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When it comes to social media, best practice communications strategy is to ‘listen first’ before inviting your customers to ‘ask questions later’.
Last week, JP Morgan committed what has been comprehensively branded a #socialmediafail. On 8 November, the banking giant announced that on 14 November it would run a Twitter Q&A session, featuring the hashtag #AskJPM. In the lead up to the launch, @jpmorgan invited ‘students’ to ask its VC Jimmy Lee #CareerAdvice about his leadership and experiences.
The response was, unsurprisingly, overwhelming.
Given that only a couple of months ago, JP Morgan agreed to a $300 million settlement relating to practices that were allegedly irregular and led to it ‘unjust enrichment’ there were many, many people at the ready with burning questions. Just not the type of questions that the architects of this ‘strategy’ had envisaged – indeed if they had thought far enough ahead to envisage any.
Add to this that only weeks before it entered an agreement to pay the US Government $13 billion – including some in “consumer relief” – by way of restitution for its liability over irregular mortgage securities, and the decision to open the social floodgates becomes even more unfathomable.
Over much of Wednesday afternoon, the day before the #AskJPM launch, the Twittersphere unleashed its fury at the bank.
More than two thirds of the 8,000 tweets published under the #AskJPM hashtag were negative. The New York Times published many of the tweets in its in-depth article last week.
So what went wrong?
Many companies make the mistake of deciding to be ‘social’ or go ‘digital’ without understanding that to do so successfully requires the same kind of thorough planning as any other communication activity.
When creating a sound communication strategy, there are three areas you need to agree before deciding on tactics – let alone channels:
1. Objective – what do you want to achieve from the activity?
2. Target Audience – who are you trying to reach?
3. Messages – what would you like your audience to understand from what you say or do?
And the overlay of all of this is risk management: what could possibly go wrong – and what can we do to avoid it?
The bank failed from the start. What was it trying to achieve by launching an open forum Twitter campaign at a time when its brand is experiencing such high levels of negative backlash? And even if it was clear about its objectives, the channels and tactics it deployed rendered it difficult to ever achieve the goals – perhaps an even bigger fail.
Second, JPM was targeting students with this campaign. If it had conducted appropriate research, it would have soon found that the favoured social media channel for students is not Twitter. It has never been a popular channel for students and younger demographics which currently prefer instant messenger apps. But who does favour Twitter? An older demographic, including upper socio-economic and a strong media contingent. In other words, precisely the slice of the population with the biggest beef with the bank.
Third, what was the JPM message? It is open to feedback? It is ‘social media savvy’? It is accessible through social media? Or that it has something worthy to offer in the way of career and leadership advice at a time when it is paying record fines and settlements relating to behaviour that continues to affect the lives of ordinary people years down the track? If so, the campaign would not have been deemed a #badidea by the JPM spokesperson before the campaign had even launched.
So, what should JPM have done?
Considering the three steps above should guide you to the right channel/s. From there, best practice is to ‘listen first’ to confirm your beliefs and choice of channel. This will tell you what people are saying about your brand. Where are the pain points and strengths, your detractors and promoters? If JPM had simply searched its own hashtag #JPM, it would have seen tweets alleging negligence and even “robbery”. This may have suggested against using an open forum seeking feedback from this audience. Just a bit.
JP Morgan is not the first brand to ignore the first steps in planning a social media, and more specifically Twitter, campaign. The #McDonaldstories campaign resulted in customers sharing a range of pretty revolting experiences of the fast food chain and when Tony Abbot set up #AskTony on Twitter, audiences were infuriated by their belief that he ignored the difficult questions and gave only closed answers – leading to a tirade of questions and insults.
The upshot? Social media can be a highly effective platform for two-way communication between brands and consumers or other businesses. A number of brands have done this very well (that’s another story).
A key lesson here is that, rather than trying to simply tick the social media box, brands need to more fully understand the role of social media – its pros, cons and possibilities. As with all forms of communication, you need a strong strategy in place; to devise an execution plan that mirrors it; and you overlay the whole with scenario planning and risk management.
