Search results matching tag 'habitat'

Media140: personality and social media – do you need one?

255762 — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:28:00 GMT

The panel I chaired at Media140 in London felt like it could have run and run (it almost did) as the question as to whether "brands need a social media personality to engage consumers" or not sits at the heart of what a lot of companies are trying to do on Twitter.

If you get this wrong you fall flat and fail. Drew Benvie, managing director of 33 Digital (@drewb), said that getting that personality right was incredibly tricky, which is why there is so much "fake and fail" out there. He said that it comes down to how you use that personality and that it should come from both the brand and its people".

Part of my question was also can you in that personality mix the personal and professional -- can you give customer feedback in one breath and holiday plans in the next?

We were lucky to have Richard Baker at Virgin Trains as he does mix it the personal and professional, helping people with Virgin enquiries when they ask, but also dropping in other comments as well.

He'd told me previously that in the context of social media his emphasis was "social" and that "without a personality you can't have a conversation and without a conversation you can't have a relationship".

When he is dropping in personal or non Virgin Train related comments he is having that conversation and inviting people to respond. Maybe as a result of that, he said that people were less likely to have a go at him than the VirginTrains Twitter account.

Will Mcinnes, MD of NixonMcinnes (@willmcinnes), made a strong point about addressing the root of your brand in order to work out what is right and what is going to work or not. You can see the brands out there that have not done this, not been rigorous in examining their brand roots, as those are the ones failing. It isn't enough with Twitter and social media in general to simply launch on the world in the way you might with a single piece of marketing.

Candace Kuss, director of planning at Hill & Knowlton (@CandaceKuss), addressed this when she said that social media "it isn't just marketing and isn't just customer service" and that is what makes it so tricky. It's because of this that big companies do not always win out because they make basic mistakes.

What's been fascinating about Twitter in part is how and social media has allowed companies when they get it right to punch above their weight. This has helped brands in the US such as Southwest Air outplay the likes of the bigger and better known likes of JetBlue and Virgin America.

Several of the panellists made the point about how screwing up in social media means screwing up loudly and publicly as both Bestbuy and Habitat have found out.

Best Buy's chief marketing officer, Barry Judge, perfectly exemplified this when he got into a spat on Twitter with blogger Doug Meacham in an incident that tore across the blogosphere and Twitter. Likewise in the UK with Habitat and its intern which was mentioned throughout Media140. It only takes one time and then you’re a case study in bad practice.

Habitat did do something right, however, on its return to Twitter: it did listen. Marketing Week's Ruth Mortimer (@MarketingWeekEd) spoke about the importance of brands listening and that the voice on Twitter can not simply be about pumping stuff out.

Although countering Will Mcinnes felt quite strongly that when brands do respond listening isn't always enough.

It is a good point, brands do have to act, but increasingly I wonder if in this always on world of social media expectations are raised too high when you have such instant access? As with instant access comes the desire for instant response and resolution. Ruth Mortimer commented here that it highlighted the need to closely manage expectations.

Richard Baker (@richard_baker) said that he tries to respond and do what he can, but clearly that only goes so far. He can't fix broken trains, but he can keep customers posted. Listening might not always be enough from a customer perspective, but the importance of it can not be underscored enough.

This addressed my point as well as to whether you have a real person and a human face, such as Richard's, or you can as easily have a cute marsupial as your voice on Twitter? As long as there is understanding and the brand is listening it seems okay to have a meerkat in the case of Comparethemarket.com or the duck in Aflac's case in the US (both are social media successes stories). The Barry Judge/BestBuy example illustrates clearly enough that people as well as cute little creatures can get it wrong.

Towards the end of the panel we moved on to discuss another potentially tricky issue relating to brands and personality in social media: who owns the voice?

Candace Kuss mentioned Scott Monty the head of social media at Ford. He has built a major Twitter presence (32,000 plus followers). What he is not is Scott@Ford. Sure, Ford has other Twitter accounts, but none have become as well know as Scott Monty who is a social media brand of his own.

When Monty leaves that brand and personality he has built up goes with him and could be a major benefit to his next employer. Candace suggested that she would advise brands to go down the route that others have done (such as Dell with @Dell et cetera) where there is an association between the individual person tweeting and the company they represent.

The same is true for Richard Baker who readily admitted he had given the issue some thought of where he and his followers might end up next. Partly to address that Richard has set up @VirginTrains, but it is an account that has far fewer followers than he does personally…

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More on Media140 on BR - Chris Quigley of Rubber Republic - Twitter is like word of mouth on crack, the Peperami Animal and other tales from Media140

Twitter what should brands be doing on it?

2646379 — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 12:46:52 GMT

Habitat made its return to the world of Twitter last week and asked the Twitter community for ideas on what it should be doing? What are good examples of brands using Twitter and what should they be doing?

From KFC to Habitat in the Twitterverse

255762 — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:10:00 GMT

The FT has a quick look at how KFC scored on Twitter and the pros-and cons of promotions.

Americans and their chicken, I will never get that, but KFC knocked it out of the park on Twitter earlier this year (with a few pitfalls) along the way. The fast food chain had agreed a deal with Oprah Winfrey to unveil the company's move into grilled chicken (as part of its healthy push) with details of a voucher on her website for a free meal. That's a lifetime's supply for the queen of TV.

