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Business Digital Dilemmas: Should You be Twittering?

Currently amongst companies and enterprises, Twitter seems to have four philosophical camps. Firstly, there are those enterprises that don’t believe in its power, so they don’t use it at all. Secondly there are celebrity users, who because no one else compares in stature or ego to them, follow no one; they just treat the system like an advertising soap box for their various public offerings. Similarly, there are certain companies who ape the celebrity modus operandi and just update on their new products or services. Finally, there are those that do get it right, and understand that the real point is engagement!

And Ford Motor Company, under CEO Alan Mullaly, is one of them. It uses several different accounts to connect with its clients and fans of its many market segments. Ford try to ‘humanise’ the brand in their terms and they don’t use the sites to advertise as such. Links to some of Ford’s twitter sites are below.

FordTrucks

FordDriveOne

FordDriveGreen

FordCustService

FordMustang

FordRacing

So for those companies not already involved, is Twitter (micro blogging) the new marketing tool that they should engage with?  The probable answer lies with the industrial sector you work in, and the nature of customer your sector prescribes.

Already some large UK store groups such as Harrods, Sainsbury’s and Habitat, Sainsbury’s and Harrods are twittering away, whereas others like John Lewis and Tesco are not. The really crucial issue, though, is the total number of followers – today Sainsbury’s has 636 followers, Harrods barely 150. Is it worth the effort one wonders, but then Brad at Starbucks in Seattle has over 485,000 followers frothing with excitement, so is doing rather well.

By considering the concept of engagement, a key founding principle of Twitter, it leads into asking whether your company would rather have minimal interaction with its clents? Would you rather outsource customer service to Bangladesh or Vietnam where the criticising bunch of toadies can rant at someone who doesn’t understand a word of English?

Furthermore, another serious question to ask of yourself is whether you’re going to put in the effort to do it properly. Stephen Fry, probably the most famous and prolific tweeter of the UK with around 1 million followers is obsessional and produces 20 plus tweets a day. Do you want to go down that road? Of course not, but you do need to make a reasonable effort.

If you sell to consumers, then it’s worth considering, though if you sell insurance, probably not. If you’re selling cars, tweets could be used to sell some of your more hard-to-shift models, and your followers can negotiate online in return.  Purepages is shortly producing a simple questionnaire, the twitterfactor, to formulate a probable answer. Watch this space!

© Mike Phillips. IBM B1 WEEK53 wc28122009

Sources: Twitter.com, Hitwise, Silicon.com, Computer Weekly

A brand is simply a name or logo that influences a purchasing decision. In commodities such as cement manufacturers that name might just differentiate one business from another – cement is pretty much the same wherever you buy it; price is the only discriminator.

In consumer products, however, that name or logo should be a psychological symbolisation of how people think about that particular business or product. The best brands create a special relationship with customers, based on intangible qualities that evoke strong emotional responses. In essence, a brand will be a durable, unique business identity (Hovis has been around since 1886), often protected by trademark and patents, and inter-twined with perceptions of high quality, personality, origin, and pleasurable experiences. The whole brand experience should be holistic – the whole should be greater than the sum of the parts.

So having spent time, creativity and resource developing a brand, what sort of benefits might be expected.

1. Building a brand helps customers shorten their decision-making process, by creating a perceived knowledge of what they are going to buy, before they buy it. Most people, for example don’t think long and hard before buying a Mars bar!

In a similar vein, great brand images and logos can create memorability which in turn, help shorten the decision making process. For example, BP’s flower logo indicates inter alia, good clean forecourt, most likely a well-stocked convenience store attached and, above all, quality petrol. FedEx’s purple and orange van livery suggests the ubiquitous and quiet understated efficiency of this global delivery company.

2. Lowering the purchasing risk. So when someone feels under pressure to make a wise decision, he or she tends to choose the brand-name supplier over the no-name one. As the saying goes, “You’ll never be fired for buying IBM.” Similarly, buying PG Tips tea bags over a supermarket’s generally inferior own label bags will always work out a good decision.

3. Brands create and reward the confidence in a business, product or service by doing exactly what the customer already believes it will do. A can of Coke will refresh you and always taste great, year on year – it always delivers the expected emotional response.

4. Purchasing a branded product should evoke an emotional feeling in the customer. For example, Giorgio Armani makes his clients feel good about what they wear, feel good about buying clothes from his shops, and helps send out a positive fashion statement to the client’s peer group.

5. Good brands create loyalty which means consumers are more likely to buy that product or service again than competing brands. People who closely bond with a brand identity are not only more likely to repurchase what they bought, but also to buy related items or brand extensions of the same brand, to recommend the brand to others and to resist the lure of a competitor’s price cut.

6. Brand advertising can have latent and long lasting effects. Seeing your adverts regularly in newspapers or displayed on the sides of local buses can all be very positive. A consumer might not want your offer just now, but in the future when that need or desire occurs, your brand could well appear in the persons mind as the solution.

7. Brands command premium prices and therefore help generate greater turnover and profits.

8. Brands have the ability to spawn extensions such as KitKat and KitKat Orange. With a well-established brand, you can spread the respect you’ve earned to a related new product, service or location and more easily win acceptance of the newcomer. Most UK consumers have lost count on how many extensions the Virgin Group have launched.

9. Great brands can create greater company equity. Cadbury’s media defence against the current £10 billion hostile takeover manoeuvres from Kraft of the US (14.12.2009) is based primarily on a perceived undervaluation of the iconic Cadbury brands.

10. Lower marketing expenditure is possible. Although you must invest money to create a brand, once it’s created you can maintain it without having to tell the whole story about the brand every time you market it. For instance, a jingle or tune associated with a brand can be used on its own to generate excitement or interest. The James Bond Theme or Intel’s TV jingle are good examples.