Who Owns Your Brand?

If you can’t firmly say that it’s you, then social media isn’t for you. Now I know the benefits of social media. I know that it means brands are now transparent, that users can openly give you feedback (both good and bad), that your messages can be interpreted and that now, more than ever, brands can have a 2-way dialogue with consumers. But with all the good that this brings, unless every person in your organisation knows your brand values inside and out, then you’re in for trouble. With social media, it is so tempting to become susceptible to everything that people are saying about you and think that you have to implement it in order to keep people happy. You don’t.

This might sound a bit rash for someone in my line of work, but it’s absolutely true. I know from experience. I want to use two examples to show the importance of keeping your brand values intact online.

First up is Ryanair. For those of you that don’t know, Ryanair were brought into a very public debate with Irish blogger Jason Roe earlier this year. In a nutshell, he wrote a post about a bug in the Ryanair site, Ryanair staff got involved and the debate got a little out of control. It was a little while until we got the official response. When the press statement was issued, it included the line “Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves as our people are far too busy driving down the cost of air travel”.

Compare that to a response from Virgin Atlantic in a similar situation. In January this year, possibly the world’s best ever letter of complaint was doing the rounds on the social media circuit. It could potentially have been very damaging for Virgin Atlantic, with photographic evidence showing the airline in a none too positive light. So what did Virgin do? They hired him.

There is a lot that can be learned from these two examples. Through their carefully handled responses the two airlines absolutely stuck to their core brand values. What is the one thing that Ryanair is known for? Cheap flights. This is exactly what they conveyed in their response. They even got this in the press statement! Ryanair is the brand we love to hate. We know what they do and they do it best. They didn’t get distracted by the furore that was building up online and offline and swiftly issue an apology. Their response is really no less than what we’d expect from them. Never has a press statement so accurately reflected the real-life experience of a brand.

In a similar vein, Virgin’s response also stayed true to their core brand values. They’re the airline that’s known for being innovative and quirky : they have cute salt and pepper shakers that say ‘stolen from Virgin Atlantic’ on the bottom, they commission artists to design sick bags. You fly with Virgin for the experience, not the cost. And their handling of the complaint conveyed their brand values. They did the unexpected and it was absolutely brilliant.

Take something from it

Companies can learn a lot from these two examples. Now, I’m not suggesting that you go around pissing off the ‘blog sphere’ just because that’s what Ryanair did. But what both these brands did is listen and respond. When companies are involved in a crisis, it’s when you see their true colours shine through. Tesco’s also did this when the founder of the Jedi religion caused a stir in the press by complaining  that he’d been kicked out the store because of his beliefs, which included wearing a hood. Their response was genius. Just like with Virgin Atlantic, the response became the story. It was humorous,unoffensive and showed Tesco’s in a positive light. They had clearly listened to what was being said about them, understood that people are impervious to the standard press statement and just had a bit of fun. Something they can do because they have such clear brand values.

I cannot stress enough the importance of having your own house in order before you experiment with social media. With brands now becoming more permeable. social media plays its part in every organisation level – from marketing, to customer service, to product development. You absolutely have to be aware of what’s being said, but you have to figure out what applies to you, how you’re going to incoporate it and what might certainly sound like a good idea but isn’t right for your organisation. Many people peddle the opinion that when you go online you have to relinquish control of your brand or you’ll risk upsetting people. Fact is, you can never please everyone and your brand will die in the process if this is what you try and do. You  do have to open your brand up through social media and be prepared for the fact that your official messages will be distorted online, but relinquishing control is the worst thing you can do. You own your brand, nobody else.