Category Archives: Social Media

Feb 20 2014
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Business, Digital Strategy, Marketing Strategy, Social Media, Strategy

What´s App Facebook? 4 Questions You Need to Ask to Understand The Acquisition of WhatsApp

Facebook´s acquisition of WhatsApp for about 19 billion (!) is the biggest deal ever for venture-capital-backed startup. As far as the money goes, it is naturally mind-boggling amount of cash but strategically I am trying to get my head around this. Four big questions came to my mind, when analyzing the acquisition:

1. What kind of ecosystem Facebook is building?
Currently Facebook is owner of three really strong (and separate) digital platforms: Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Despite launching the ad units in Instagram, the photo platform has been relatively autonomous regarding Facebook. Apparently they will continue similar approach with WhatsApp and even more so as there will be no ads (in foreseeable future) in WhatsApp. See more in question 2 on that matter.
If we compare to Google, who builds their entire product offering under strong Google branding and synergies, Facebook currently resembles more of a venture capitalist and having quite separate and independent entities. Either approach is right or wrong, but at least currently Facebook ecosystem seems quite disjointed compared to the Google one. But maybe they have a bigger plan intact: see question 4.

2. How will Facebook monetize WhatsApp?
On the investor call Facebook mentioned that there would be no ads on WhatsApp and they are mainly concentrating on growth in the near future. Currently WhatsApp is free for one year and then you pay 0.99 for every additional year (and not even in all the markets).  Current business model is not exactly breaking the bank as it has quite limited growth opportunities, but compared to many other social ventures coming from Silicon Valley it is already profitable. From monetization standpoint it is interesting opportunity for Facebook to enter also to the subscription business and test it first with WhatsApp before rolling it to wider.

3. Was it strategically right decision?
Initially buying WhatsApp seemed a rather uninspiring and unsurprising act. More forward-looking would have been buying some emerging mobile instant messaging platform from Asia (Line, KakaoTalk, etc.). Especially as Facebook mentioned that the reach in emerging markets was one of the core reasons for acquiring WhatsApp. Asian mobile instant messaging platforms would have been better fit also to current Facebook monetization strategy as these platforms are currently more open to advertising as well? Cynical view of the strategic importance of the buy was that as the main Facebook platform loses steam the growth and engagement had to be bought to please the investors.

4.  Will there be Facebook Premium in the future?
How much would you pay for your Facebook account?
It might be that the goal of buying Instagram and WhatsApp is eventually to have capabilities to introduce Facebook Premium. This social network would add the best of the Facebook ecosystem and provide value on certain subscription fee. I have been toying around with that idea for a while, but currently it seems more reality than ever before. I have been quite disappointed of the unimaginative monetization strategies Facebook has had (overtly media-focused) and venturing to subscription models without endangering the crown jewel of free Facebook seems lucrative and interesting option.

The reaction from the markets to the acquisition was slightly disappointed and Facebook stock plunged slightly.

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Jan 24 2014
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Advertising, Business, Digital Strategy, Insight, Marketing Strategy, Planning, Social Media, Strategy

How To Approach Your Social Media Strategy in 2014?

Year 2014 will be turbulent for both brands and agencies working with social media channels. Because of the recent IPO´s (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), the previous rebels have started to resemble more established media houses. It is a double-edged sword. Many agencies are not as stressed out as the social media ecosystem is more predictable (and none of the innovation labs is making money anyway). On the other hand, the activities have been and increasingly will be quite dull and unimaginative.

Beginning of the year is the time to think your social media strategy. For majority of the brands, year 2014 should be year of revolution instead of just evolution:

1.Facebook is the channel for reach.
Majority of your social media paid media investments should happen in Facebook to maximize the reach. In terms of sheer amount of users, it is dominant. However, the recent developments have been really worrying for brand (and other) pages as well. Certain pages have seen dips as low as 88% in organic reach. Even Facebook itself is not talking anymore about free organic reach, but instead brand pages as a way to increase the reach of the paid media. This is natural advancement and should not surprise everyone familiar with market economy. So I believe that Facebook will get bigger media share in 2014, but actually less focus in terms of engagement. I would invest more in those terms with Twitter (customer service, real-time marketing) and to visual platforms (content creation).

