The Ones Who Can't Spot Change

It is sad to see, at least from my personal observations, the large amount of businesses who are failing to see how social marketing is changing their environment. The old way of marketing, or mass advertising, does not cut it any more. Instead, consumers expect companies to do the right thing: protect the environment, excel in ethics, hold their promises, interact with the customers, and be transparent and accountable of their actions. The ones that fail get blasted on the Internet, which happens even faster and easier with the help of social networking websites. The ones that do get the brownie points.

Of course, this post would not be complete without some examples:

When nVidia had a snafu with their graphics chips, they denied to comment and did not admit to having a problem. That was despite countless blogs and forums leaking internal documentation of the problem, physical evidence of poor materials being used, and a financial statements showing some extra 20 million reserved for warranty work. The result was that ATI took over as the graphics supplier for the majority of the dedicated graphics laptop market. The end consumers had spoken, though the retailers were not thrilled with nVidia's response to them either.

An [unnamed] company stated that it wanted to increase the amount of voice about its product and wished to be transparent. However, it also aimed to prevent people from finding out where it sells its products at discount prices (as well as some other facts about it). That is counterproductive to their goal, because as soon as people start talking about a product or company, this stuff is bound to come out. Furthermore, it goes against the company's wish for transparency. With mass media advertising, they probably could have gotten away with this. However, today's blogs and Facebook make secrets impossible.


I was reminded of this idea when viewing the meerkat exhibit at the Woodland Park Zoo...
 

In the wild, meerkats always post a guard to look for threats - eagles, snakes, the like. However, this zoo mob had not noticed that their environment had changed. So, this guard was still needlessly sitting on the top of the rock and scanning the painted sky for deadly predators. Though if he knew, he could have been doing something more productive with this time...

Companies have a choice: they can either adapt to the new environment or stay the same like these guys. Unfortunately for the companies, unlike the meerkats which are meer-cute, there are no zookeepers which will feed and support them.