Social media: A powerful weapon for business
This week I’ve been doing some research about some case study about the social medias and the risk that come with them. It seems that business model have been change drastically and social medias are the keys to many competing business. There are many reason for people to start using social media for their business. I’ll show you some case study that I found to support my opinion.
Ben and Jerry’s has been engaging with their customer through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google+ and have a large fan base. They announce new flavor with tasty picture and receive 23,000 reply average per post. One of their campaign is @BenJerryTruck(s) which you can use twitter to chat with them and they receive information about where they should go from their fans. This is a great advertisement from Ben and Jerry’s
Nike has a campaign that let user install device that can measure the distance that they ran. This distance will be use as money to bid in an auction for Nike products. This is greatly reinforce Nike brand. It make more people want to buy Nike to participate in this campaign.
Jay-Z and Bing has a campaign to make users to stop using Google for 30 days. Jay-Z write a book name Decode which will be given a clue by Twitter, Facebook, and Bing to search for this book pages, one page at a time. The user will be participating using Bing not Google. After this event, Bing got 11% more user. Decode was on bestseller list for 19 weeks.
There is an event that two employees from domino recorded a prank of themselves do unappropriated thing with pizza and post it on YouTube. Domino don’t want to draw attention so they didn’t reply to any sources for a week. This destroy their reputation and their stock price drop 10%. They could have lessen the damage by engaging with the social media so people will understand and quickly remove the video which is the source if this damage.
Social media is a powerful weapon which can be used to strengthen your brand, engaging with your customer, and advertise your products. However, you need to be careful of the social medias which could also destroy you with the same power. The social medias need to be moderate to minimize your risk of having people destroying your brand in any way. To minimize the risk of using social media we need to educate our employees of the social medias policies. They need to know what they could do with the social media and what they must not do.
Images sources from:
My Blog 2.0 
It’s interesting with Ben & Jerry how they’re more than just an ice cream – they have the best ice cream ever (obviously), however they have a massive fan base which is quite rare when it comes to products.
I think Ben and Jerry’s have done a good job at social medias. Everyone love Ben and Jerry’s and everyone love what they present in their social medias.
Cheers,
Prapat W.
Hi Paprat.
You listed some good examples of E2.0 usage. I like the negative example from Dominos :), That is a good case to explore the risk behind E2.0.
Cheers,
In this case, Domino didn’t know how to deal with a case like this and let the time pass for too long to fix it. This is the risk of not involve with social medias and moderate your brand on web2.0.
Cheers,
Prapat W.
Hey!
Never heard of this Domino’s pizza flop before, a really good exemple on how employees can damage the reputation of their company’s brand through the misuse of social media.
About Ben&Jerry’s, they also created a website where customers could create their ice cream flavour, choosing from the base to the toppings, spices and syrup twirl. I think it was a really good way to get direct information about their customers tastes and craves while making them involved in the product development process in a funny way. I couldn’t find it anymore so I’m not sure that they are still doing it.
Nice reading you 😉
Ben and Jerry’s is not a product in my home country Thailand so I’ve never follow any campaign from them before. I think Ben and Jerry’s is very active with their fan through social medias.
Cheers,
Prapat W.
Hi,
Interesting how Bing increased the number of users especially by telling people to stop using Google. It is in my opinion, a hard strategy to pull off but was worth it. Regarding the case of Domino pizza, I have seen a few other fast food chain having their reputation destroyed by similar methods.
I think Bing case study is brilliant. I’ve never thought of how I could take down Google before even for just 30 days. Also about the fast food chain, I think many of them have things that we should not have known. They can be thousand of problems at the fast food chain which would disgust the consumers. The fast food chain need to realize that whatever they do everyone will know it through social medias.
Cheers,
Prapat W.
In my opinion, it does not allow only affect fast food chain but almost every business since news travel through the social media like wild fire. It has also become very hard to control and manage if things get out of hand
It really shows how things have shifted from authorised marketing or executive employees representing a company to this new environment where anyone (even the dominos pizza makers) can be part of a company’s image. Your examples are great examples of the risks and benefits of this new world of enterprise 2.0.
That why we need social medias policies for the employees to follow. The employees are parts of the organization so their action in social medias is like part of our brand too.
Prapat W.
Hey,
It is quite impressive that most of fast food companies suffer from the negative contents generated both internally and externally. What I concern is that it’s far more better to prevent than to make up since public is not easy to pleased, even Domino’s tries to clarify the responsibility, customers will only remember about the prank 🙂
Thanks for sharing ur thoughts!
Hey Edie, I agree with you that, it is important to prevent the negative effect to our brand. However, we can do both defending and strengthening our brand with social media together. If we use the social medias regularly, we will get to know about the use of social medias that have a negative effect to our brand as well.
Cheers,
Prapat W.