2.Use Twitter as the channel for real-time and customer service.
I am not saying that every brand should necessarily be in Twitter, but if you want to jump on the real-time marketing bandwagon, Twitter is the place to be. I have a love-hate relationship with Twitter throughout the years, but despite all the shortcomings the service has proven its worth. It does certain things really well (like customer service), and provides more natural ways to engage with audience than Facebook. Here is example of random interaction with Warby Parker, after I shared their innovative annual report:
Warby Parker Tweet

3.Invest heavily on visual social media channels.
Whereas online media money is going to Facebook, I would concentrate majority of the production and engagement investments to visual social platforms. No one has time to read text anymore, unless you are able to condense it to 140 characters or say it in photo.
Online video has been the fastest growing online ad format for couple of years. Naturally the pre-roll is the TVC of the new generation, but creation of good content provides great reach & engagement opportunities for brands. Video is a great tool for customer service as well:

Besides video, the photos are naturally huge and I expect the short-form video content to rise rapidly (Instagram video, Vine). Especially tutorials are naturally fit to for shorter video content (Check: #lowesfixinsix).
Many companies should actually rethink their community manager talent pool. In 2014 if you cannot take great photo or shoot a great video, you should not probably be community manager.  Social media used to be more verbal, but now it is increasingly more visual.

4. Embrace the renaissance of anonymous randomness.
Contrary to what Facebook says, many people want to remain anonymous while online. 6% of all adults on Internet use Reddit. People engage way more on Tumblr blogs nowadays than on Facebook brand pages. One reason is that not all the people want to attach their Internet personality to real-life. In Internet you can be that backpacker hiphop-dude you really are and do not need even remotely to try to sound smart. It actually reminds me of the original promise of MySpace. You did not need to use it with your real name. You could make a site for your cat if you fancied. Anonymity can naturally bring some problems, such as hate-speech, crime and stuff but it also enables refreshing randomness that is currently missing from Facebook. Many people are more interesting talking about things they are interested and not about themselves (assuming they are not completely narcissistic). So do not underestimate the power of “anonymous” social media channels. Maybe Yahoo was on to something when it bought Tumblr.

5.Experiment with the new upcoming channels.
I have written before about how you should approach your social media strategy like investor. The landscape in terms of the hot newcomers changes really rapidly. Global brands should nowadays be more tuned into what is happening on local level. Experimenting with various social media channels goes hand in hand with that. For example if you had done tests with Path, it would be easier to utilize the learnings in Indonesia (which is the third-biggest Path user country). The innovation in social media sphere is also not limited only to Silicon Valley anymore so cutting-edge firms should empower their local teams to experiment with local social media channels as well. For example WeChat is way more advanced than WhatsApp. Competitive advantage can come from everywhere. The trick is to identify it, experiment with it and scale it.

There will interesting year ahead. In 2014 companies need to dramatically update and revamp the social media strategies. Which is great. Whenever there is turmoil and crisis, there is always an opportunity.

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Jan 22 2014
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Advertising, Insight, Planning, Social Media

Sharing is A Selfish Act

Why people share things?

Honestly, sometimes I really do not know. For example this clip below has gotten over 1M views:

Many times, it is easier to say why they are not sharing your content. Often the reason is that your content just sucks. And while it sucks, it does not suck enough to commemorate ironic share (like the video above).

