the twitter truth
That’s why we decided to take a sweet-spot between those two fig- Engagement Vs Broadcast positive brand mentions from other
look at what’s happening with ures, each company seems to settle We also compared the brands in Twitter users. Where Asda might
Twitter in the real world. We se- on a frequency that works well. our sample group to see how run into problems with this ap-
lected a cross section of 140 much they engaged people in proach is if customers accuse it of
leading UK brands (or internation- Introverted Vs Extroverted conversation on Twitter, and how being unwilling to respond to more
al brands with a UK presence) and Another area where Innocent is in much they use the channel sim- critical comments, choosing only to
analysed exactly how they are the minority amongst brands on ply as a broadcast tool. While a highlight positive references.
working with Twitter. Twitter is that it displays extrovert- large number of brands continue
ed behaviour. By this, we mean to use Twitter for broadcast (that Short Vs Long Term
Formal Vs Conversational
that instead of focusing entirely on is, using it primarily to publish A common mistake we spotted is
One of the first things we noticed is
its own brand and products, the links to content on their website) the use of Twitter for short bursts.
that Twitter is forcing brands to drop
company is happy to talk about there is a noticeable trend to- This is understandable, since mar-
their traditional formal marketing
keting people tend to think in
language in favour of a more relaxed
terms of campaign led activity,
style. We categorised each company
according to whether the style of
“Apart from a handful of well publicised case
but it doesn’t really work for
Twitter. The platform lends itself
language it used on Twitter was pre-
studies there hasn’t been an awful lot of information well to establishing a profile and
dominantly formal or conversational,
and found that 73% of the group available on how businesses are really using Twitter
building relationships over the
long term, but trying to use it to
adopted a conversational tone.
This is very much in keeping with
as a PR and marketing channel.”
support a three month marketing
campaign will only lead to failure.
what people have come to expect
Lance Concannon When we carried out our re-
from modern social media market-
search, Walkers Crisps had only
ing. Consumers increasingly want
used its profile to support a short
brands to engage them in conversa-
term campaign – the profile had
tion like human beings, rather than other issues and topics that might wards engagement.
few updates and less than 100
pushing the same old tired market- not always be directly related to its Failing to engage with your fol-
followers, and it’s hard to see
ing messages at them. line of business. Only 21% of the lowers on Twitter can be
how it could have added much
A good example of this is sample group were extroverted. damaging – they understand that
value to the campaign.
Innocent Drinks, which uses a very A lot of marketing professionals Twitter is an environment for con-
Since then, however, the brand
chatty style on its Twitter page and might struggle with this idea, but versations to take place, and if
has followed the lead of Innocent
often responds directly to comments a good example of how it can they don’t feel like you are listen-
Drinks and started using the pro-
and enquiries from other users. work well comes from Kodak. By ing to them and not using the
file to engage with its audience.
Innocent is an interesting case study talking about a wide range of channel as it is intended, you run
It’s very quickly gone from hardly
for a number of reasons, not least of photography related issues rather the risk of a backlash.
being noticed at all, to seeing
which is that it was by far the most than keeping the conversation An interesting example is Asda,
dozens of Twitter users having
vocal of all the brands on Twitter tightly focused on Kodak, the which primarily uses Twitter to
conversations about the brand,
with an average weekly update fre- company attracts interest from a broadcast information about spe-
and this is likely to improve signifi-
quency of 900 tweets! This is very wide range of photography fans, cial offers with links to the main
cantly over the longer term if the
much the exception, however, with even those which may not yet be company website. But in addition
brand continues on this track.
most brands posting new tweets Kodak customers, and sends out to this, it also retweets (that is, re-
Other consumer brands would do
anywhere between 10 and 200 the clear message that the compa- publishing somebody else’s tweet
well to pay attention. ■
times a week, on average. There ny is as passionate about the on your own Twitter page, like for-
doesn’t appear to be any particular subject as they are. warding an email to your friends)
FMCG News 19
Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28