Out of control

As much as the companies plan their engagement with social media and their campaigns with careful consideration through several months to a year, the hard fact of life is that the groundswell is a " little" unpredictable as far as the results of those meticulous plans go. In the book " Groundswell" by Charlene Li, and Josh Bernoff we read in chapter 11 how the connection with groundswell transforms their companies in a good way usually, and how the marketing departments learn from their mistakes like in the case of the company that tried to engage their executives in blogging. The executives refused simply because they were not immersed in social media yet, seeing little or no value in blogging. The second concern of the executives, and more important for me here was that they feared about the loss of control over the marketing message, and feared that negative comments could reflect badly on the company and lead to loss of sales. The authors of the book give this example to simply illustrate how the company executives finally embrace the groundswell.

I see that as far as the fear goes, the executives may never have actually let go off this fear completely, and I believe the marketing teams themselves are never free of  fear that social media will go out of their control and a certain twist can change the best advertising plan into a total disaster.Social media campaigns always contain a measure of risk, where responses from users cannot be controlled

In January this year, McDonalds launched a Twitter campaign using the hashtag #McDStories. McDonald’s asked users to post nostalgic stories about their experiences on Happy Meals. Sadly for them, the #McDStories campaign quickly took a whole different turn  as users started using the hashtag to instead share horror experiences and shock tales. From poor work conditions to appalling food quality, McDonald’s campaign turned negative attention back to itself.
Here are just a few examples of the tweets on the #McDStories Hashtag:
 
There are many disaster stories happening to big brand companies in social media channels, and the executives and marketers have the right to be afraid of the media going out of control. But in my opinion the companies that experience those mishaps are often those who are already on the black list of the customers. The invitation to talk like this just allows the customers to get out and openly voice their opinions that are already shaped by popular believes.There is a lot of controversy around Mc Donald's and fast foods in general, and by asking for stories from the customers Mc Donald's is asking for trouble. Don't they know they have a terrible opinion anyways?

Are the "good" companies also victims of social media going out of control or maybe if a company is perceived as positive among customers, they have nothing to fear. Maybe not quite that simple, but for sure how the company "behaves" and how it conducts its business will have a tremendous effect on its image in social media. We still have to witness if the big buzz about the unhealthy foods will finally kill the giant companies like Mc Donald's

Social media can be a great way of increasing brand awareness, customer engagement and long term loyalty and generating a  boost in sales, but it’s also a potential tool for failure and in the worst case scenario can end up with a fiasco like in case of Mc Donald's. Even a global restaurant giant, can not control conversations on the internet. Companies like Mc Donald's and their executives have a lot to fear from social media, and I don't really think they are able to embrace the groundswell.

No company can rest assured that they will be perceived as "good guys" on the groundswell, or that their particular campaign will take an expected good turn, so there is always an element of fear unless the company decides to let go of its controlling instincts and provide the best possible product or service they can, clean their act and go with the flow.

Companies who have hidden issues or are trying to push their product on customers, will meet resistance on the groundswell like Toyota did, trying to promote Camry on Twitter in a way that customers found invasive.