While you may theorize the psychology of sharing until the end of the day, I find it relatively easy. You share either useful or funny content. Being useful is more multi-dimensional, as it might mean that the content is useful to either the sharer or the expected receivers. This is the reason why the world´s most uncreative people share all these creativity links and quotes on Facebook.
Stop it. You are not fooling anyone.
We attribute sharing to our individual image, but it is quite seldom even a slightest reflection of who we really are. When people are anonymous (discussion forums, Reddit, 9GAG, etc.) in Internet the content that is share is completely different. In real social media, what is truly shared is anti-social content. Anonymous comment is much more authentic representation of human spirit than airy-fairy “we-are-the-world”-share from the self-help guy in newsfeed near you.

It is gross misunderstanding that this age of oversharing is increasing openness to our culture. Facebook is just homogenizing what we share and has people showing their polished desired images. My feed is overpopulated with engagement announcements and baby photos. It is not even statistically possible that there is so much mating going on in my network every single day. You feel forced to like and comment those photos, which creates vicious cycle of boring content to my newsfeed. This is the reason I have decided to like every negative status update from now on to show my support to reality and attitude in 2014. Sadly, I have not been able to walk the walk and my own personal status updates are nowadays only about my sport accomplishments. Facebook has become a commodity, which has made it commercially interesting but same time really boring on an individual level.

We said in our book “Digital Fooprint” in 2010, that in digital age everyone is personal brand. Unfortunately we were right and the social media is full of overtly self-conscious personal branders optimizing every like and comment.

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Dec 13 2013
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Business, Digital Strategy, Marketing Strategy, Planning, Social Media

Social Media Trends 2014: The Truth According to Me

Good folks at Kurio Digital Marketing Think Thank asked me (again) and 21 other Finnish digital dudes & dudettes some views of social media trends in 2014.

In many ways the social media scene has matured and the shifts are not as radical as they were few years back. Many of my answers from last year would not be out of place this year (last year trends can be read here). As majority of the readers of my blog cannot read Finnish, I have translated my predictions below. If you can understand Finnish, the report is highly recommended read.

Before going to my answers, it is important to make the distinction between a fad, a trend and a commodity. Every new thing starts out as a fad (i.e. Snapchat is in that phase). Majority just stay as fads (Chatroulette), but certain things evolve to trends (i.e. brands building their Facebook pages few years back). Only very few make their route to become commodities (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube at the moment). Trends do not pay the bills, so usually only when something is commoditized it starts to make safe business sense. In that way you should approach your social media marketing efforts like investor:

70% of investments to commodities (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube)
25% to trends (Taking selfies)
5% to fads (Snapchat, Vine)

This is naturally subject to your risk tolerance and your business majority. If you are start-up with nothing to lose, it might sense to flip it other around. And do not get me wrong, my view is that brands should try to ride the trends and fads more proactively. It is just important to realize their business role (such as learning, gaining the opinion leadership, creating the future competitive advantage). Riding on the fads seldom is the way to reach masses.

So with that caveat my social media trends (with couple of commodities and fads thrown in as well):

 1.Biggest Social Media Trends in 2014: Monetization & Mobile-First
There is two big paradigm shifts which are not really trends, but changes which have already happened but keep
a) Money (Show it)
Twitter did the IPO this year, which will affect the user experience. I doubt that the success will not be as good as with Facebook. Mass social media channels are increasingly more bought media than earned media. Therefore community manager or social media director without also access to bought media budget is a position without any real power. In many ways the advancements in bought media (i.e. programmatic buying) have also been way more interesting in recent years than say in, content marketing.
b) Mobile (First)
The switch to mobile is not a trend, it is a change which has already happened.  Consumers  switch wildly between different channels, platforms, devices and even use them at the same time! This puts extra pressure to understanding the consumer journeys. You cannot really understand those journeys without constant testing, measuring and optimizing. Secret to crack the mobile-first challenge is to think holistically consumer-first.

