Digithoughts

Finally! Not to be a suck up but JWT’s panel on brand journalism was awesome. The panel, moderated by Bob Garfield, stayed on topic, was well balanced and conveyed different views on the subject matter.

I’ll admit, I thought the panel was primarily going to focus on JWT’s award-winning brand journalism campaign for Microsoft. However, they started off with McDonald’s (who actually works with Publicis-owned Leo Burnett).

McDonald’s, in order to improve their public image, took moms to see the farms where the food was produced. The moms then followed the potatoes from farm to fries. They repeated the process with eggs, etc. They are the Moms’ Quality Correspondents. For 3 years now McDonald's has been letting consumers tell their story.

However, it was noted that if brand journalism and letting customers tell the brand story were something brands did well, then JWT wouldn’t have had the panel.

Examples and major takeaways from the panel:

There are 30 billion status updates on Facebook every month. Brands compete for that attention. We have to advertise like a status update. You can’t just hand the product to a consumer and tell them to go create something -- that has no meaning.

When we think about brand journalism, it doesn’t mean that Pepsi should now act like CNN or The Huffington Post.

The bigger picture here, brought up by JWT North America CEO David Eastman, is that all info is becoming digital, all digital is becoming media, then media becomes marketing. When everything is marketing, how should brands and agencies behave? Brand journalism asks them to act differently. It is an experiment.

The goal of advertising is awareness. The goal of social media is credibility and trust, which is the foundation of a good relationship.

But then in terms of a brand like Pepsi, how do you forge a relationship around “sugar water”? The relationship is with the brand, not the product. The focus for consumers should be on things like shared values, etc. It goes beyond the product itself. The Pepsi Refresh came about due to the economic crisis. Pepsi saw the opportunity to build that relationship because their values aligned with their consumers’. In turn, they saw a lift in persuasion and brand equity (no need for awareness, who doesn’t know Pepsi?).

Brand journalism can use a “whole mess of journalistic forms and platforms”.

The Ford example: The campaign for the Volt was part documentary (filmmakers were even allowed into even board meetings, dealer meetings, and plant closings) followed by journalists writing about Ford’s problems -- unedited with permission from Ford. The online community then had debates about what Ford should do. These included content from major journalists from publications like BusinessWeek etc. The program ran 6-9 months, but Ford still uses it.

Part of brand journalism is aggregating and curating content that comes from somewhere else. That’s the harder part.

The Microsoft example (as expected): Microsoft allowed JWT to hire journalists and then allow those journalists to publish things they, Microsoft, don’t agree with. They then responded the way a journalist responds. It is hard to get brands to do that. Third party content -- it exists already. You have two choices- engage with it or pretend it doesn’t exist. You don’t need to amplify the negative, but don’t need to be afraid of something that is not a glowing testimonial. This allows you to be transparent.

Firing people over social media -- tweets, Facebook posts, etc. -- shows how vulnerable a brand can be. How do you reconcile the “loosey-goosey” nature of social media?

The Chrysler example: A person from Chrysler’s PR agency person tweeted about people in Detroit being terrible drivers, complete with an f-bomb. Chrysler then fired the agency because of it, even after the employee was let go. To really take part in brand journalism your journalists need to part of your organization and need to understand the values. Chrysler should have invested the tweet and see if there was any truth to people driving poorly in Detroit. They got more bad press from their overreaction than from the tweet itself. The public actually related to the tweet and then they fired the PR agency? Not the best move. He, the PR guy, made a real human connection. We love to slam big brands but we need to figure out it we are we engaging as people or as brand messengers? The reason Twitter has been so successful is because it builds relationships by sharing info. People relate to tweets.

Social media gives a brand a big, fat, anonymous voice.

A brand’s “frontlines” of social media are the social media policies they create for employees.

PepsiCo’s Shiv Singh believes likes and follows don’t mean that much if there is no engagement. We need to ask Twitter and Facebook to move away from follower and fan numbers and create a new daily engagement metric. It is much more valuable. If you have 5 million fans that haven’t read anything you’ve posted in the last 3 years, it doesn’t mean anything.

People believe less in what their friends recommend or like. This is the inevitable social media backlash.

Then there was some inner panel debate about customer service tweets. Some for it, some against it. Kyle Monson, JWT Content Strategist/Editor, was against it, stemming from when he had been tweeted at following a complaint. Contacting an angry customer via Twitter and asking them to call customer service only encourages them to keep ranting. Garfield disagreed. He once started a “Comcast Must Die” blog where other customers could post their complaints with the cable company. It wasn’t long until Comcast found the blog. They tried to get him fired first, but then engaged with everyone who came into the blog. Those formally angry customers then told everyone how Comcast came rushing and solved their problems. They turned it into a PR strategy.

This was definitely a wonderful panel. Will brands become more open because of brand journalism or even just social media? Or will they become more sensitive out of fear? How do you allow journalists and/or customers to speak freely while still controlling your brand image and reputation? How do you find that balance? It will be interesting to see how this evolves over time.

Oh and always try to remember to “think in real time”.

Reena Leone Marketing and Social Media Coordinator

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