Having studied marketing and coming across so many case studies of how brands have fiercely competed against one another with ads that have been trying to make the rival brand seem secondary, it is quite interesting to see how branding is seen in social media. So many social media sites share links to other sites and even show the logo of their main competitor! A good example of this is Flickr. A website that is owned by Yahoo but displays the logo of Google on the homepage. In more traditional marketing, Coke and Pepsi have been showing each others brands in their campaigns quite cleverly but usually in a way that one of them is seen to be a superior one.Coke and Pepsi spent so much money in the past trying to prove why one is better than the other, now the aim seems to be to have fun with the brand. A great example is a 2011 advertising campaign by Pepsi
Almost similarly it looks like Yahoo has accepted that it is not worth it to try and change people from using Google. It is better to give people the freedom to use what they want because in the end, users have the power when it comes to social media.
If you go to YouTube and read the comments under this ad for Pepsi it's really fascinating to see how people have responded to the ad. This brings up the question whether marketers or the brands themselves have any power in social media anymore ? Or is it simply just better to stay back and let the users promote and protect your brand?
My view: Social media is "the people's space" - brands don't own it, they simply earn the right to use it. They can't control it.
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't mean they can't influence it, though! ;)
Great post Roni
ReplyDeleteYou ask a very good question too. Stand back and fall behind, or actively use and risk getting bad comments on occasion.
The Coke Pepsi example is interesting, even back in the day they didn't really have control over much of where their brands were. in the supermarket, they are stacked in shelves next to each other, but even worse for the two companies, are the little corner shops all over the world with not much room, and too frequently you see cans of coke in a pepsi fridge or cans of pepsi in a coke fridge. That must have made the reps cringe! I think this mix up of logos (especially in some FMCG) is something that may have been going on for much longer than SM has existed.
interesting post Roni! i guess we better take the risk than fall behind. n then again, neg WOM does work great sometimes. in fact some companies do it purposefully to get attention. but yes of course on the other hand, many company did get into trouble because of bad WOM. i guess the most important strategy is to know how to handle negative situations smartly other than avoiding and fall behind.
ReplyDelete