Brands that don’t get it! (and why they should)

This post started to be written in my mind some weeks ago when Susan (@buzzedition) told the world that she was giving up on her HP for a Apple Macintosh. Incredibly, as far as I know, no computer brand or even Apple jumped on this business opportunity to offer Susan the best deal. She was ready to buy. She publicly announced that intention. She had credit card in hand. And no one came forward to say “Hey, I’ll sell you one and here’s why you should buy from me.” A few days later, I was exchanging a few tweets with UK’s PC Advisor editor that was preparing to write a review on smartphones. When I asked her if she had the new Nokia N900 on the list, she told me that she had contacted Nokia, they had promised to send her one N900 and never got back to her. I was (again) very surprised that no Nokia representative immediately jumped on this opportunity to make it right via Twitter. For those who aren’t familiar, “PC Advisor” ranks as the global number three tech media site for UK traffic.

Another example relates to the Flip camera.  My good friend, Shelly (@shellykramer) has complained, on a number of occasions that her beloved Flip camera unexpectedly quit working. She’s been a huge brand advocate for the Flip during the course of the past year, especially on Twitter. She’s talked about her love for the Flip cam and what a terrific addition it is for the “tool set” that  small business owners should have and should be using in their marketing efforts. The fact that Flip hasn’t been paying attention simply amazes me.  Kodak is paying attention. At the recent 140Conference in Los Angeles, they made sure to put one of their new Zi8 cameras squarely in Shelly’s hands.  Funny thing, she tweets about the Zi8 camera and publicly laments that it’s not as user friendly as her beloved Flip.

Both of these examples are clear cut cases of brands just not paying attention.  These women are both considered fairly influential, are thought-leaders and tremendously well-respected in the Twitterverse.  Their collective “reach” is huge. Yet neither of these brands are, apparently, doing much to monitor this space for brand mentions and are, most assuredly, missing opportunities to do just that.

In the meantime, Dell reported yesterday that it made $6.5 million that is directly attributable to Twitter promotions and operations alone. I’ll admit that $6.5 million is, for many companies, a drop in the bucket. But I know many companies who would gladly take that $6.5 million and laugh all the way to the bank – especially in light of the state of the global economy today.

So, on one side you have an example of a company that embraced Twitter and is using the medium to drive sales and, on the other side, you’ve got examples of companies that totally ignore Twitter as a market space. Am I the only one who finds this shortsighted?

Zippo is another brand that gets it when it comes to social media and gets it well:  It monitors the Twitterverse for the zippo keyword and it engages by making RTs and by addressing questions or complaints. Like Zippo and Dell, there are many brands who are already using Twitter, in particular to step up up the level of  of communication they have with their end users, as a customer service arena and as a place to engage with prospective clients.  And, in my always humble opinion, these are the brands who will, ultimately “win” the marketshare wars and see the results thereof directly in their bottom lines.

Can you afford not to have your brand  on Twitter?

One of the objections that I hear often whenever Twitter is mentioned as an integral part of an overall integrated marketing and customer service strategy,  is: “We don’t have the resources for this.”  This from companies who spend thousands – sometimes even millions of dollars and Euros on automatic systems that only serve to get users frustrated.  [e.g “To speak with a human please hang up and go outside – it’s never going to happen here”]  The other common lament is “If we go in there we will be bashed by all of those angry customers, and for that, we have the retailers. We like it when they shield us from unhappy customers.”

If people care enough to speak about your brand (good or bad), it means that they are emotionally attached to it. Even those who use Twitter or one of the many other social mediums to say “Hey brand name I could not give a damn about you!” they still hope that you will listen to them and act on whatever it is that’s frustrating them.  Fundamentally, customers WANT brands to hear them.

To the “We don’t have the resources…” the answer comes in the shape of another question: “Can you afford not to be where your clients are?” But this is not the only problem facing brands who are not embracing Twitter, and Social Media, in general.  There are, most definitely, bigger things at work.

Enter Google’s Real Time  Search (what else?)

If you haven’t read about it yet, Google’s Real Time Search is simple to describe: You enter a search term and you get what is being said on Twitter (and other social mediums) about that search term. Live. Real time. Get it?

My friend mentioned above, Shelly Kramer, makes an extraordinary call to action on her recent blog post regarding Google’s Real Time Search and what it means to brands. In a nutshell, from now on when people,  people who are NOT on Twitter,  search for your brand they can see what others, from all over the world are saying about it. The good things AND the bad things.

The time for excuses is over. Brands who don’t get Social Media and who are not willing to embrace it will be severely affected by this. The time of being an option, a plan, something to think about is also over. Brands should get to it – like right now.

And if you are reading this and you work for Nokia, I would really like to review the N900. And I think that my feedback will be more than a little valuable to you.  Hit me up on Twitter

What is your experience? Tell us in the comments!