Customs Street Advisors is a full service investor relations firm based in Lagos, Nigeria.

Virtual SADness (Self Assured Destruction) on Social Media

This week on Street Talking in NEXT, I point out that contrary to the popular belief that companies expose themselves to attacks from embittered customers, angry investors and unscrupulous competitors when they join social networks, the reality is that they may be their own worst enemies on social media. Instead of obsessing about their exposure to potshots on these networks, companies should pay attention to training their staff on the professional and proper use of social media.

‘I will not give people a tool to harm me. Can’t you see that these are weapons of mass destruction?’ Those were the ringing words of the head of corporate communications at one of Nigeria’s biggest companies in reference to social media.

We were having a chat on the opportunities that sites like Facebook and Twitter could offer companies like his to enhance contact with customers and investors. His attitude was vehement rejection. In his opinion, joining a social network would expose his employer to all kinds of attacks from embittered customers, angry investors and unscrupulous competitors.

He argued that his responsibility is to ensure total control over the message and he will never give that up through membership on any of these ‘so-called online forums’. If that was the price of engagement, then he would pass.

I tried to explain that the company’s participation or not in social media made no difference to committed brand bashers who would attack anyway. Moreover, the company would miss the positive benefits of these sites. Nyet! He would have none of it. ‘They can say what they want there but if we lend our voice through comments or responses there then we would be legitimizing them.’ For a second, I thought I was listening to Avigdor Lieberman, the far-right Israeli Foreign minister, affirming the principle of not negotiating with Hizbollah terrorists.

Finally, I asked him if he had, at least, bothered to claim his company name on these popular networks to avoid squatting or impersonation. He replied, ‘What for? There is no need.’ His obsession with us (the company) versus them (members of social networks) and here (the company website) versus there (social networks) bordered on the paranoid. I gave up.

The recent experience of Nestlé, the world’s biggest food company, would seem to lend credence to these reservations. Greenpeace, the environmental activist group, has been running a slick online campaign accusing Nestlé of sourcing of palm oil from an unethical supplier whose slash-and-burn methods are wiping out the natural habitat of orangutans in Indonesia.

In response, sympathizers flocked to the Nestlé’s Facebook fan page at http://www.facebook.com/nestle to express their displeasure. Many of them changed their Facebook profile pictures to baby orangutans and an ingenious alteration of the famous KitKat logo, which had the prefix ‘Killer’.

At some point, the barrage of criticism became too much to bear for the Nestlé fan page administrator who joined the fray with a rash of sarcastic and downright rude replies.

The following exchange says it all:

Sheena Indhul: I have several things I’d like to say to the director of Nestlé . . . please explain corporate social investment. Why on earth have World Wide Fund (WWF) eco-schools . . . when you are killing endangered orangutans to make KitKat?

Nestlé fan page admin response: Get it off your chest. We’ll pass it on.

Here’s another tiff:

Helen Constable: I’d like to know if the person writing the comments for Nestlé actually has the backing from Nestlé? I doubt it. Even a dumbass company like them would get such as idiot to be their public voice.

Nestlé fan page admin response: I think you missed the ‘not’ there Helen.

The administrator’s previous comments are child’s play compared to the next sledgehammer remark:

Nestlé fan page admin: So let’s see, we have to be well mannered all the time, but its perfectly acceptable to refer to us as everything from idiots right the way down to sons of Satan with a few obscenities and strange sexual practices thrown in.

Martin Clunes, the patron saint of incorrigibly laddish behavior and star of Men Behaving Badly, the British comedy, could not have put up a better performance.

Two weeks ago, the Vevey, Switzerland-based company shut down the fan page. In my opinion, the food giant’s reaction was based more on the caustic remarks of its Facebook administrator than on the Greenpeace campaign. By her actions, the administrator had done more damage to the company’s reputation that any activist could. Talk of shooting oneself in the foot.

In the past, it used to be that the mere act of joining a social network by a company was a certification of coolness. Back then, signing up was 80% of the job. The remaining 20% was about posting inanities and gathering followers even when they were spam or inactive. Today, joining a network is but the first step in a thousand mile journey.

Followers and fans will grill a company on every subject, including its customer service, social responsibility, governance, strategy, financial results, recruitment policies, gender bias in the management, etc.

The Nestlé experience shows that companies can be their own worst enemies on social media. The long-feared enemy could well be an unsupervised or poorly trained staff member typing away in a cubicle in the corporate communications department and not external forces impatient to usurp the company’s Facebook fan page or Twitter hash tag.

The 3Cs (content, conversation and community in that order) form the tripod of social media. When a company focuses on one leg without thinking of its consequences on the others, it is brewing a disaster.

For instance, in the past I have observed @UBAGroup and @GTBankOnline tweeting their share prices on days when they have risen. Do they really want to start a conversation or build a community around their share price in addition to the litigation risks of being misconstrued to be soliciting purchase of own shares without disclaimers? I have had to caution both institutions, which are head and shoulders above their peers in the embrace of social media, against this practice.

Of equal danger was a more recent tweet I received from@GTBankOnline on a political event. On March 17, a day after a youth rally led by the Enough is Enough movement in Abuja to demand changes in the governance of the country, the Twitter manager sent this message:

Yesterday was a great day for young people in Nigeria. Abuja stood still. How can GTBank help you today?

However commendable the civic activism of the Enough is Enough membership, by tweeting on the event, @GTBankOnline is signalling that it (the board and executive management of the bank, not just the social media administrator) approves of the rally and would like to start a conversation around the topic. I have very strong doubts that this is a desirable scenario for the financial institution.

Without intelligently articulated and vigorously enforced social media policies, companies expose themselves to rogue representatives whose best intentions may do more harm than good.

Thomas Kuhn, the late Harvard University philosopher of science and author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, was not far from the truth when he noted that a generation of scientists has to die (literally) for a paradigm shift to occur. Social media is the disruptive new physics. A generation of corporate communications heads may have to roll before the discontinuity occurs. Death to the die-hards.

The original article may be read here on the NEXT website.

Related posts:

1. Mind the Gap when hopping on the Social Media bandwagon Around the world, social media is the old ‘new’ buzzword....
2. You’re so vain, I bet you think this song is about You, don’t you: How social media breaks the corporate ego Last week, the CEO of a public company told me...
3. One thousand ways to say ‘I Connect’: How companies on the Nigerian Stock Exchange can use social media (1). What is social media? Are social media and social networks...
4. One thousand ways to say ‘I Connect’: How companies on the Nigerian Stock Exchange can use social media (2). What is social media? Are social media and social networks...
5. Super-connected: Social media usage in Investor Relations by Carolina Bridi of Brazil’s Capital Aberto magazine Last month, Capital Aberto, the leading business magazine in Brazil,...