Are your internal communications keeping up with the times? BRANDEMiX can help!

Gartner Highlights Four Ways in Which Enterprises Are Using Twitter

By 2011, Enterprise Microblogging Will Be a Standard Feature on 80 Percent of Social Software Platforms

As businesses struggle to consider the uses of microblogging platforms such as Twitter in the workplace, Gartner, Inc. has highlighted the four ways in which organizations are using Twitter.

"Despite the fact that Twitter is primarily aimed at individual users in the consumer market, many of those individuals work for companies and 'tweet' about business issues, leading businesses to explore how they could best use it," said Jeffrey Mann, research vice president at Gartner.

"In general, Twitter usage by employees should be covered by existing Web participation guidelines," Mr. Mann said. "As Twitter is a public forum, employees should understand the limits of what is acceptable and desirable. It is good practice to remind employees that the policies already in place apply to this new communication forum, as well. If organizations have not defined a public Web participation policy, they should do so as quickly as possible."

Twitter allows users to post short, 140 character updates, on what they are doing right now. Users distribute quick thoughts, news and ideas, and this broadcast element of Twitter has led this type of service to be called microblogging, as each individual message (called a "tweet") can be considered a very small blog post. Users select other "Twitterers" to follow or receive their messages in close to real time.

Gartner analysts predict that by 2011, enterprise microblogging will be a standard feature of 80 percent of social software platforms on the market. While other consumer microblogging platforms exist (such as Plurk, Jaiku, and Identi.ca), Twitter is the most popular.

Twitter is primarily aimed at individuals, so it is not imperative for every corporation to be actively participating at an official level. However, the popular impact of microblogging is leading many companies to explore how they could use it. In addition to the individual use of Twitter, Gartner has identified four different ways in which companies are making use of the Twitter application: direct, indirect, internal, and signaling.

Direct — The company uses Twitter as a marketing or public relations channel
Many companies have established Twitter identities as part of their corporate communications strategies, much like corporate blogs. They Tweet about corporate accomplishments, distributing links to press releases or promotional Web sites, and respond to other Twitterers' comments about the brand. Gartner maintains that this approach should be used with caution because uninteresting or self-serving Tweets could hinder the brand image as much as it could help. Responding to comments can be particularly risky, as the anonymous nature of Twitter can easily descend into a negative spiral. Gartner recommends that at a minimum, companies should register Twitter IDs for their major brand names to prevent others claiming them and using them inappropriately.

Indirect — The company's employees use Twitter to enhance and extend their personal reputations, thereby enhancing the company's reputation
Good Twitterers enhance their personal reputation by saying clever, interesting things, attracting many followers who go on to read their blogs. As people enhance their personal brands, some of this inevitably rubs off on their employers. Twitter provides a way of raising the profile of both individuals and the organizations they work for, which elevates these companies that want to be seen to employ influential leaders.

Internal — Employees use the platform to communicate about what they are doing, projects they are working on and ideas that occur to them
In most cases, Gartner does not recommend using Twitter or any other consumer microblogging service in this way, because there is no guarantee of security. It is crucial that employees understand the limitations of the platform and never discuss confidential matters, because as a seemingly innocuous Tweet about going to see a particular client can tip off a competitor. Other providers, such as Yammer and Present.ly, provide Twitter-like functions targeted at enterprise microblogging with more security and corporate control.

Inbound Signaling
Twitter streams provide a rich source of information about what customers, competitors and others are saying about a company. Search tools like search.twitter.com or the twhirl application can scan for references to particular company or product names. Savvy companies use these signals to get early warnings of problems and collect feedback about product issues and new product ideas.

Labels: BRANDEMiX, internal communications, twitter

Last week's blog showed the power of Social Media to shape an advertising campaign. Listening to your audience is great, but making decisions based on audience reactions may be harder than you thought. This week's AdAge article shows why.

J&J Caved to a Vocal Flash Mob, but Did It Hurt Its Relationship With a Larger Audience?

By Jack Neff

Published: November 24, 2008

BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) -- At first glance, it looks like Johnson & Johnson's Motrin was chastened by the power of social media when it yanked a Motrin ad campaign pilloried by mommy bloggers on YouTube and Twitter.
But as it turns out, J&J might have been a tad hasty in pulling down its ad. In doing so, it bowed to a vocal flash mob that represents a tiny fraction of moms, and Twitter, which itself attracts about 0.15% of the world's internet users each day, according to Alexa -- by the most generous possible estimate based on that data, about 1.1 million people in the U.S. And despite a storm of media attention, the ad -- together with a YouTube video put together by a mommy blogger on the controversy -- received less exposure than one 30-second spot on a cable news network.

