How Product Recalls Spread Through Social Media

February was a busy month for major product recalls.

Let's look at how the web and social media responded to 3 different companies in 3 different industries that announced major recalls. (A companion set of slides is also available on SlideShare.) The goal is to see if there were any similarities and differences based on how it was handled in those critical first 7 days.

General Motors 

GM announced on February 13th a major ignition switch recall, affecting 1.6 million vehicles. Many believe GM allegedly knew about the risks years ago and should have reported it sooner. A federal investigation is under way.

In the chart above, it is the number of mentions about the GM recall in the first week after the announcement.
As shown, GM instantly got lots of mentions in the mainstream media (under Other), such as Automotive News, USA Today, and Reuters. GM is an established global brand in a 100-year old auto industry that is heavily covered by traditional journalists. It was "front page" news in business publications, automotive publications, and those covering it from the angle of this being the first true test for the new female CEO Mary Barra.

Then news spread quickly on Facebook within 24 hours. Interestingly, Twitter had less conversations. But on Twitter, the top posters were still traditional news outlets like USAToday (with nearly 1 million followers) and @ReutersBiz.

Ironically, if you go to GM's Media site and look at February 12th (around the time of this recall), there is no mention of the ignition switch recall. Instead, there's a press release on how "GM Leads Automakers in Dependability Awards."

Even though @GMCustomerSvc responded to a few users on Twitter, GM was a bit slow to leverage social media to manage this PR crisis. @ChevyCustCare didn't really take to social media to address consumer concerns until nearly 2 weeks later when consumer backlash in social media risked long-term brand damage (a la Toyota's 2010 recall #FAIL). By then #gmrecall was trending quickly.

In a letter to employees, CEO Mary Barra defended GM and said it was a top priority for her to investigate this. Time will tell how this plays out.

Fitbit

Fitbit is a relatively young company that is the category leader in the nascent wearable tech industry. It's Fitbit Force is a wristband you wear that can track your activity. In January, customers were complaining on Fitbit's forums about skin rashes. Initially Fitbit attributed the issues to allergic reactions to nickel and said the device was tested by medical professionals. But consumer complaints piled up, Fitbit finally announced a product recall on February 20th with a blog post by CEO James Park. The Wall Street Journal was one of the first to break the news on mainstream media on February 21st. Then the floodgates burst open when the company's @FitbitSupport Twitter team started to responding to Twitter users. Word also spread, but to a lesser degree, on Facebook. (See below)

Fitbit got news out rapidly across all channels -- on its website and its social media channels instantly. That really helped calm the masses, as shown above.

FreeStyle / Omnipod

FreeStyle, from Abbott Diabetes Care, is a popular brand of blood glucose monitors for diabetes patients. Omnipod is an insulin management system made by Insulet. FreeStyle issued a product recall press release on February 19th on its corporate website about FreeStyle test strips leading to erroneous blood glucose readings when used with Omnipod.

As shown above, news spread rapidly in the first day on Facebook and Twitter via individuals and major diabetes organizations, such as JDRF. Discussions and lots of questions started developing by the first weekend in online forums, such as the American Diabetes Association's community.diabetes.org. A few influential bloggers, such as DiabetesMine and TheBloodSugarWhisperer, also posted the news early on.

By Monday, people were reporting in forums, Facebook, and Twitter of finally receiving letters in the mail and experiencing long wait times in the call center. This led to a second wave of online discussions as shown above.

Mainstream media was not as prominent in this case.

Conclusions

It's generally true that Facebook and Twitter is like gasoline on fire. And brands need to be ready to respond in those channels.

It is also interesting to see there isn't one common pattern for how news, such as major recalls, propagates online. It depends a lot on the industry, the brand's online presence (whether it has active social networks that are engaging with users in a customer support capacity), and an integrated online and offline communication strategy and execution.

When you look at a heavily watched and discussed industry like automotive, consumers (lots of people own, depend on, and love their cars), business people, and journalists all engage in conversations online.

