Pepsi India - Social media insensitivity, culture ignorance or plain indifference?

This Diwali will not be a memorable one for the well known soft drink brand, Pepsi. 

And that's thanks to the insensitivity to the culture and people of this country - India, probably one of the largest markets for the brand. 

What's worse was the timing of this ill-conceived and ill-fated contest - Diwali eve. 

Driven by sheer over-enthusiasm or plain indifference, their social media team jumped onto the contest bandwagon last evening Indian time, asking participants to use the hash tag  #Ramayana140 and tweet in their version of the story - to use Pepsi India's words - Are you someone who can explain the Ramayana in 140 characters....

It was surprising, and to an extent downright stupid of people who were responsible for social media at Pepsi, or may be their digital platform agency to even attempt to hold a contest in the name of Lord Rama, who is a much worshiped God by millions of people in the country.

Withing hours if not minutes, a whole lot of people on twitter expressed disgust and outrage at the way a brand like Pepsi decided to even begin a contest like this.

More damage was done by some twitter handles which went about defending Pepsi India’s action, and asking why the brand must even apologize. It was amusing to see that the people behind these handles did not see the twitter-verse to be intelligent to see that they possibly were people who work with the digital agency behind this insensitive campaign.

The question for a brand like Pepsi is – how would you ever imagine that such a campaign will not hurt the sensibilities of a country in which characters of the epic Ramayana are worshiped day in and day out? And do such campaigns and contests have any prior vetting by the country’s senior leadership, or at least the social media custodians of the brand?

Pepsi India apologized later in the day for attempting such a contest. But the brand and its digital agency has more explaining to do.

By the way, this also is an eye-opener for social media custodians of many such brands - when you plan a contest,  beware of the people, their culture, beliefs and value-systems. Some basics that were thrown to the wind by Pepsi. 

Dear Air France KLM, this is going to hurt badly.

To say the least, the airline industry is just not waking up to the power of social media. Do these guys who run some of the so called world class airlines realize that we do not live anymore in the stone age! Every customer armed with a camera mobile phone and a personal computer, is a global citizen – and command all the power to decide the fate of brands at the click of a mouse.

These airlines had a huge wake up call to get their act together, when a disgruntled businessman Hasan Syed made news after buying several promoted Tweets to blast British Airways -  for allegedly losing his father's luggage on a flight to Paris.

But that does not seem to have served a wake up call to the aviation industry, and the CEO’s who run the businesses.

Not to  Alexandre De Juniac, CEO of Air France-KLM at the least!

Disgruntled – well that is an understatement by all means – passenger Jay Shah has had a nightmare of an experience with Air-France, along with a bunch of co-passengers. Read Jay’s experience/letter to Alexandre here. To quote from the blog: 

I’m over and done with this debacle but not without spreading the word about your service amongst my friends and family. There’s no doubt that your company is not competent or professional enough to take passengers world over. You may get defensive and say that this is a one-off incident but unfortunately, it isn’t. Number of people have voiced a similar opinion about the treatment meted out to them by your company. It is rather unsettling. Don’t know the effect this letter might have on your customer service but rest assured, you can thoroughly deduct an average of 5000$ from your annual profits if not more. Although that might be just a whisker in your overall mess, it’ll be one which was done with due diligence. We’ve had enough of your staff’s condescending bullshit. We have encountered inadequacy of service, which I never knew was possible for such a big company along with ignorance and stupidity of humungous proportions. 

Let me make it very clear, we don’t fly your airlines for free and more often than not are the only people flying on this particular sector. You might try and make some damage control but be completely sure, that we will never forget the way we’ve been treated at the hands of your staff. You have failed miserably in meeting the expectations of your customers based on the promises you’ve made to them. 

All the best Alexandre De Juniac – please do salvage what’s possible of your airlines now battered image. 

One last thing – when will people who work is customer service (we will say ‘public facing’ roles) wake up to the reality that every consumer is a journalist?

Social media, arms market-place? - Stop this now

Social media and online-commerce are the 2 most revolutionary things that have impacted human race more than any other phenomenon in the recent history.

