Should brands be part of the real-time conversation?
On stage were representatives from Capital One (bank), Whole Foods Market (responsible supermarket), Dell and McDonalds, not the least. Central to this panel was the question: should you, as a brand on social media, go with the flow, or do your own thing? The former stated that they had no interest in responding to the latest news or hype.
McDonalds has a different approach and occasionally hooks into current events. Around the ice hockey match between the United States and Canada during the Olympic Games, there was a real Twitter battle between McDonalds USA and McDonalds Canada. There was a lot of bragging and the loser was forced to do all kinds of innocent tasks, such as retweeting the congratulations five times.
Capitol One Tweets
Capitol One Twitter Feed
But what was more striking was that without exception, all four of them take belgium mobile phone number list social media 300% seriously, in a way that we hardly know in the Netherlands. For example, all their employees are informed about what they should and should not do. At Whole Foods, only the people who also work in the store are allowed to respond on social media.
Dell has 280 people who continuously monitor social media and strive to respond to all questions and 'cries for help ' with the motto " listen, learn, engage and act ". Capital One positions itself as a lifestyle bank (we don't really have an equivalent of that in the Netherlands), tweets brand-driven and easily retweets a tweet from Rolling Stone magazine. " Social media really matters ", and the naturally service-oriented Americans take this very seriously. And it works for them. The keywords to make a difference as a brand are empowerment and positivity, because it is about real contact between people.
Design principles
A well-intentioned redesign of the Twitter logo.
Last year, the panels in the Wanderlust room were a big hype. Not surprising, when there are 500 people at the door every time with only 160 places. The reason that this programming is not going to a larger room, is simply because it is a sponsored event of Team Detroit , a large advertising and design agency from Detroit and part of the WPP group .