 2. Social Media platform to look out for in 2014: Anything related to visual storytelling
I have talked about selfies before in this blog and they will not go anywhere next year (hopefully twerking will not disappear either). All the applications, which help you to modify and enhance will be hot items next year. China will show the way in this trend. Also, we have to also remember that selfie is a communication vehicle as itself. Combining IM and visual storytelling will be a big thing. Instagram has actually addressed this already with its Direct offering.

3. Biggest challenges in doing social media marketing in 2014: Processes block the real-time success 
Old processes stand in the way of the really great real-time executions. Year 2013 was disappointment in terms of real-time marketing. There were couple of nice stunts, but we should be able to do better than just dunk in the dark (Oreo is still pretty much the only proper case study example). The briefing process that is suitable for traditional big brand campaign just does not fit faster requirements of real-time marketing. My personal New Year promise is to concentrate even more in creating and executing more streamlined, collaborative and more agile way to make real-time success stories next year.

4. Social Media Buzzword, which hopefully disappears in 2014: The whole talk of the social media
If you are still in 2014 talking about social media as a separate unit, you are more old-school than the person still using FourSquare. Consumers switch smoothly between devices and platforms and between virtual and real-life like it ain´t no big thing. What is actually the difference between digital and real-life nowadays? How can your firm address the needs and the behaviors of these consumers in every relevant touchpoints? To separate social media from other digital activities or other activities is just laziness and shutting your eyes of the reality. Digital scene is more fragmented than every before. Therefore it is more crucial than ever to create a big picture of those fragments. We do not need any more social media specialists (or digital specialists for that matter). We need 100% digital people who live and breath like their consumers and have the understanding and empathy to connect with them (and also means to be in the right touchpoints).

 5. Biggest social media hope for the next year?
I do not hope, I just do. And measure, optimize and do it again.

Predicting the future is too much work, I rather create history.

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Dec 10 2013
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Advertising, Insight, Planning, Slideshare, Social Media

Whopper Sellout: Facebook Like is Not A Sign of Loyalty

One of the most idiotic campaigns lately has been this effort from Burger King Norway:

Effectively they subsidized their biggest competitor with 50 000 krones and lost 30k of their Facebook audience at the same time. But hey, now they have more engaged Facebook community with only those who care, right? Or they have 8000 fans who have already opted out of Facebook messages and have not seen the status updates about campaign.

Why this campaign was just really idiotic stunt?

1.Fast food is not loyalty business.
Majority of the people eat both in Burger King and McDonald´s. When you are hungry your main selection criteria is location, location & location. 72% of Pepsi drinkers drink Coke as well. Also if you offer free gift coupon for your main competitor and the only downside is that you cannot join a brand Facebook page anymore. Who would not get this deal? We are not talking about your favorite basketball team here. We are talking about burgers. How often you go to social media to really engage with burger? If your brand page disappeared today, who would mourn it?

2. Fast food is a mass business.
Even your most loyal 8k fans do not really make dent in your results. Therefore I rather had 40k disloyal bargain hunters than 8k hardcore Burger King loyalists. Sometimes Facebook is just reach and not engagement. The situation would be different if your average buy would be hundreds of dollars. Buying the fast food is low-interest buy. In reality you want the people fast in-fast out and not really expect them to discuss about your brand further.

3.Fast food business is led by promotions.
People wait for the new burger variants, one-dollar discounts and 2-in-1 deals. Why not give what they are wanting for? Majority of the brands should just realize that their Facebook page is only place for promotions, sweepstakes and occasional social media meltdowns. People go to Facebook because they want to connect with their friends. They do not want to connect with brands. They might do it occasionally, if they really want to or if they are bribed properly. Most likely they are too busy uploading selfies than answering your boring brand poll.

Liking in Facebook is quite seldom an act of loyalty. Quite often your most loyal fans do not even know that you have Facebook. It is totally delusional to argue otherwise.  And do not get me wrong, I do not think that there is necessary any value to Facebook like and there has been brilliant campaigns playing around the mindless like-chase. I have to also admit that “Whopper Sacrifice” is still one of the most brilliant FB campaigns ever. They were probably trying to come up with something like that in Norway, but failed miserably.

