Looking at the coverage on the TV and the Web, it struck me that the news stories did not have a strong voice from Maclaren and that got me interested in how the company was managing the crisis and specifically whether they were using social media as part of the campaign.  After all, the decision to undertake a recall of these proportions would not have been taken lightly or quickly by such an established brand and surely the media/PR planning would have been meticulous …

A bit of web searching unearthed a fascinating blog post from Harvard Business Review entitled “Maclaren’s Product Recall: What Would You Do?”  The post discussed the impact of the recall on the company’s brand and business and then put forward some strategies from crisis management experts originally included in an HBR case published in 2001 on an eerily similar theme.  I have summarised HBR’s recommendations below:

Engage a reputable, independent, outside investigator …

Hire a crisis management expert charged with setting up and training a permanent, internal crisis-management team comprising people from the operations, marketing, IT, security, and legal departments …

Call the babies’ families. Offer to meet with them privately and provide whatever assistance possible, including paying the medical bills …

Announce the recall in paid advertisements as well as issuing the joint press release with the CPSC [U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission] …

All of these recommendations make complete sense of course, but they don’t go far enough.  What jumped out at me was that the proposed strategies completely ignored the role of the Internet and in particular how Maclaren should engage with their customers through social media to get their message out, tell their story, rally their advocates, answer customers’ questions and respond to their concerns and fears.

This omission looks all the more glaring as in this case, Maclaren has not pursued an aggressive, nor systematic online campaign – as Time has noticed.  Just take look at the very tame official twitter account for Maclaren UK, or indeed the slightly more proactive (but still lame) account for Maclaren US.

So to answer HBR’s question, this is what I would do …

1. Hire an experienced community manager fast:  You need a community manager (more likely a small community team) who can take part on Maclaren’s behalf in online conversations across the Web.  This person or team will also be responsible for bringing these conversations into the company and will be a vital interface with senior executives, product management, customer service and PR. Believe me an agency could not perform this role for you as they cannot be an authentic voice for the company in the public domain, and they are external to the org, so cannot help you with internal co-ordination.

2. Make sure you know what people are saying about you and where: if you are to have a responsive campaign around the recall, you need to be listening to the multiple conversations people are having about you.  Use a social media monitoring tool like Radian 6, Scout Labs, or Nielsen Buzz Metrics, to understand how the issue is resonating on the web and the impact your campaign is having.

3. Take part in conversations across the Web:  Once you know what people are talking about and where, don’t sit on the insight, but use it to engage with your customers.  Don’t assume that having social-media powered conversation means putting up a page on Facebook.  For an issue of this type the most active conversations may be across multiple parenting communities and blogs.  Send your Community management team to listen first and then engage where the discussion is happening so they can clarify issues, help customers with information and put your side of the case openly.

4. Use Twitter properly: Don’t fall into the big brand trap of using Twitter simply as a tool to push out press releases or company information.  If you do that, you end up (like today) with a handful of followers.  You need to build up a following and use Twitter as another conversational tool. So look for who is tweeting about Maclaren and the recall, reply to them, follow them so you can DM them, and retweet your advocates.

5. Work with advocates and detractors: There are many people who are still on your side across the globe and of course many who aren’t.  What binds them is both communities are emotionally involved with the issue.  So work creatively with both groups and make it easy for them to share and pass on information about the recall through the digital media they use and the communities they are involved with.  

6. Facilitate discussion on your Web site about the recall:  You are really missing a trick with your Web site. It won’t be effective for you, if you simply use it to push out a corporate message. That well-intentioned light box message on the home page won’t change what people think, and is intrusive to people who are trying to find out information and get advice.  So junk it, and instead use your customer service area as a place of conversation with your customers.  At this stage people are more likely to believe what others are saying about you than your official messages, so creating a structured conversation on your site will work to your benefit.  A tool like Get Satisfaction is a good option here.

Making online conversations a core element of the crisis management strategy for Maclaren will also deliver longer term business benefits for the brand as it builds a platform and team who can absorb and act on feedback quickly from customers. This will only reflect well on brand, improve Maclaren’s customer service, and help in new product development, long after the PR storm from the product recall has passed.

And as for Harvard Business Review, well, good effort but need to try harder. Time to update the case methinks …

I put myself down for thesis 18 which is the subject of the rest of this post:

“18. Companies that don’t realize their markets are now networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversation are missing their best opportunity.” … here goes

Business feels more comfortable seeing the customer as ‘king’ rather than as a peer. After all, it’s easier for the marketing dept. of a company to objectify and bestow importance upon its customer as a segment (identifiable, but not easily actionable), a target market, trend or latent need, rather than go through the day-to-day, humdrum activity of talking to the people who consume its products and services.