Once Opera gave the word that there was free chicken on offer that's when it went retweet crazy on Twitter. As with other recent promotions such as Moonfruit's recent Mac Book Pro giveaway, which backfired (although they gave 11 away), and Lenovo's giveaway earlier this year, it proved once again that people on Twitter and everywhere like free stuff.

What they don't like, however, is spam. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone warned earlier this month that companies should not use the the micro blogging service "for purely promotional purposes". That's kind of what Moonfruit did and it was ejected from the trending topics list forthwith for breaking that emerging rule.

Stone told PRWeek recently that that corporations must be wary of setting up an account for the sole purpose of pushing out information. "If it is just promotion after promotion - anything that gets toward the realms of seeming like spam - that is a no-no," said Stone. "Make sure people are following your account for the right reasons. If it's done in a spammy way, it's not going to last very long."

Done well these promotions all trend very high (KFC hit the top spot) on Twitter and provide a substantial hit, but the proviso is that you shouldn't be surprised by this and you must be ready – otherwise why do it?

KFC was somewhat taken aback by the response - it shouldn't have been. KFC's website crashed and its restaurants were overwhelmed by demand. Apparently they could not grill it fast enough.

More in the FT piece that also gives a mention to Habitat and its disastrous foray into the Twitterverse with its Iranian election campaign: "#MOUSAVI Join the database for free to win a £1,000 gift card".

A terrible idea handed to an intern to do. Remember kids this stuff is too important for that. It's broadcast. Still on the plus side, it gave us much to talk about and @DarenBBC's search for the #habitatintern continues. Will he find the him? Would you own up? Hell no. Who wants "creator of PR disaster for retail chain" on their CV.

So far the bonafide PR disaster has kept Habitat off of Twitter. What it needs to do now is comeback with a genuinely good Twitter promotion/campaign, which will reverse its earlier loss and also demonstrate how quickly fortunes can change in social media.

You really are only as good as your last tweet as this stuff can move so quickly. It might only be 140 characters, but you do, as the FT headline says, have to be careful what you tweet.

More in the FT – "It pays to think before you tweet".

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Habitat’s Tehran branch – how not to use Twitter

2419367 — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:30:00 GMT

I've been watching the way that the situation in Iran has been unfolding on Twitter with a mixture of surprise and confusion for some time now.

Yes I can see the huge importance of getting first hand reports out of the country and the vital role that new media has played in the debate - although I'm not sure I agree whole heartedly with Gordon Brown's comments that as a result, “you cannot have Rwanda again”.

What has most surprised me most though is the string of messages that started appearing over a week ago asking tweeters to turn their avatar green to show support for the people of Iran. Is this really helping? Why would I do this? What’s more, once I have turned my avatar green, do I keep it have to keep it green forever?

As a result of all this activity, #Iran and #iranelection have been top trending topics for the last week or so. Enter Habitat…

As the news broke that Habitat had started adding inappropriate hashtags to its sales offers, it started to become clear that we were now being presented with a great case study on how not to use Twitter.

The story of the intern who added inappropriate hashtags to Habitat offers (and has since been fired) will no doubt be told again and again over the coming months. But it also helps to highlight another Twitter issue that emerged earlier this week - namely that the micro-blogging site is proving to be very effective at sending traffic to media websites, but not online retailers.

This is clearly a challenge for all online retailers. As the new Woolworths online only store launches today it’ll be interesting to see whether they can make Twitter work for them. Just stick to picknmix hashtags – and steer clear of politics.

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Habitat's moment of Twitter madness

2545541 — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:27:00 GMT

Over the weekend, Tiphereth Gloria's blog (the excellent 'Digital Tip') over in Australia alerted me to an incidence of Twitter madness from UK furniture retailer Habitat. The story has now extended to mainstream news outlets picking it up, for example see this piece by Sky's Twitter correspondent Ruth Bartlett.

In a nutshell, Habitat didn't just blast out price lists and special offers via its Twitter feed. That would have been fairly harmless, if pointless, as with Twitter you can of course decide to unfollow anyone who doesn't take your fancy. Instead, they forced themselves into popular conversations by the use of hash tags - the way in which popular trends and subjects on Twitter are grouped. This included things like #iPhone, which meant that if you were searching Twitter for info about Apple's smartphone you would have come across Habitat's posts.

Spammers and get rich quick merchants use this method of getting attention through hash tags all the time. But it's not what you'd expect from a premium brand.

However the worst thing was that whoever Habitat outsourced its feed to also used hash tags to do with the Iranian elections, a crisis which has of course cost lives. Above there is an example where they used #Mousavi (after the Iranian opposition leader) to call for people to join their database. The reaction from the Twitter community was pretty much as you'd expect, below is a small selection.

Habitat has now admitted its mistake, though in fairly mild terms and in brand speak. It's also scrubbed its twitter feed clean, though the results live on thanks to the joys of search.

My guess, for what it's worth, is that the Habitat press office had nothing to do with this directly. Communications professionals would (hopefully!) not think it a good idea to spam Iran election feeds with info about flat packed furniture. I could be wrong of course but instead I assume that they outsourced this job to someone - and someone who knew something about Twitter, as a complete novice wouldn't be clued up on hash tags. And that the brief read 'get us X,000 followers fast!' (or words to that effect.)

If so, perhaps it's a case for checking out the credentials and online footprint of whatever social media "expert" you bring on a little more closely?

Update (25 June) - Habitat has published an apology and put it down to the fact that they turned their feed over to an over enthusiastic Intern.