Much more effective campaign would be to offer people to switch their whopper to Big Mac in Burger King. Then I think more people would show loyalty and you would have gotten nice case study video material. Or do a campaign where you can only like either McDonald´s or Burger King in Facebook, and reward those who select Burger King as their solely FB Burger fan page with free Whopper. With Whopper Sellout the mechanics were just wrong and therefore it failed (and nicely done case study video does not change that fact).

Only good part of the campaign has been the publicity it has garnered (like this long piece on Fast Company). Calculated through that, it might have been worthwhile to lose those 30k fans. They also seem to have gained 2000 new ones after this latest stunt, so maybe it was just really twisted PR stunt and I fell victim to it as well.

Otherwise this just looks like award case study scam gone terribly wrong.

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Dec 03 2013
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Digital Strategy, Insight, Social Media, Strategy

#Selfie: New Way of Communication or The Tipping Point of Narcissism

I ran a marathon last Sunday (in time 3:58:55 if you want to know) and I noticed people taking photos of themselves with smartphones during the run. The act of taking selfies did not seem to cause accidents in Singapore like in Hong Kong, but selfie-taking is truly fascinating phenomenon and the selection as the “word of the year” by Oxford dictionary underlines the importance.

Last year I wrote how Pinterest is the tool for lazy & self-obsessed and cynically you could say that selfie is the tipping point of that laziness and narcissism. You do not even need to be interested about anything particular expect yourself. However, when looking more closely the selfie-picture is more revealing than your average duckface:

Visual storytelling: Selfie is about the process, not the end product
In your average marathon you have professional photographers almost in every turn. So taking a selfie is not about having a photo of yourself, it is about taking the photo as well. Selfie is about being the creator and the subject. How you take the selfie is almost as important as how you look. Do you take the photo from up or down, portrait or landscape and what is your pose? Do you squinch, smize or prune? I think where many analysis go wrong is that taking a selfie is a purely narcissistic endeavor. Many times selfies are not solely about how you look, but what is the message you really want to convey. What is the moment you want to capture? As the visual storytelling becomes more and more important, taking a selfie is same as sending SMS was to my generation. Like Frédéric della Faille (founder of Frontpage) concludes in New York Times article:

“The idea of the selfie is much more like your face is the caption and you’re trying to explain a moment or tell a story. It’s much more of a moment and a story than a photo. It is not about being beautiful.”

When people wondered why Facebook offered three billion for Snapchat, this is the main reason. Selfies are a new communication vehicle. Why Snapchat turned the offer down? Maybe they have clearer vision in the selfie crystal ball than us. Or they are just crazy.

Looking good: Expect the rise of selfie-enhancing tools in 2014
Although me, myself & I are not the only drivers for selfies, they are naturally the main ones. Teenagers taking selfies at funerals or exposing private parts in Snapchat are sad examples of selfies. Selfies strengthen the worrying trend of overtly focus on appearance even at younger age. You are bombarded everywhere with certain beauty ideal, how you will match it?

Well, if you do not have the right looks naturally you can always fake it.

Modification and enchanching the selfies are huge opportunities for innovation and quick monetization. China is leading the way on this one. Meitu Xiu Xiu (super simple photo editor) is already one of the most popular apps there, and Momentcam reached no.1 position in Appstore also beyond the China borders. If people are spending so much time taking photos of themselves, natural next step is that they will spend more time polishing them. That will enable them either to look good (Meitu) or tell their story or capture the current moment better (Momentcam).

The selfie-phenomenon will not disappear soon. More likely we see acceleration in the amount of selfies. What started from teenagers has already expanded to adults. According to Samsung study 30% of all pictures taken by 18-24 year olds are selfies. That is quite many gigabytes of duckfaces. Soon you will see your parents taking selfies. And you remember what happened when your parents joined Facebook?

