Corporations and Social Media
How can a corporation engage in Social Media? We ask Andrew Peters how, and how he works with companies to bring them into online networks.
EDITOR: If a client has a project and has never engaged in social media before how do you assess if you can help them or not?
ANDREW PETERS: I recently saw a company in Malaysia that creates big engineering things and I was asked how I could help them with social media.
I think that even something as crazy as that, once you talk to the client in enough depth, and getting away from a formality of client-supplier situation and getting them to understand what they do and how they do it, and what’s unique about it, then you can create a social media programme that fits and makes sense. You can always find a solution that fits, it might not be Twitter, but it might be Ning.
However, I don’t see that social media is the only way to do things.
For example, take the Air New Zealand TVC (television commercial) of naked painted bodies, that has gone around the world and had a minimum Susan Boyle effect. But are they creating an Air NZ tribe out of it? No they are not. Go to Facebook, there is nothing there. Whoever rolled it out, rolled it out as a traditional ad campaign and didn’t look at it as an opportunity to address communities around the world – like body painting and body art. They could have released the TVC and built a community on Facebook or whatever platform they could.
When I talk about Social Media, I don’t talk about doing everything on Social Media.
For example, take the “Best job in the world” campaign. That was a big spend by the client agency, but they hit the nail on the head with Social Media, however they knew they had to support it with traditional marketing as well.
Air New Zealand on the other hand has done a good job of communicating that they are an airline, and that they have safety procedures. They haven’t done epecially well at communicating that they have nothing to hide about their air fares, which is why they are naked.
The biggest advantage of Social Media is at least attempting to create and engage a community. You can do that just by immersing yourself in Facebook or any of the other popular platforms.
