Twitter birds are liars

How reliable is Twitter as a source of information, especially when other media channels are sleeping?

Twitter itself is saying that they are without a doubt the best way to share and discover what is happening right now. Well, I must agree about the way to share and “right now” but "discover"  thing should be improved with words  “discover what is happening right now in the mind of users fantasy”.

Let’s take an example. 19 of December. The elections of Belarus president where Alexander Lukashenko won. the things what happened after the elections in short: 

Thousands of opposition protesters in Belarus have tried to storm the government headquarters, following the country's presidential election. A lot of people injured, because demonstration broke out in the capital city of Minsk in support of opposition presidential candidates. It happened because Alexander Lukashenko has been declared the winner, but the opposition claimed that the result was rigged. Interesting note: European Union promised to give 3 billion euros to Belarus, if the election will be held in democratic way. More about the protest  read here.

While all the media kept silent, the social network Twitter made an awesome buzz. Hundreds of new tweets every minute wrote about the situation in Minsk. All the main information channels was waiting something. One of the most popular tweets was: „CNN, BBC, Euronews WHERE ARE YOU?! Yes, Korea is tense and yes, it's snowing, but the big story is October Sq, Minsk, Belarus.”

On that time it was the only source of information to understand, what is happening in October Square. From this point of view, the Twitter really showed it’s power, when the other media channels are slow or unwilling to broadcast the happening. One very popular tweet of that night was: „The entire value of Twitter is not in tweets like "I'm Valerie, I was in a toilet ", but manly in such kind of moments.”

At the same time the main information what was retweeted the most was that there are tanks all around October square and 4 people are already killed in Minsk.” These messages created mistrust in my mind, because there was no prove- is it true or not. Hundreds of people retweeted this information and spread all over. 
Next day when finally news channels started to give an information about this happening, nobody talked about tanks and killed people. Why? Because it was lie. Anyone could write down whatever come in mind and spread it, because the attention for any information about this event was enormous. Those twitter users who didn’t understand the tweets in Russian but wanted to know what is happening, asked to translate these tweets in English. More and more misleading information came out. Another interesting thing. While this buzz in Twitter happened, immediately a fake profile of the Belarus president was made, where "he" gave "his" opinion, which again was immediately retweeted.

So, how really powerful is twitter in such kind of moments when people are the journalists and tell the news? The bright and really amazing thing is that you can get these news immediately and from the person involved in the happening, but from the other point of view, they have the opportunity  to manipulate and spread untruth information. I don’t say that the news channels doesn’t do, but I think it’s more about hiding the information or telling the half true. In Twitter case the lies are more brutal.  

My Starbucks idea- success or failure?

"My Starbucks Idea" is the site of Starbucks where Internet users all around the world can register and post their ideas about how to improve Starbucks business, than vote for other Internet user ideas, leave comments and see the implementation of the best ideas. The point is that customers know better than anyone else what they want to improve  in Starbucks.

The idea is really simple- you as a customer post your idea, then other Internet users will vote if they like your idea, their comment your post, discuss it and if your idea get a lot of attention (votes), Starbucks will implement this idea and Starbucks will improve customer satisfaction.

It’s a good and clever point to listen your customers and threw listening get their involvement and their ideas. Internet users discuss them, comment, say their opinion. When they post their idea, their spread this message to all social networks they are involved and Starbucks get a lot of attention.

 In this way Starbucks also implement the idea Starbucks is all about experience, it’s not just a cup of coffee. They have created this feeling into customers minds that they are the 3 place between work and home.

So, this in my opinion is the success part of the campaign- perfect engagement with customers and personalized communication. Then where is the dark side? I made some research and found a lot of articles about the failure of this campaign. “My Starbucks Idea, despite receiving over 75,653 ideas, has only implemented 315 ideas to-date, an even more miserly 0.4% of the total.” The negative aspect is that they are claiming to be a company which are listening their customers and get the input from them. At the same time it’s clear that they actually don’t use it. It’s like a cheating, because they actually implement the customer ideas which they already had in their minds. Here you can read about it. So they declare that they have implemented customer ideas when actually, they haven’t. So you get a feeling of cheating and  create some kind of gap between customer satisfaction and customer expectation.

In conclusion, my opinion is that in terms of social marketing campaign, it’s a success, the way they promote their website and their brand idea is great, but from improving business from customer research is a failure. Customers are not stupid. And I don't mean here the "Diesel" stupidness. I hope that kind of stupidness is inside of all of us!

Pepsi refresh the word

 OR "engagement with customers  nowadays is the key aspect of success"

I want to share a good example how to use the social media towards  customer engagement- „Pepsi”  campaign called "Pepsi refresh project". The idea of this campaign is to look for the ideas of people and businesses that will have a positive impact on society and get  these ideas awarded. The total amount of money "Pepsi" is going to spend are 20 million dollars. It encourage people to think about how they want to change their community. Who wins? The ideas which have the most votes from Internet users.  "Pepsi" spread this message using social media such as Facebook, Twitter, website and Youtube with the aim to involve and engage customers. 

Of course, "Pepsi" still need to go a long  way to reach the amount of the audience like their main competitor- "Coca Cola"- on Twitter "Coca Cola"'  has 3 times bigger audience and on Facebook- 18 times than "Pepsi". 

It’s a good example of social media use and how the company „work” and show their vision- „PepsiCo's responsibility is to continually improve all aspects of the world in which we operate - environment, social, economic - creating a better tomorrow than today." At the same time this vision sounds very modern, so I'm not sure they haven't came with this vision now, to get an idea into customers minds about "socially responsible company", because that's the hot topic now.

Anyway, they have gain a lot of good things with their campaign- the number of fans  is growing, they are getting more and more ideas how to make the word better .They see what people are concerned about, which are the most popular topics, they are engaging with customers and what is not bad at all- they are showing their attitude towards a better life. 

The only thing I’m a little bit confused is that I don’t see how this campaign goes together with their previous one, where they used expensive testimonials to advertise their brand. Now this idea about making the word better place for me is like a contrary with the things they did before. For me they are like saying: „Hey, instead of paying a huge amount of money to Britney or Timberlake, we donate this money for the aim of better world." 

But anyway, good job Pepsi, I like your new attitude! 

Website of Pepsi refresh project