When the trends get tired is the moment when they come commercially interesting.

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Nov 01 2013
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Business, Insight, Marketing Strategy, Planning, Social Media, Strategy

What CrossFit Can Teach You About Branding

Those who read my post last week will already know that I have not yet become totally cynical to the art of marketing. I fell victim to good branding once in a while. I have been reminded of this gullibility, because lately I have desperately wanted to start CrossFit.

For those who are not in the know, CrossFit is an intense exercise program characterized by functional training using non-traditional weighlifting equipment (such as kettlebells). It has been probably been the hottest thing lately (especially among guys) in exercise circles and become quite mainstream in last couple of years. Reebok is also betting heavily on the rise of CrossFit.

I am already sports crazy. I run and do circuit training every morning, play in two basketball teams and try to swim once in a while. I do not really need any additions to my sports regime. I am healthy enough. The urge to start Crossfit is not rational decision. It has been branded well. It feels natural, because the exercise is functional. It feels total antithesis of the shiny gyms: many times CrossFit-sessions happening in the old warehouses. It has strong ethos of pushing to the limit, which resonates well with my view of sports in general. Exercising is not supposed to be fun. Only pain brings gain.

However when I was searching for the alternatives for CrossFit training in Singapore, I was shocked by the steep price tag of monthly prices. You should not really pay over 200+ dollars for basic circuit training in shitty warehouse. Or should you?

This is the inner dialogue I had:

Left brain: Hey that guy just took your our basketball summer training and is now charging hundreds of dollars a month from a glorified circuit training!
Right brain: But I want to push tractor tires to feel like a man!

Left brain: You push yourself too hard even in your morning jogs, CrossFit can actually destroy your muscles.
Right brain: Whatever, I want to train until I puke.
(Actually I heard a rumour that Red Bull sales increased when there was news coverage about alleged deaths of mixing Red Bull with Alcohol. Danger attracts.Also a vast majority of the news stories about harmfulness of different sports are written and shared by people who just want to find excuses for not exercising)

Why Crossfit is currently so appealing?

1. Proven business model
Crossfit.inc (founded in 2000 by Greg Glassman) follows in many ways the same success formula of the rise of “Les Mills”-branded classes, best known for Bodypump-classes. They license the Crossfit name to gyms for an annual fee and certify trainers. Licensing business is one of the most profitable types of business in the world.

 2. Room for creativity
Whereas Les Mills feels more like the McDonald´s of Gym Exercise (it is the same in every part of the globe), CrossFit still feels like a rebel alternative for it. Every CrossfFit-training can be different and the possible variations for the training are infinite.

3. Perfect training type for digital office worker
No-frills type of training feels perfect antidote for the overtly digital world we are living in. Also the sessions are high-intensity short bursts, which you can easily fill even to the busiest calendar.

4. Fueled by social media
I doubt that the sports would not be as big without the connected world we are living. There are CrossFit-forums, Facebook pages and endless amount of training videos. After watching this video by Finnish CrossFit-hero Mikko Salo, it almost felt I was training myself (150k views, btw):

5. Good story to tell
Exercising should always be about your own health and development. The truth is though that many times people exercise also for the bragging rights. CrossFit just sounds way cooler than being in Spinning. No offense to Spinning.

I probably try CrossFit despite the steep price tag. If no for other reason than to give a nod for the branding well done.

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Oct 28 2013
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Insight, Marketing Strategy, Planning, Social Media

How Teens Abandoned Facebook and Other Lies You Can Find From Research

First of all, I recommend everyone to read “Wrong: Why Experts Keep Failing Us”, a brilliant book by David H. Freedman. It showcases that painstakingly big portion of scientific research is completely faulty. The book did not address the subject of marketing research, but as the situation was quite bad with scientific research, I would say that nearly all of the marketing research is somewhat inferior. That does not mean it is not useful, but you should always take it with grain of salt.