The trouble is we as customers are down-to-earth republicans at heart and prefer to solicit the views of other people before we make a purchasing decision and indeed afterwards.   Online communities are now an integral part of the early stages of the purchasing cycle and after-sales support process.  We consult them long before we go near the official web site of a business …  it’s been a very long time since I booked a hotel room without vetting it first through Tripadvisor.  And off-line we use our personal networks to find trusted suppliers for the jobs we need to get done.  Some recent research from BT found that the biggest driver of new business leads for small businesses was still offline Word of Mouth – 70% of the sample got the majority of their business this way, going up to 88% for sectors such as professional services.

Companies have everything to gain from tapping into the power of conversations both on and offline. The example of  Walkers Crisps is a good one.  They have run a campaign to get the public to suggest new flavours for crisps (1.2M entered!) and then vote on the finalists made into packets of crisps like the Cajun Squirrel pictured here.

You may think this is a cheesy viral … I see it as a fantastic way for Walkers to become part of a fun, creative and meaningful conversation with its customers that will reinvigorate its product line and sales. The crisp company has made itself the subject of the conversation between its customers.

A related but alternative strategy is for a business to become the place of conversation for its customers, in other words a platform.  This is the approach of a community like Get Satisfaction for example.

In contrast I see many of the large customer review sites that provide a platform for consumers to comment on a company, but limit the means of interaction/right of response of the business, as a flawed medium.  At the end of the day it doesn’t help consumers if the subject of the conversation can’t take part in it!  Yelp’s recent change of policy to allow businesses to comment on reviews indicates that having a one-sided conversation is not the best way forward either for individuals or businesses.

The Cluetrain Manifesto ten years ago made a compelling case for markets to be seen as conversations that remains as valid today.  Business practice has yet to catch up with consumer behaviour, but the signs are positive and change is accelerating.

The power of consumer reviews is undeniable in influencing purchasing behaviours.  However, I think it’s time we got our telescopes out and took a peek into the firmament to see what is driving reviews and ratings behaviour – in particular to assess whether review sites actually give a balanced perspective on the good, not so good and sometimes bad businesses or products listed thereon.

The 5-star-ratings model is the de facto standard for review sites.  But is the distribution of stars uniform over the 5-point range?  It would appear not … as this distribution from Yelp in September shows.

A whopping 67% of all reviews on this very popular site gave either 4 or 5 stars.  A measly 15% of reviews gave businesses 1 or 2 stars.   Why is this the case? and should we be worried about it?

I’ve just finished reading an intriguing report by Jupiter Research on the use of Web 2.0 technologies in Retail that highlighted a couple of very salient findings. For a start Jupiter underlined just how central reviews and ratings are to online purchasing decisions today as it found that 77% of US online shoppers look at product reviews and ratings.

But what really caught my attention was the difference in consumer behaviour after a positive and a negative shopping experience online.  Consumers are, according to the research, more likely to take a survey (43%) after a good experience than a bad one (17%), more likely to tell friends about good experience (31%) than a bad one (21%), and more likely to write a product review about a product they liked (9%) than one they didn’t (4%).

So it does appear that as consumers we really only want to tell the good news and this results in reviews being skewed towards the top end of the scale.  If this pattern of behaviour holds true then I would argue that the 5 point scale is potentially flawed as it presents an illusion of objectivity and a paucity of insight –   If 67% of the restaurants in a town I want to visit have 4 or 5 stars, how do I then choose between them?

And this gets me onto a second concern which is the trouble an aggregated star rating system has in conveying the richness of a product or service experience.  Julian Blom at LBi sent me this picture that illustrates the problem beautifully.

In this case a ‘neutral’ three star product rating is given based on the reviews of two consumers with polar opposite opinions.  This example shows that any aggregated rating system suffers from the degree of freedom it has from the original consumer experience.

Compound this distance from the original experience with the fact that consumers tend towards giving positive rather than negative reviews and I can’t help thinking that star-based review systems may have some fundamental limitations.

Looking beyond the instant gratification of a star rating, an alternative approach to getting deeper insight into a product or service experience, and the quality of the business providing it, is available through sites such as Get Satisfaction that enable consumers and businesses to interact openly around product or service issues.

The story of the growth of this label is fascinating, not least because it was started in the 1950′s by a brother and sister who were white, yet it made its name by discovering and promoting some of the most well-known African-American artists of all time, supported by thoroughly ethnically integrated backing bands.

Remarkable for its time and place.

Key to its success (and in sharp distinction to Motown) was its open-door policy of allowing anyone to come in off the street and play with the band. People came and went, participated, connections were made, talent emerged and became part of the Stax community.

I couldn’t help thinking that the open-door model is really what makes for a successful community-based web site. The record label was the platform. Stax removed the barriers to participation and created the place where individuals wanted to come together and be creative.  The label was also the social object around which the community could coalesce meaningfully. The label became successful once it had created a vibrant community (it’s ‘family’ as Stax and its artists described it) and a nexus for talent.  Cash followed community.

A really simple recipe for success that we could all do well to strive to emulate.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T