Does corporate India understand social media?

Here comes another corporate gaffe on social media. Volkswagen India posted an offensive tweet in reply to one if its followers’ comments and then promptly took it off without any apology. The company recently put an Ad in a newspaper with a motorized vibrator in the back page that went off automatically if one opened the newspaper. The vibrations were meant to inspire people to head to the Volkswagen showroom to check out the new range of Polo and Vento cars. Instead it elicited ridicule and embarrassment on twitter.

(Image courtesy: http://www.technologyreview.com/files/84102/diffusion-cascade.jpg)

Some women followers of the brand on social media gently admonished it for a failed attempt to create a catchy campaign, not to mention the underlying sexual innuendo. The brand retorted by tweeting “Women would be dumb to call it a vibrator. Or maybe they do not understand real driving experience,” and set off heavy criticism including being labeled sexist.

It was only last week that social media in India ignited over Samsung leaving two Indian bloggers stranded in Germany, after they refused to succumb to threats by Samsung forcing them to promote their products at an event. Subsequently the company issued a hasty response blaming “miscommunication” for the incident.

These incidents prompt one to ask if corporates understand social media. It is most likely that they do not. This is because the fundamental principles of business and social media differ.

1. Control – Business and all business communication thrives on control by the management. When negotiating with business partners or clients, businesses often ensure that the terms are favorable to them first and then to the third parties. A similar degree of control is exercised in dealing with traditional media (eg: presenting an official version of a situation) and this is now extended to social media. Corporates see social media as yet another channel to increase their publicity. They expect corporate announcements and positive reactions to these announcements to float around on social media, not noises of protest or admonishment. Unfortunately social media thrives on self regulation or mere guidelines of regulation. Criticism is doubly quicker than praise. Those who take to social media, view it as a channel free of biases, unlike traditional media where there is still some influence of one’s media house or political leanings. It is naïve for companies to seek only public endorsement for their products/ services on social media.

2. Profit – The objective of most businesses is to make profits and rightly so. Without profit, there is no future. Employees can be laid off, research divisions can be dissolved, collaboration can be sacrificed, customer feedback can be ignored, and budgets can be cut to achieve the end objective - profit. In contrast, social media has one objective – engagement. There are no boundaries to define engagement and no limit on the number of metrics to measure it. There is no “point taken, now shut up” kind of control to exercise, whether 10 tweets criticize a company or 10,000 tweets do. The greater the public participation, greater the engagement. In that sense social media can be equated to a virtual mob. To influence the mob, companies have to be a part of the mob and gain trust. Making the mob do your bidding is a long way off.

3. Code of conduct – Businesses define and follow (at least on paper) a code of conduct to govern their relationships with employees, business partners and third parties. Any communication as part of this code is largely impersonal, even though the motivations for such communication are likely personal. Apologies and values often take a back seat in most corporate communications that tend to get defensive. Social media, on the other hand, is all about the individual – as personal as that can be. People faking their personalities are not taken to kindly on social media. People connect only with those they feel are genuine (with likes and dislikes) and not corporate mouthpieces. If one makes a mistake, one is expected to apologise and only then allowed to move on – just like in kindergarten. Not being sincere in one’s apology or being tolerant of others’ views, will earn corporates social media detention.

As more corporates take to social media marketing, they must realize the trade-offs that come with the medium. Else social media will soon turn into an anti-corporate channel for people to voice their criticism.