Now look at a traditional regulated industry like medical devices. This industry tends to move slower in general, but it's even more cautious and slow to embrace social media. Heck, it wasn't until January of this year that the FDA finally released its draft guidelines for social media/UGC usage - 10 years after Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg.

As Abbott Diabetes Care and Insulet learned, a few crucial days between the online press release and patient receiving mailed letters, coupled with a lack of a major presence in social networks, really fanned the flames online. Hjalte Hojsgaard, Insulet's manager of consumer marketing, sums up the issue quite well: “We would have liked to get the letter out even sooner, and get the word out on our website and social media, but these things sometimes take some time."

It was the opposite case with Fitbit, which is a company born in the Internet age. So it's not surprising that it had all the info consumers needed online when the recall was announced. It took full advantage of its robust social media presence that includes 13K @FitbitSupport Twitter followers to engage concerned customers. While GM has several decent-sized social media accounts, it waited too long to start engaging customers online, threatening to hurt the GM and Chevy brands.

Overall, Fitbit was the best of the 3 companies in managing the recall, once they "admitted" there was a problem.

(A companion set of slides is also available on SlideShare: Analyzing Online Consumer Reaction to 3 Major Product Recalls in February 2014

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Twitter Jumps on Behavioral Targeting Bandwagon

On Wednesday, Twitter had a blog post about "Experimenting with new ways to tailor ads." They provided the following example:

Let’s say a local florist wants to advertise a Valentine’s Day special on Twitter. They’d prefer to show their ad to flower enthusiasts who frequent their website or subscribe to their newsletter. To get the special offer to those people who are also on Twitter, the shop may share with us a scrambled, unreadable email address (a hash) or browser-related information (a browser cookie ID). We can then match that information to accounts in order to show them a Promoted Tweet with the Valentine’s Day deal.

It is an interesting move by Twitter to engage in behavioral targeting, which is a proven tactic in online advertising. What we're seeing more of in the industry is what data is brought to bear to inform and improve re-targeting.

For example, site re-targeting was huge when it first came out. The idea of being able to serve a "hey, you, come on back and finish that order we know you were looking at on our site the other day" online ad to a cookied  user who had come to your site was fantastic! It still is.

As re-targeting grew, people got more creative with data, especially ways to tie various online data sets via cookies or other means. In Twitter's case, an email address or cookie would be tied to an advertiser's first-party data. I've also worked with brands that hand over their first-party CRM data (email addresses -- which are needed as the primary key to match to another data set -- and key segmentation variables) to a DMP/DSP that attempts to match user's cookies to re-target them across ad networks. In some cases, an intermediary like LiveRamp helps marry the data sets to facilitate this process.

The other targeting trend I am seeing that I think could show promise is 3rd-party data append of offline data to online behavioral data. For a long time, classic direct marketers have appended data from the likes of Experian or Acxiom with their CRM data to learn more about their customers' interests, financial profile, or shopping behavior. The challenge for a long time is with anonymous cookies, how do you tie that to a real person offline. Email was and still is a great primary key as consumers often use a specific legitimate email address for online shopping, signing up for newsletters or contests, etc. and usually keep that email address updated. That led to companies like Rapleaf whose main business is matching users via email addresses.

Then Facebook took it to a new level earlier this year when they announced a partnership with major 3rd-party marketing data companies, such as Epsilon, Acxiom, and Datalogix. Those names sound familiar? With their new self-serve Partner Categories ads, Facebook claimed it was a new way to target ads to more categories of people. For example, a local car dealership can now show ads to people who are likely in the market for a new car who live near their dealership. To date, advertisers have been able to show ads to people based on their expressed interests on Facebook. Now with Partner Categories, they can also show ads to people on Facebook based on the products and brands they buy online or offline. This has the potential to marry tried and true techniques of direct marketers with the power of the social graph!

And then there's FBX -- Facebook Exchange, which allows real-time bidding and behavioral targeting with data from third-party Web sites.

