It's been mildly interesting to follow the @westpac Twitter hullabaloo that emerged yesterday afteroon (hullabaloo is probably the right word - it's certainly far from being a debacle or fiasco).
I posted about it here - Westpac Deletes Quirky Tweet - Proves it Hasn't Got a Clue(train); included is an update to the story as it continued to unfold into the night.
I've had numerous discussions since with a range of people - in person, on Twitter and via comments on the blog post itself.
I must say the conversation has been robust and certainly far from black and white.
Many points of view have been overlaid with a variety of acute observations; a couple merely skimmed across the surface of my post and felt I had beaten up the issue with a view to creating web traffic.
Now, anyone who reads this blog regularly knows I don't make it a habit of bashing big brands, nor do I go out of my way to deliberately inflame situations in order to generate traffic for my site. Simply not interested in doing that.
On the rare occasions I get involved commenting on a situation where a major company has stuffed up something (generally it has been online), I tend to come at it from the sidelines as an interested observer trying to piece together various streams of a story. Given my background, I generally offer some commentary from a PR perspective.
Anyway, back to Westpac...
I've taken in all views and had time to reflect on the post.
Here are some additional clarifying thoughts:
There's a bigger picture at play here.
The tweet in question was in my opinion pretty harmless and could have been corrected quite easily. The fact someone higher up in Westpac thought it necessary to delete said tweet is one thing, that action was taken after potentially thousands had already seen it and commented on it (in a generally light-hearted way I might add) is just plain weird, and it brought unnecessary heat down on the brand.
The irony is people liked the tweet. As I said in the original post, it was out of left field, a bit quirky, and it helped @westpac gain between 150 to 200 extra followers. That's something like a 20-25% boost in Twitter followers. There's a message there!
Some of the comments on the post included:
- Andrew Wilson made a good point that a brand's authenticity shouldn't just be in the social media space but reflected right across a company's operations.
- Sarah Thomas thought it was surprising Westpac didn't have real-time social media monitoring in place, but hat-tipped the bank on updating their status on Twitter.
- Steve Sammartino believed Westpac blew an opportunity, while Karalee Evans felt it was a mistake for the bank to delete the offending tweet but could understand why they did it.
- "Stephen" believed the follow-up tweet from Westpac didn't acknowledge the "heightened public interest"; Craig Badings rightly pointed out the situation was "indicative of the struggle so many corporations have with the immediacy, authenticity and intimacy of communicating online".
Lip Service?
My bigger picture contention is that major companies continue to struggle with the new media landscape - is it a case of the technology (the 'movement'?) moving too quickly for them? Are they taking the social web seriously, or are they simply paying lip service?
This story is less about an innocuous single tweet and more about a prevailing attitude that big companies still think they can shut down conversation and control the message. Well, I'm sorry but you can't.
A chunk of my original post put the situation in context with a couple of theses from The Cluetrain Manifesto. Ten-plus years on it's still frighteningly fresh in its observations. I do ponder the question:
How many senior executives and corporate affairs people have actually taken the time to read the book and take notes?
Without putting too finer point on it, this 'movement' hasn't just snuck up on us, it's been emerging for some time.
And...it's not just about the technology!
(OK, I'm over this story now...NEXT!)
