Saw a rather unsavoury incident on Twitter recently. Someone with 30,000+ followers – a person popular for his witty tweets – had a problem with his mobile service-provider and decided to tweet about it. That in itself is not a big deal really. But when his service-provider replied via their Twitter handle that they’d get back to him in 48 hours, it turned ugly. The gentleman not only went on to lambast the service-provider, but decided to urge his followers to tweet about all their bad experiences with the said service-provider, so he could retweet them under a hashtag – almost like creating a scrapbook of incriminating evidence against the service-provider. Of course, many people obliged.
Now, it would be one thing if this was a public service effort. What galled me was that it had become a personal vendetta because he didn’t get VIP treatment. This raises important questions for me – in a time when brands are soft targets on social media for just about anything they do, or don’t do, what are the responsibilities of the so-called Twelebs as influencers of public opinion? And what is a brand to do when consumer behaviour goes from airing grievances in public to that bordering on vilification?
When you’re in a position to influence thousands, it is important to live by the credo of responsibility, respect and accountability. Brands are supposed to uphold these values, and rightly so. For, they exist to serve useful functions for the community they operate in. For all its positive points, the trouble with social media is that many practitioners achieve their influencer status amidst no expectation of maturity and accountability from their side. It is left up to their own personal values and judgment as to how they use their influencing status. That is trouble.
I am of the firm belief that there needs to be a code of conduct for social media users as much as there is one for brands and companies. I tried searching on the web for codes of conduct for social media. There were many for regular users of Twitter, Facebook, etc, but none specifically for people in position of power and influence. So, without taking the responsibility away from brands’ role to serve the public better, here are some suggestions from me to young Twelebs.
1. The reason you acquired thousands and lakhs of followers was your unique content. Your outburst against a company because you faced a problem and the attempt to mobilize public opinion against them looks childish at best. You’re surely entitled to prompt redressal of your grievance, but mobilizing a virtual morcha is not what your followers expect from you. Please stay with your content.
2. If you find a reason for complaint against a brand, remember that the brand is not your personal enemy. You may not be aware, but the majority of brands do understand that serving the public is a good thing to do. You should understand that some problems have layers of technology, processes of multiple parties and there is a certain given amount of time that problems take to solve. For instance, a refund of your online purchase involves banks and processes outside the vendor’s control. Understand these things in a mature way.
3. Just as a brand is held to high standards of responsibility because it is in the public domain, you’re also responsible for the influence you wield. A brand that has crores of consumers will face a certain percentage or incidence of breakdown, and you too may be among them at some time. Just as you weren’t singing paeans of praise while the going was all good, you carry the responsibility as well to not malign a brand because you happen to have a problem with the service once in 12 months. Spiderman’s foster dad was right. With power comes responsibility.
4. Crucial conversations require collaboration and a constructive approach. While you insist that brands should be humane and not behave like bots, do remember before you vent your fury, that too publicly, that an employee seated in a call-centre or a junior charged with managing responses is doing his best in stressful circumstances. He’s as human as you wish the company to be. Even as you wish the company’s top brass to hear you, be compassionate with that person having the conversation with you.
Building a brand is a painstaking task, achieved over years of efforts on product, services and communication. A marketer’s biggest joy is getting kudos from the public he serves. If a brand doesn’t do a good job, believe me, the public will reject it sooner than later. Let not our short-term fame make us churlish and egotistical to try and get mileage out of bringing down someone’s hard work.
(LK Gupta is Chief Marketing Officer of RedBus)
Feedback: lkgupta610@gmail.com