It's too early to tell if all this is working at Facebook. But in one early report of Partner Categories tests run by Facebook partner Social Code using a wonky KPI called "engagement per Like (EPL)" showed promise.

For a data-driven strategist like me, it's fun to get my hands dirty with first-party CRM data, 3rd-party data appends, and these social networks. What an exciting time in the industry!

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The Problem with Twitter and "Live" Events (on Tape Delay)

During the TV Upfront events this week, there was lots of talk about Twitter and television viewing. Yes, it's tough to watch anything on TV these days without a Twitter hashtag on the bottom of the screen. And Twitter has been cutting partnership deals left and right it seems. From ESPN to FOX to even the NBA (I know that's not a TV network), Twitter is working hard to justify its hot valuation!

For live sporting events, like NBA games, Twitter is great for engaging in the conversion in the moment. Everyone in the country is watching the actual event at the same time.

What I find more challenging and annoying is when networks are airing a "live" event that will be shown on tape delay across the country at different times. Those of us on the West Coast usually are victims of spoilers from East Coast viewers. To be clear, this problem is not new and has long existed before Twitter came along. You could always talk on the phone with a friend in the other time zone. And then when email and texting came along, you could get spoiler alerts from your so-called friends after they just watched the show. But Twitter and promoted # hashtags exacerbate the problem.

Take the American Idol Season Finale this past Thursday night. Throughout the show #idolfinale is on-screen. If you follow this conversation and you were on the West Coast, you can see that news of Candice Glover being the winner was already hitting the Twittersphere before the show even aired on the West. (See timestamp below for 7:16pm PST)

Heck, you can even watch all the great performances, such as J Lo's, via Twitter links before it's even on FOX. (See timestamp below for 7:39pm PST)

Imagine you are on Twitter watching the show from California and tweeting to #idolfinale. How can you not help but to see that the tweets before yours already has all the buzz about who actually won?

What's the solution? Not sure...geo targeted tweets that aren't shown instantly in all time zones?

Thankfully, I don't tweet when I watch TV so I'm immune to Twitter spoiler alerts.

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5 Interesting Things I Learned about Twitter at SMX Advanced

Reflecting back on my Seattle trip early this week to attend SMX Advanced, the Twitter session and the amount of questions and discussions about Twitter overall stood out in my mind.

Even though I live and drink the social media Kool Aid daily, I learned a few things about Twitter that I thought I'd share in this post (in no particular order).

1. Twitter will ban your account for various reasons. One audience member claimed this could happen if you tweet a lot more links rather than real conversation messages. Or if you follow a lot of people in a short time period. Apparently, all of this makes Twitter think you're likely a Twitter spammer.
2. Several attendees had questions about how do you separate personal and business accounts if you have a very visible and successful Twitter company account managed by someone who could leave the company any day...and all that equity on Twitter goes out the door with him/her. For example, if Tony Hsieh left Zappos or if Frank left Comcast, what would happen to those accounts and their loyal followers? What should companies do to "protect" such a scenario? Interesting situation to think about...
   
3. Not all URL shorteners are created equal. Beware of those that don't do 301 redirects. Danny Sullivan wrote a great guide based on his in-depth evaluation of URL shorteners. His top suggestion? Bit.ly. Mine too.
   
4. On the subject of URL shorteners, I'm starting to think twice about clicking on a shortened URL from people I don't really know or trust since one has no idea where that link takes you. I might end up getting my computer hijacked!
   
5. Learned about Easytweets, a good tool for brands to manage multiple accounts at once, monitor mentions of your brand or other keywords continuously, and get alerts via SMS or email. I added them to my list of client recommendations for a good Twitter management tool.
   

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Where is Twitter on the Hype Cycle?

I love the Hype Cycle curve developed by Gartner. It kinda reminds me of Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm in the sense that many companies, especially tech, never manage to go mainstream...in other words, they fail to cross the chasm.

This hype cycle is related because some technologies, like Twitter, are over-hyped and fail to go mainstream and, more importantly, make $$$!



Source: Webguild
Where will Twitter end up?
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BART going 2.0 on us!