On the one hand, so-called Motrin-gate proves the power of social media for marketers. On the other, it proves how quickly marketers can be forced to buckle to a relatively small but vocal minority of people who can create "flash floods," as a Toronto Globe and Mail columnist described them, in e-mail boxes, Twitter queues or Google searches that get picked up and spread by mass media. Indeed, the flood that felled the ad started and ended in three days.

Quiet before storm
It all started with an ad that generated zero online buzz during its first 45 days online at Motrin.com. Created by Taxi, New York, it featured a voice-over of a mom who carries her baby in a sling because it's good for her kid and she sees it as "a fashion statement" and validation of her as "an official mom." Alexa data suggests the Motrin ad was seen by as many as 15,000 people daily at its peak after it went up Sept. 30.

No one complained much, it would appear, until Nov. 15, when Barb Lattin of Colorado noticed a mention of the ad on a babywearing section of a Yahoo Group for devotees of "attachment parenting" and posted it on the blog related to her business, Perfectly Natural Photography.

Another Colorado-based blogger, Amy Gates of CrunchyDomesticGoddess.com, picked up on that and posted the first tweet on the subject just under five hours later. By the following Sunday, the Motrin ad controversy was generating as many as 300 tweets an hour, according to TrendRR.com. That helped move it to the top of Twitter's "trending topics" list, which in turn helped the original bloggers pitch the story to conventional news outlets.

Indeed, the person who hijacked Motrin's brand on Twitter and was among contributors to the criticism appeared to be aware as of Sunday night Nov. 16 of impending coverage by the likes of The New York Times (which covered the fracas on a blog), The Wall Street Journal, AP and Reuters. Later in the week, the person behind the Motrin handle tweeted that he had offered Kathy Widmer, VP-marketing for Motrin and other over-the-counter drugs at J&J's McNeil Consumer Healthcare, to turn over the account with "no strings" but had received no response. In response to a Twitter query, the Motrin account owner gave an e-mail address that appeared to point to a male Ruby on Rails programmer from Austin, Texas, but that person could not be reached to confirm that by deadline.

Subsequent coverage came from USA Today, the Washington Post and Chicago Tribune, too.

Minimal impact
Yet, despite all the fuss, not that many people ultimately paid attention. The two YouTube posts of the actual ad in question (which was removed from Motrin.com) drew a combined 216,000 views through Nov. 21. A YouTube video by mommy blogger and online retailer Katja Presnal piecing together the Motrin protest tweets got 63,556 views.

Even without subtracting duplicate views by the same people, which are impossible to know, that amounts to less exposure than running a single 30-second ad on a cable news network -- something even Motrin's relatively sparse $2 million media outlay in the first half of 2008 could easily outstrip.

What's more, data from Motrin.com's Alexa graph suggest about as many people saw the ad there without turning to social media in outrage -- averaging around 5,000 daily before the controversy broke -- as saw it during the week after it broke. And comments on the YouTube posts after the initial controversy appeared to run mostly positive to neutral.

In fact, most online buzz about Motrin-gate was either positive or neutral in tone toward J&J and the ads, according to analyses by Tom Martin, president of Zehnder Communications, New Orleans, and Lexalytics.

Meanwhile, the core group behind the Twitter storm numbered in the low four figures. A Google search on Monday indicated around 4,000 tweets on Twitter, and analyses by Mr. Martin using Radian6 data and by Lexalytics suggested around 1,500 tweets involving around 1,000 individuals using the #motrinmoms hash tag.

"If Motrin's brand managers were not just listening to the market, but accurately measuring it too, they might not have been so quick to panic and pull the ad," Lexalytics said in a blog post. Its analysis found that even among those using the #motrinmoms hash tag on Twitter, only about 35% of the tweets were negative, with the rest neutral or positive toward the ad.

Mr. Martin suggested in his blog that J&J should have kept the campaign in place, apologized to critics in whatever medium they had used to complain, and used the opportunity to engage in dialogue. In a second posting on Motrin.com Nov. 20, Ms. Widmer suggested she intends to do the last part, anyway.

Was it worth it?
Meanwhile, even some mommy bloggers saw signs the whole episode had hurt their community more than helped it. "Right or wrong, the rest of the web is now rolling its eyes, again, at our community," Erin Kotecki Vest said on Nov. 17 at QueenofSpainBlog.com. "I'll be honest, they are right. What happened this weekend went from smart, powerful activism to Palin-rally lynch mob."

Corporate marketers already knew about the power of mommy bloggers, she said. "They are buying ads, they are engaging women online. They are sponsoring trips, sending you even MORE free stuff. They are paying for YOU to consult for them. ... You have their attention. You have the power."

