Once upon a time, you could count on your marketing department to be able to "prove" any conclusion management had already reached.
When the board at BP needed to feel reassured that the company could avoid being tagged as a major contributor to the death of an entire geographical region and the resultant slow implosion of several local economies, they went to their marketing geniuses and we got all those great commercials on TV about "Disaster? What disaster? Everything's great here." It doesn't matter what's really going on because you're "controlling" the message, so nobody's going to see the real problems because Big Oil owns a majority stake in the politicians in the Gulf States and the money they're able to spend on media makes it easier for people (who desperately need to believe it's all OK) to believe it's all OK, in spite of some small voices to the contrary.
Variations on that little scenario have played out quite often over the years.
Things have been changing a bit though. Social Media is the way to go now. You can save many millions of dollars (paying me a few hundred K instead) by putting up a Facebook page and letting Twitter carry your message virally to millions more consumers than TV or even that old-fashioned Inter Tubes thing could ever imagine.
But "control" is an illusion, and what frequently happens on Social Media proves it. What you get might be very much the opposite of what you were probably expecting and/or hoping for, and it can come as a very rude surprise when you start to understand that you can't cherry pick the feedback.
Mitch McConnell found that out not too long ago (eg). And now the New York Police Dept is finding out too. NYPD decided they were in need of a little PR boost, and believing (as all authoritarian organizations do) that the undeserving masses must surely be grateful to us - or at least respect us for our abilities to crush their puny skulls at the slightest provocation - they went along with the Social Media suggestion by asking their fans to tweet their favorites pictures of the noble NYPD in action.
Here's a quick sampling of what came in by the thousands before they could shut the account down - prob'ly not quite what they had in mind:
When the board at BP needed to feel reassured that the company could avoid being tagged as a major contributor to the death of an entire geographical region and the resultant slow implosion of several local economies, they went to their marketing geniuses and we got all those great commercials on TV about "Disaster? What disaster? Everything's great here." It doesn't matter what's really going on because you're "controlling" the message, so nobody's going to see the real problems because Big Oil owns a majority stake in the politicians in the Gulf States and the money they're able to spend on media makes it easier for people (who desperately need to believe it's all OK) to believe it's all OK, in spite of some small voices to the contrary.
Variations on that little scenario have played out quite often over the years.
Things have been changing a bit though. Social Media is the way to go now. You can save many millions of dollars (paying me a few hundred K instead) by putting up a Facebook page and letting Twitter carry your message virally to millions more consumers than TV or even that old-fashioned Inter Tubes thing could ever imagine.
But "control" is an illusion, and what frequently happens on Social Media proves it. What you get might be very much the opposite of what you were probably expecting and/or hoping for, and it can come as a very rude surprise when you start to understand that you can't cherry pick the feedback.
Mitch McConnell found that out not too long ago (eg). And now the New York Police Dept is finding out too. NYPD decided they were in need of a little PR boost, and believing (as all authoritarian organizations do) that the undeserving masses must surely be grateful to us - or at least respect us for our abilities to crush their puny skulls at the slightest provocation - they went along with the Social Media suggestion by asking their fans to tweet their favorites pictures of the noble NYPD in action.
Here's a quick sampling of what came in by the thousands before they could shut the account down - prob'ly not quite what they had in mind:
No comments:
Post a Comment