I spend a lot of my time at work trying to convince clients to invest more online, especially in social media. These are smart marketers at big brands. And many are so gun shy to just pull the trigger and DO SOMETHING!

I find it ironic then that BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) has been more progressive than some of these clients.


(Photo courtesy of SF Weekly)

They were already running a great near-real-time email-based BART advisory alert service that often reported delays to its schedule. But then I noticed an ad on a BART train telling people to follow them on Twitter (twitter.com/sfbart). They not only push out delays in the system, but they are responding to user feedback and issues, promoting local events and how BART can get you there, and proactively engaging in the community in useful ways (e.g., this tweet from last week when big RSA conference was in town: "Welcome to all the folks taking BART to RSA! Let us know if you have questions and we'll try to answer. #rsac"). They are even giving away $25 BART gift cards for favorite tweets about BART. Best of all, the tweets feel very personable, not just what you'd read on their "dry" website.But they're doing more than just Twitter. They have RSS feeds. They've also opened up their schedule and real-time data to third-party developers. This recent news release about their "Developer App Center" summarizes some of the other cool stuff they have cooking in mobile space. They did a mobile survey and appear to actually be listening and responding!

It makes business sense why they're reaching out to developers and customers. California and many municipalities are facing budget cuts so they have to rely on the collective wisdom of the community, given their limited resources.

Overall, I am very impressed by this new face for BART. Keep it up, guys!

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It May Help to Think of Twitter Like Email Marketing...Sorta

Many brands and consumers are still trying to figure out this whole Twitter thing. Meanwhile, brands that have setup Twitter accounts, such as @comcastcares and @zappos, are often cited as shining examples of leveraging this new medium. As a marketer, you can make excuses for why Twitter works for those guys and why it wouldn’t work for you. I say: get over it!

For marketers, one way to convince your company (or yourself) to experiment with Twitter is to apply some of your experience and comfort level from managing your email marketing programs.

Think about it this way. If you set up a Twitter account and get followers, that’s like customers signing up to be on your email list and opting in for future marketing communications. But there are a few notable differences:

• Email marketing can be highly targeted and versioned. You can’t easily do that on Twitter (at least not with one account). It’s one-size-fits-all.

• Twitter is primarily used as a public broadcast medium. But unlike other broadcast media like TV, radio or even banner ads, Twitter is opt-in and users can un-follow you with one click any time.

• It doesn’t require heavy creative resources to deploy a campaign – no graphics to create, or layout and limited copywriting (the 140 character text limit helps serve as a forcing function).

• Tweets (the equivalent of an email blast) can be made much faster than email communications because of the casual, limited text nature of “tweets”.

• No need to deal with being blacklisted or wasting all your time managing and scrubbing your email database. Twitter bounceback rate? There’s no such thing?

• Twitter technically costs nearly nothing to setup and manage, but does require human resources to maintain active presence in this community.

So, go ahead and dip your toe in the water, like Twitter newbie Doubletree Hotels. Test pushing out deals. Inform consumers of new product launches or updates. Announce local events. Like opt-in email, make sure the customer sees the benefit of following you on Twitter.

Promote your Twitter account with Twitter badges on your site and other social spaces (e.g., your brand’s Facebook page), email signature block, direct mail, packaging. In short, much like the late 90’s when brands promoted their AOL keyword or URL on all advertising and packaging, why not encourage customers to “follow us @BrandX”?

You can also search for existing brand mentions at search.twitter.com to proactively reach out to those who are already talking about you on Twitter. In many cases, this will put you in a customer support (not marketing) role, so engage them directly in a meaningful way if you are able to help.

Unlike other push media, like broadcast or email, be prepared for followers to respond quickly and publicly…positively or negatively! You’ll need a community manager and rules of engagement to avoid a PR nightmare. Most users will expect a timely response, probably faster than your current customer service response rates.

To show I am not offering a totally biased view of exploiting Twitter, I leave you with this counterpoint from this website:http://www.howtousetwitterformarketingandpr.com/

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