the areas customers care about most -- such as server reliability, new account setup and problem resolution.

There's plenty this company can do to make people feel more confident about using them, even with a history of missteps. However, turning a corporate Twitter account into customer service triage creates the appearance that the company lacks a competent social media strategy or a crisis management plan. It's a lot like someone starting a first date by providing a detailed list of reasons why every former relationship ended in failure. I wouldn't recommend calling in that order for wedding invitations just yet.

Marketing 1.0 Skill Sets Are Not Sufficient in a Web 2.0 World

The phrase Web 2.0 has become popular lately. If you’re not familiar with the term (and like a lot of internet-related terms, its definition is not completely agreed upon), it describes the web’s second generation, which has more community applications, such as social networking sites, wikis, message boards, blogs, etc.

Web 2.0 means that users have a voice and increased expectations for commercial websites and communications with brands online have increased. It also means that online marketing has become incredibly more complex than the days when you could get by with throwing up your brochures and a contact us page and wait to see what happened. There are significantly greater opportunities for business as well as significantly greater complexity for those who manage online marketing. Of course, this means that the skill sets necessary to effectively manage web 2.0 must similarly evolve.

However, historically, companies have staffed their internet marketing department with personnel that lacks marketing experience, when, in fact, internet marketing is easily the most complex marketing channel to manage today. Very candidly, again and again, I’ve seen and learned from peers with similar experience that the reason for inadequate skill sets in the online marketing department is often rooted in senior marketing executives not being comfortable or familiar with online marketing. Consequently, they often view online marketing as an area to hire managers with strong technology skills, not necessarily strong marketing skills. My twenty two years of marketing and advertising and twelve years of managing online marketing tell me that companies should be looking for managers with very strong marketing and communications skills who are technology savvy. So, what is the result of online marketing departments staffed with inexperienced marketers? Check recent studies on marketing effectiveness, integration in the marketing mix and ability for online marketing to measure effectiveness from the CMO Council, Jupiter and others from the past several years. Although online marketing departments can provide a lot of web operational metrics, they rarely provide measures that are meaningful to the business. (Hint to CMOs: If you’re staff is providing you with low level web operational measures such as visitors, click-throughs and page views, you have a problem – you should be seeing measures meaning to the business objectives and ROI. Additional deficiencies include areas such as marketing mix integration, planning, setting quantitative objectives, properly testing, effectively leveraging media vehicles, etc. -- the list goes on.)

Web 2.0 not only means that marketing and metrics experience is even more critical than in the past, it also means that in-depth experience with communications is vital. Web 2.0 means that your targets have a voice – whether it’s on your turf (AKA website) or somewhere else. Which means that online marketing staff should be managing communications that are two way in nature. Think message board, blogs – it doesn’t matter if your company has launched one of these vehicles or if your targets use them somewhere else; if you’re not at least monitoring these vehicles and leveraging the information in your marketing -- plain and simple -- you’re not properly managing your brand.

All of this makes internet marketing incredibly more complex than it was a decade ago. It is no longer about throwing up brochures and watching what happens. I’m not even persuaded it is fair to call that interactive marketing, when that is about as interactive as someone reading a newspaper or watching a television show on their couch -- that's observing. Today’s web enables significantly greater interactivity. Internet users can rate things, provide their opinion to the community or brand, ask for help or give help to others, share their experiences with a brand – there are almost endless possibilities. However, companies still often manage this area with skills sets that fit more with Web 1.0.

I’ve put together a list of some of the skill sets necessary to manage online marketing in today’s environment:

- Advanced communications skills.
Merely understanding and communicating the value proposition isn’t sufficient. The web isn’t like one-way communications sent out to the public such as advertising or press releases, online marketers must be fluent in two-way communications with the public and know how to deal effectively with harsh critics. This is probably the most difficult skill set to expect from candidates, as this area is so new. Consequently, strong corporate communications experience is imperative.

- Strong knowledge of branding and a solid understanding of design, usability and user experience.
Visitors to your website, recipients of your emails, readers of your corporate blogs are all experiencing your brand. Your website being hard to use and forms not working might represent that your company is not customer-focused and concerned with ease of use in your products to her.
- Strong knowledge of other elements of the marketing mix.
Great online marketing rarely exists in a silo. It is integrated into everything else your company is doing, from PR to word of mouth marketing to traditional advertising to packaging to support. In order to be integrated, great online marketing requires integrated planning and, ideally (but rarely, in practice), integrated metrics. This means that online marketing managers must have a solid understanding of how these other elements work in order to best integrate.

- Strong marketing, segmentation and targeting skills.
Effective online marketing requires a strong foundation in marketing and direct marketing fundamentals (yes, I believe a foundation in direct marketing is very beneficial for online marketing, even if you're not doing direct selling), segmenting audiences and effectively targeting messages.

- Strong understanding of technology/information technology.
Managing online marketing requires a strong knowledge and comfort with technology to understand how things work and what is possible. It means working closely with the IT department, programmers, coders, designers, illustrators, analysts, etc. Even more, because internet technologies and usage is regularly evolving, it requires a manager to regularly stay up on technology. However, the technical aspect of managing online marketing shouldn’t define the online marketing position, marketing skills should.

- Strong analytical/data skills.
Online marketing, even for brands that do not sell direct (that is, through channel partners), requires constant analysis of data that indicates what users do. Database marketing experience is critical.

- Strong knowledge and experience with research and marketing testing techniques.
I’ve often thought that a good place to find great online marketers is from the direct mail marketing world, as these marketers are often experts with testing, complex metrics and database marketing. Doing online marketing campaigns at a best practice level requires testing and an effective online marketing manager must have a strong knowledge of testing techniques, and research in general to know when to conduct research and how to leverage the information learned from research.

Managing online marketing well requires a strong grasp of internet technologies, but it requires an even stronger grasp of marketing management. Perhaps CMOs are only beginning to realize this.