Primark has stopped buying from three suppliers it found to be using child labour to embroider clothes it had sold in its stores. It was tipped off about child labour being used for its garments by BBC TV's Panorama programme.
What's interesting about this episode is how complaints about Primark's practices have been building on Facebook. Take a look at the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/s.php?q=Primark+child+labour&init=q
What this underlines is that people are going to use social media tools to talk about issues without referring to companies themselves. More Facebook and social media network-driven consumer campaigns are bound to happen, as people use these tools to organise themselves. Like they did with HSBC on Facebook.
Was Primark monitoring social media networks? Probably not. It was probably another one of these major companies who don't let their communications people look on the web and instead have a firewall blocking them! Does Primark have a social media strategy? Probably not. Like a lot of companies it probably relies upon the traditional broadcast method, sending out press releases which are not relevant. The risk for companies like Primark is that they fail to see how consumers are talking about their brands on social media networks which can, as they have been discovered, be quite different to the committee-approved press releases and messages they pump out from their offices.
www.itsopen.co.uk