I was reminded of this when there were lots of shares in social media about research on how Facebook is not the most important social network for teens. The news coverage it got made me sad and angry because of three things. First of all, that study was conducted to 802 teens (there are 20+ million teens in US). Second, it was focus group, not assessing the real behavior online. Third, it was mainly a study about privacy, which might also skew the answers to certain direction (like the previous study about social media effect on teen purchasing patterns). If you look at cold facts, not feelings coming out from the focus groups, the truth is different:

Numbers trump feelings
The so-called popular network Twitter has 24% penetration in teen audience, while Facebook has 94%. That gives a clear signal about reality: Facebook is “only” over 3.5 times bigger than the “most-liked” social network. You rather have actual reach than likes. When you are crafting your next campaign for teens, I would still concentrate on Facebook to get that actual reach. Instagram (owned by Facebook, which is good to remember) or Twitter might be good for more engagement, but by the time of writing, something new is probably surpassing them as the social network of choice for teens.

Do not replace your common sense with research
Main takeaway from the research was that teens do not find Facebook cool anymore. That is hardly surprising and you do not really need research to get that insight. Why would teens even find it cool? Their parents are using Facebook, for god´s sake. There will be always a demand for that “new thing” amongst teens (whether SnapChat or twerking). That “new thing” enables teens to differentiate from adults and hopefully shock parents as well. When Twitter becomes popular enough, teens will “abandon” it as well. That “abandonment” does not mean that Twitter would be irrelevant. On the contrary, that might mean it is just big enough to make business sense for the target audience.

This rant is not really about the teens fleeing away from Facebook (which they actually do, to some extent). It is about that I am totally sick and tired of sloppily executed research and lazy misinterpretation of that research. You run into these bullshit stats taken out of their context everyday, whether you are reading blogs, industry press or just browsing the latest deck from the research agency. When these stats get passed on in social media without any deeper thought, I sincerely hope that people are just too lazy to check details of the research. Other alternative is that marketing people are just too stupid. Hopefully not.

Especially we, as planners, should take a stand and always dig deeper to the research and be the devil´s advocate when it comes to research. Find the occasional nuggets and gems between the lines and rip the other pieces of the research apart.

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Sep 20 2013
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Digital Strategy, Planning, Social Media, Strategy

#LufthansaFAIL: Why You Cannot Separate Customer Service and Social Media?

I am usually not a fan of writing how different brands “fail” on social media. Too often these fails are actually quite trivial and more driven by the urge of “social media experts” to nitpick on every thing. However sometimes you just stumble on things which are quite hard to believe that are still happening in 2013.

Today I noticed there was discussion from Lufthansa wall spreading in Facebook. I went to check it out. You can read the whole correspondence from here, but if post will be deleted, you can also see the highlights below:

Lufthansa fails in Facebook
Because this is all public correspondence from Lufthansa wall (part of the #fail-part), I have not censored any names or such because it is public post.

The start after the first post was a guidebook social media example answer from the company with no customer service capabilities within social media team:
Lufthansafail2

Good answer. Now Lufthansa would just need to make the final reply and everything would be ok.
How Lufthansa fails in Facebook
Further assurances are made that thing is progressed further, but nothing happens for a week:
Lufthansafail3

During this part of the discussion the social media team actually shows that they only work as messengers within the company with no real access to customer service personnel. It also seems that customer service personnel does not really care what comes from social media team either. It also showcases well how the airline companies (not only Lufthansa) are making the access to customer service increasingly difficult. You cannot call anyone and the mails are not answered (or your mails are bounced back). In Facebook you get answered, but unfortunately the answers are not any good. And of course nothing happens on the customer service front:

Lufthansafail4

After this something totally peculiar happens: Lufthansa Facebook team goes totally quiet. Maybe they counted that the situation will eventually die down. But as you can notice from this post, the discussion did not die down. It actually just got more vivid. People started to share this post in social media and now it has garnered almost 100 likes and 72 comments. The post has not been taken down (not that it would probably help in this situation) or not addressed in any way. If you decide to ignore someone in social media, you should make that decision first and not halfway through.

