PR & Social Networking

So I have recently taken part in a presentation on the topic of social networking and how it is used in PR, as a group we looked at a variety of campaigns and certain companies that used social media. I personally decided to focus primarily on the social media experiment that Skittles developed and that of Coca-Cola. Both companies created massive campaigns, and as I shall discuss both were highly successful.

The popularity of social networking sites seem to increase daily with Facebook, Bebo and Twitter being the competition leaders in the UK. Companies of all descriptions have been quick to jump on this bandwagon. As we have seen recently with the case of Nestle and their recent mismanagement of their Facebook page the manner in which you interact with bloggers and fans is of prime importance as it can ensure the maintenance of a relationship with consumers and therefore maintain positive brand image and reputation. Content as always is King. The use of films, adverts, games and interaction will ensure that a campaign or company in general is discussed by those online but will also hopefully lead to further discussion in general society. Attention must be captured to ensure the interest is maintained, certainly want to preserve consumer support whilst also developing new fans. Those working on the social media side of things must ensure that they are continuously involved in all areas of their social networking that relate to their product and campaign.

In the case of Skittles it was in 2009 that they launched a new social media campaign by turning its entire website into a social media experiment. This move was questioned by some, mostly because it was unfiltered and anything could be said, but many felt it was a daring move to be admired. All this behaviour caused for a buzz to grow around Skittles resulting in their Facebook Fans rising from 600,000 to 4million.The Facebook page is called ‘Mix the Rainbow’ and allows for members to interact with one another and can often see a representative from Skittles entering into conversation, often with light hearted banter, for example

Derek says: Is it just me, or does there seem to be too many orange ones in the bags now?

Skittle says: Derek despite what you or the Internet may think, we can assure you there is no orange skittles conspiracy-red on the other hand…

Towards the end of 2009 Big Spaceship, a New York agency, were given the task of reinventing Skittles.com. Big Spaceship have been enlisted to ensure that fans remain engaged in the Skittles brand, they do this by posting every day which often results in comments from fans. Interaction is key when it comes to the Skittles brand. Skittles certainly seem to have embraced social media in a big way. This is certainly a brave move for them to have taken and as a result of this they can certainly be regarded as frontrunner in social media.

Coca-Cola has over 5million Fans on Facebook, it has blogs eg Coke Zone Blog, a Twitter account, and videos on Youtube. Anything you can name it seems the global power of Coke has its finger in its social media pie. However this wasn’t always the case as Jonathan Mildenhall Cokes VP of advertising admitted that they were initially slow to embrace social media and that this was certainly a mistake on Cokes part. They have made great steps to rectify this misjudgement by developing an office dedicated to digital communications and social media.

1.5 Billion servings of Coke are sold every day so it is understandable that they were a little hesitant to try a new form of marketing as the traditional approach has always worked well for them. In 2007 Coca-Cola initiated their social media approach with the launch of the company’s first blog “Coca-Cola Conversations”. Coke then ventured towards the social media giants of Facebook and YouTube and continued to have success. A quote from Coca-Cola’s interactive marketing manager Prinz Pinkatt who stated, “In some cases some of our campaigns won’t need a coke.com hosted site. We would like to place our activities and brands where people are, rather than dragging them to our platform.” I think this quote encapsulates the idea of social media; it is all about consumer ease. People will be more willing to find out about a company if it is put in their lap, it removes a sense of hassle.

I think that both these example highlight how minimal use of social media can have a great impact on the support towards a product and create a real buzz around it. They certainly show that even the most powerful and successful of companies can even see the benefits of using social networking to stay connected with its consumers.