While there can be no debate on the greater benefits of this market-place, what is shocking is the impunity (or call it ignorance?) with which some of these social places like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook are being used by gun/arms vendors to sell their ware easily. And there is just no control of in whose hands across the globe these are landing – may be a few this minute too.

This story in the Daily News as to how Instagram is being used to buy and sell guns without background checks is a stark reminder of the world we live in, and the perilous side of any social tool.

In this story is the Huffington Post, Michelle Shimel throws more light into Social Media Networks As a Marketplace for Gun Sales.

Shouldn't we be alarmed at such brazenness with which this great new world of social market place is turning into a free ware-house of arm peddlers?

We should, and must to what is possible by us to highlight this danger to all fellow humans out there. Do what you can as well to stop this kind of social marketplace abuse.

Live-wire crisis management – a great lesson from Patna.

Today, in India’s run up to the next general elections, the principal opposition held one of the largest ever rallies in Patna, the capital of Indian state of Bihar. Social media counts and feedback from on the ground indicate that there was anything over 1 million people at the venue ground.

There were a series of bomb blasts (5 in number as per police reports) around the meeting venue, with subsequent information even suggesting that there was a live bomb that was placed right under the dais, from which the probable PM, Narendra Modi delivered the speech.

Yet, as would be in any such mammoth gathering in the country, there was tremendous crowd control, and fortunately no stampede as a panic aftermath of the blasts that rocked the area.

The organizers told the crowd through speakers that there were celebratory crackers that were set off, and also urged people not to resort to bursting crackers. Plus, the party cadre also urged the people to stay put and not move helter-skelter.

All this, despite the party leaders/organizers knowing well that there could be some casualties and damage owing to the bombs that were going off.

Yet, realizing that any crowd surge towards the bomb spots would lead to an uncontrollable situation and also loss of more lives, the organizers used the cracker decoy.

While one may debate on the ifs and buts of such a handling, it is truly praise worthy example of real-time crowd and crisis management.

Moral - seldom panic and think before managing a crowd when crisis hits.

Social response – Buffer is in the ‘swift response’ league

Sometime last night, Indian time, social sharing tool, Buffer was hacked send shockwaves across loyal users round the world. 

To quote from this story at CSO blogs by David Lewis twitter - @gattaca   - “It turns out that the social media aggregation site, BufferApp.com, was compromised earlier today. A significant number (actual number unclear as of this writing) of users had their accounts taken over by nefarious types who then took to sending our spam posts via that linked Face book and Twitter accounts”.

Buffer chose to respond swiftly – pat came a mail from Joel and the Buffer team, which clearly laid the facts to the users. A reality statement, and what was being done to set things right – to make sure the customers did not suffer.

Intent for customer delight does not end there. This blogger sent a tweet to Bufferapp raising doubts the payment security, and also the customer usage status.

The response from the @Buffer twitter handle was almost instant, again reiterating facts and the present situation.

Buffer sure comes out a winner in crisis communication, and more, a good example of how swift the response on platforms like twitter ought to be.

May there be more brands that respond like Buffer. Sure a win in customer response real-time.

Bad PR and corporate acquisitions fall apart?

At the PRSA site, there’s this interesting story - Does BadPress Kill Corporate Acquisitions?

There’s been an interesting study mentioned in the quoted Reuters story – a new paper in the Journal of Financial Economics that examines the role of media in corporate acquisitions – this one being in the light of Fairfax Financial Holdings chief executive officer Prem Watsa’s stated reaction on a deal with Blackberry. 

The authors of the paper seem to conclude that managers at corporations are more comfortable presiding over broken deals than bad ones because of the effect on a manager's reputation, including future hiring prospects and earnings.

Can it be that simple to conclude that the media pre-dominantly reports negatively only when the current stock value and market performance of the acquirer will be affected by a deal?

Is the noise in the media, and some wide fluctuation in the stock market justification enough for coming to conclusions to what is good and bad business?

It may not be that simple and straight forward. The only raison d etre for such a behavior or call it knee jerk reaction from executives may be the impact such a deal would have on their resumes.

A case of individual reputation concerns overriding facts may be. Wrong?

Simplicity & the power of content, like Romania

Great PR or marketing campaigns need not be heavy on an organizations purse.