Hi,
Nice blog. Great examples of different organisations using Enterprise 2.0 technologies. I remember when that Dominos “incident” happened but didn’t realise that Dominos responded to it so poorly and what sort of effect it had on their business. It makes you realise that companies really do need to have a social media presence, if not just for self promotion but for self defence. Because of how heavily social media is used by consumers, a single negative comment can quickly turn into to something much worse, and the organisation under attack needs to mount a defence as quickly as possible.
I agree with you candiceruddle, this is exactly my main point in this post. You really need to have at least a social medias present. It might not help you much with your business growth or may not help your organization to increase productivity but you still establish a good image for the organization. You’ll receive recent news about your brand faster and smoother so you can deal with any problem that arise faster.
Cheers,
Prapat W.
Prapat you know the perfect way to get my attention! Ben & Jerrys and Dominos. My weakness. 23000 replies from each post. Wish I could muster that kind of business strategy! Loved all the various case studies, what kind of inappropriate things with a pizza!! Should I be concerned? Its incredible the shear power that a few seconds of recording can have in this day and age.
Good read thanks again,
Caleb
I think it’s important to know what could happen to our food(pizza) when we ordered them. The power of social medias is very powerful indeed.
Prapat W.
I can widely see the social media in term of its usage within the article, especially on beating the competitive purpose as mentioned in “Jay-Z & Bing vs Google ” part. Many organizations use the social media in several purposes (e.g. campaigns, promotions, products’ selling etc.), but it seems that some of them lacking the awareness of using it. As the result of this, the company’s reputation might be destroyed by either inner or outer groups of people who are unaware about the social media that they get their hands on. Dominos Pizza hat mentioned in this article is another good example about underestimating the power of the social media.
/me said ” You got interesting case studies, Prapat :)”
Domino example is more like neglecting the social medias. They respond to the problem poorly and get the worst result.
Prapat W.
I like your way to explain the enterprise 2.0 impact to organization and company. by providing different sample and case study will let reader more understanding about your topic, and I am agree with you on the social media is powerful and effective.
Thank you Rickson. I think we need to carefully use the social medias for the best result and avoid the risk as much as we can.
Prapat W.
Hi Prapat,
Good post, the domino example reminded me of a similar event recently when someone working at a fast food place stood in a box of salad and uploaded the video to youtube. The fast food company dealt with it quickly however but no matter how quick you react once something goes viral it is impossible to stop it.
– Shaun
Many employees of the fast food chains are only part timers which are mostly don’t have attachment to the work they do. They think posting something funny related to their work is fun. This is also an area that we can explore more about social medias uses in fast food chain and how we can control people in fast food chains.
Cheers,
Prapat W.
I enjoy reading about the successes and failings of companies as they try to move into this new media space, learning from mistakes previous companies have made. They all seem to be developing social media policy’s which, while may vary from company to company, seem to add a protective layer between the customer and the company and in my mind, even though they are protecting both parties, seems to make this transaction a little more disingenuous. Do you feel that the convergence of companies acting within this space to a base guide for social media policies is good to give a foundation or bad because it seemingly kills the creative possibilities of interaction in new media? I’m interested on hearing your opinion.
~origamiJoe
In my opinion, the social media policy is important to control the use of social medias to a certain degree. However, it’s still not perfect as people can make mistake and sometimes they won’t follow the policy. I don’t really think social media policy will limit the creative creation for new interaction in social medias though. As those ideas that not follow the social media policy will come with great risk. You wouldn’t want to use the idea that has a potential to destroy your reputation. You’ll want to play safe. As I’ve said social medias are powerful weapons which will deal a lot of damage to your reputation if you fail.
Cheers,
Prapat W.
It is true that social media is a double-edged sword. In my opinion, I see social media is powerful tool for every organisation which can make great opportunities for them including government sector.
Since I am working as a plan and policy analyst in Ministry of Energy, Thailand (MOEN). I use Facebook to advertise the work of MOEN and to make people understand more about energy situation not only in Thailand but in the world also. I received many good comments from public which MOEN can use them to develop its policy and energy planning. As a result, such plan is more suitable for people’s need.
However, social media is very fast. Once it goes public, it will never come back. So every action in the name of MOEN, I have to be careful and not to make public misunderstand about MOEN.
In conclusion, i agree with you that social media is a very powerful tool but you have to be careful about action on it since it can turn out very negative than positive.
Have you heard of social media policy? It is something that will act as a guideline when you use social medias. Not only it benefits you but your organization too. Maybe you need to consider creating one to be a standard for MOEN organization to use. Your colleagues, your superiors, and people around the world will know how to engage MOEN social media.
Cheers,
Prapat W.
Hi Paprat, It is a great post.
As you mentioned, to minimize the risk of using social media the company has to educate employees. Moreover, the company could apply a new strategy which is “web filtering” and that will make the employee limited while using the internet.
Web filtering might also be a good way to help many organizations in dealing with their employees using internet for personal uses in work time. Personally I don’t like to limit everything that people can do because it’ll really stress people out. A quick look in Facebook once in a while can also keep your employees happy and produce more work.
Cheers,
Prapat W.