Ultimately, Ms. Presnal said she sympathizes with J&J's plight after having received at least two e-mails from Ms. Widmer last week. Reading from one, she noted that J&J had worked with focus groups of moms in developing the campaign.

"We listened extensively to moms, the insights about their lives, and how their pain impacts them," Ms. Presnal said, reading from Ms. Widmer's e-mail. She continued from the e-mail: "I think where this went wrong was the creative expression we used. ... The tone was intended to be real and lighthearted, but it came off as irreverent. ... We did conduct focus groups with moms. But truthfully they probably weren't extensive enough to uncover this."

"I think they truly believed they were doing a good job," Mr. Presnal said, but believes the research probably didn't include enough baby-wearing moms.

Labels: twitter

How Twittering Critics Brought Down 'Motrin Mom' Campaign,
Forcing J&J to Pull Ad, Issue Apology

Published: November 17, 2008

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Johnson & Johnson did manage to offend some mothers with an online and print campaign for Motrin that implied moms carry their babies as fashion accessories. But was it a genuine groundswell that felled the effort -- or an alliance of the few, empowered by microblogging service Twitter.

The Motrin ad was an attempt to connect with moms through the common experience (and pain) of carrying a child.

Two days after a new ad push for Motrin, from the New York office of independent shop Taxi, triggered an online backlash, J&J's McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit is pulling the campaign and begging a vocal mommy-blogging nation for forgiveness.

The ad, which was featured on Motrin's website as well as several magazines, was an attempt to connect with moms through the common experience (and pain) of carrying a child. But the implication felt by some of the campaign's more vocal critics was that moms wear their babies as a fashion accessory, or because it "totally makes me look like an official mom."

"Supposedly it's a real bonding experience," the ad said, "but what about me?"

The campaign has been online since Sept. 30 and has been circulating in several magazines for weeks, but it finally caught the attention -- and ire -- of some influential bloggers Friday night before blowing up into a full-fledged cause celebre on Twitter over the weekend.

The ultimate demise of the campaign is either an example of how quickly a groundswell of opinion can be galvanized with social media, or how much power it can give a few vocal tastemakers with outsized weight over online discourse.

J&J's McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit is pulling the campaign and begging a vocal mommy-blogging nation for forgiveness.

The beginning of the end for the Motrin push probably came Friday night, when Los Angeles blogger Jessica Gottlieb said she was tipped off to the ads and started expressing her outrage over the campaign on Twitter, where she has 1,018 followers.

"I am a satirist, I get humor, I talk about my vagina," said Ms. Gottlieb, who works as a freelance writer for National Lampoon and writes for SV Moms Blog and Celsias. "I'm just insulted. I'm not an activist. I don't have an agenda, but I do have children."

On Saturday, Katja Presnal (4,221 Twitter followers), a New York blogger and proprietor of online children's clothing store Simbaco, collected "tweets" from offended moms and edited them into a nine-minute video on YouTube titled "Motrin Ad Makes Moms Mad," which had been viewed 21,000 times as of today.

The spread of 'Motrin moms'
"You don't have to have thousands of followers to start something like this," said Mr. Armano, who also blogs for AdAge.com. "Many people with small networks have just as much influence of a few people with large networks."

Whatever it was, their impact was felt by J&J last night. McNeil Consumer Healthcare took down Motrin.com, and VP-Marketing Kathy Widmer had started apologizing to bloggers via e-mail.

Amy Gates, who runs the blog Crunchy Domestic Goddess, posted a personal note from Ms. Widmer on her site yesterday. "We certainly did not mean to offend moms through our advertising. Instead, we had intended to demonstrate genuine sympathy and appreciation for all that parents do for their babies," Ms. Widmer wrote in the note.

When the Motrin site was restored today, the ad was replaced by a message from Ms. Widmer: "We have heard you."

"On behalf of McNeil Consumer Healthcare and all of us who work on the Motrin brand, please accept our sincere apology," she wrote. "We are in the process of removing this ad from all media. It will, unfortunately, take a bit of time to remove it from our magazine advertising, as it is on newsstands and in distribution."

"[It was] amazing to have that happen over 48 hours, on a weekend in the blogosphere," she said. "People are now spreading around the apology; it's such an immediate time-frame."

"We now have indisputable proof that online marketing, YouTube and Twitter and all that it encompasses is meaningful and has arrived," said Gene Grabowsk, chair of the crisis and litigation practice at Levick Strategic Communications. "We are seeing real consequences to a mistake. If [social networks] didn't matter, you wouldn't see this type of reaction from J&J or consumers."

Just a note: yes, I'm still twittering and boring even myself. My twitters are also posted to my facebook feed, boring all my friends. And, though I have followers, I can't imagine why. Maybe I should start ranting about advertising.

Labels: BRANDEMiX, twitter