This discussion gives us three lessons:

1. You cannot have the cake and eat it too.
It is impossible to just get the “good” side of the social media such as likes and positive comments. Your Facebook page is also customer service channel whether you have customer service working in your social media team or not. This correspondence shows that the company treats social media as a nice sugarcoating and not really a part of the business. You have to also be accountable for your answers. If you say you are getting back, you really should get back. You do not really need social media expert to tell this. It is just common courtesy and common sense.

2. Handle the social media complaints first
All the customers are not equal. You should treat those better who pay more (your best customers) and you should also treat those first who can cause you the biggest damage (damage prevention). This post has been escalating for three weeks and I do not doubt that it will escalate further.  How difficult it would just to get back to the guy?

3. If you answer the questions in Facebook, follow through
It is of course respectable to have open unsolicited discussion on your Facebook page. In this case, the situation just looks bad and shows more that you do not care about customers. Also although the discussion does not show in your FB front-page it does not mean that it is forgotten. Currently the whole discussion sends the message that anyone in the organization does not really care.

Airline industry is one of the most complained industries in the world and I have had my fair share of challenges with them. Nothing new under the sun in many ways you could say. This situation could have been saved easily on many occasions during this discussion (not to mention the thing has been boiling for three months before). The situation can of course be saved, but it is much harder now.

I am looking forward to how Lufthansa will respond.  At least they have been pondering for the right comment for 1,5 weeks.

EDIT (Apparently now the situation has been sorted out):

Lufthansa Customer Service

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Aug 29 2013
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Advertising, Digital Strategy, Planning, Social Media

Why Facebook Allowed Promotions in Page timelines?

Facebook finally updated their promotions guidelines to allow the usage of natural Facebook functions in promotions. Brands can now collect entries by having users post on their page or comment/like a page post. Likes can also be utilized as voting mechanism. So now you do not necessarily need to build 3rd party app to host a competition.

This makes things clearer for brands, because the former guidelines of building the 3rd party apps seemed to be relatively difficult for brands to understand and caused a lot of confusion. Using status updates as competition vehicles has already been a tool, which especially smaller brands have utilized although it has been forbidden. From user´s standpoint this will mean that the newsfeed will be even more populated with promotional content in addition and conjunction with sponsored stories. The recent change is also total turnaround from the rhetoric of pre-listed Facebook about not populating user feeds with commercial messages. Besides the constant pressure of shareholders the reason for this change is super simple:

Mobile.

The biggest caveat of Facebook tabs has been that they are not working on mobile. For some reason, it has been tricky or trivial thing for Facebook to fix. Enabling the contests in normal brand page timeline allows brands to tap into the dramatic mobile usage growth of Facebook. It is also a painstaking proof that traditional status updates do not drive people to like the brands as much as the incentivized ones.

Is this the end of the Facebook tabs?

Now there is no idea to host simple competitions using Facebook tab. Status update competition with appropriate paid media push works totally fine and allows having more smaller competitions outside normal campaign cycle. It is quite limited way for customer interaction. Therefore I would not count Facebook tabs totally off just yet. They provide opportunities for deeper engagement, richer storytelling and more impressive experience than the native Facebook functions. Facebook has not really replaced the campaign microsites due to its limited offering for brands. If you want to wow your audience in Facebook, you pretty much still have to utilize tabs. Which unfortunately do not work in mobile.

Easing the promotion guidelines is a quick fix for Facebook and addresses certain key promotion issues regarding the mobile. If Facebook really wants to replace the still prevalent usage of microsites they either need to fix the tab formats to work in mobile or completely revamp the brand page structure to give more freedom to brands.

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