Time and again, there are some campaigns that reap the benefits of simple, yet very powerful content. Its at times just the power of words, that’s profound – in the impact it creates.

Enter Romania and Romanian Tourism in this world of simplicity.

The UK government decided to run an anti-immigration campaign in Romania to dissuade Romanians from coming to the UK.

And to counter this, a Romanian advertising agency came up with a fantastic response.

The UK government campaign ‘You won’t like it here’ was intended to keep away Romanian migrants by showing how awful life in Britain is.

Advertising agency GMP Bucharest responded by creating a campaign for its daily newspaper client Gandul.info. It used humor to fight discrimination.

It was a very simple campaign, yet the impact it created was just immeasurable. And memorable as well, So much so that there were a whole lot of comments in the social world, with people saying that they would make Romania their next holiday destination.

Not that, the Romanian campaign also went on to win accolades for a great campaign it was.

So, in this complex jungle of social, simplicity works. Simplicity + Great content shall remain a winning duo.

Public Relations & Marketing – foster a 'culture' of content creation

One can speak for hours on good organization culture, and how well people are engaged. Yet, for many of our organizations, and people leading them – culture is equated loosely with water cooler banter, something this does not augur well for the long run.

Seldom do such leaders realize what real culture means for people who spend a large part of their living day in the corner cubicles.

A culture that fosters do-ability is so vital for PR professional and marketers, in this war of content where content creation is the sole USP.

In laymen language,  good culture among other things will 

• allows people to innovate
• allows people to make mistakes
• give people opportunity to prove themselves and grow
• gives an opportunity to make mistakes without fear of pinkslip
• allows people to think people out of the box

This earlier post by Frank Strong at Spin Sucks gives some good insights on how to inspire a culture for content marketing.

Future peek - content rules.. and so every brand is a media company

Today, brand-building is all about what unique story it has to the consumer, and how well the story blends into the mind/life of its aspirants.

The use of the word aspirant is deliberate – isn’t a prospect  passé?

In brand clutter, the ‘unique’ brand story ought to be so compelling, and weave itself seamlessly into the consumer’s life story – present and future.  Its only consumers aspire to blend the brand story into his own life story does the brand survive and flourish. So, the consumer ought to be an aspirant, not a prospect.

In that backdrop, every brand needs to have an ongoing, compelling and unique story. And these stories are built in by sheer content which the brands generate – content that stands out across media, across social platforms, and that generate comments and likes in the social universe.

That is why the new book by Micheal Brito, Senior VicePresident, Social Business Strategy, Edelman could be worth a read for all marketers, PR professionals and social media mavens.

And in this guest post at Brian Solis, Michael outlines on the book itself - Your Brand:The Next Media Company – Become A Content Organization.

How redundant (funny?) can be PR measure by AVE?

The debate on PR measure continues in different parts of the globe. And it shall not cease anytime soon.

This piece on PR measurement, in the Inquirer Business online looks into Measuring public relations and publicity programs  and is right in highlighting how AVE can be a completely wrong yardstick in measuring the success of your public relations outreach programs.

Just to highlight one particular hazard : public relations measure by AVE – the column centimeter/earned media metric - does not reflect in its count how much was in positive coverage and how much in muted/negative coverage.

A classic example of this is Shri Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of the Indian state of Gujarat. Would it be fair to think that the PR outreach for him is a success just on the basis of the coverage? Would’nt it be naïve to think that all coverage is positive coverage?

Does it make the sense out of AVE as a PR measuring tool? Not really.

Fighting anti-incumbency with PR agencies?!

Well, in news just in, the Congress – NCP Alliance led state government in the West Indian state of Maharashtra is all set to hire a PR agency. The brief of this agency will be a quick fix to the troubled and dented image of the government, “as it is struggling to tackle the anti-incumbency and attacks from the opposition”.

No doubt in this season of elections, there would many such opportunities for PR agencies to work with the state and central governments for their “image make-over”.

But would sheer PR – column centimeters favoring the establishment, oped, earned media et al – make people turn a blind eye to the failure of the state over a period of one 5 year term?

The chances are remote. No PR agency can fight a strong wave of anti-incumbency. And here's wishing the best for the winner of the Maha government PR mandate.