DOD2

“Just because a brand has big marketing prowess or is known globally doesn’t necessarily mean it’s active or even gets social media–namely Facebook, that is.”

Ryan Mathews and Christina Heggie argue that many of the world’s top marketers aren’t that social media savvy after all. Five of the top 45 companies on Interbrand’s list had no Facebook presence and seven others—namely Disney, Gucci, McDonald’s, Louis Vuitton, American Express and Sony—allow only for “company-initiated conversations,” meaning consumers can read, but not chime in the dialogue. Weird, given that a) social media is supposed to be a two-way street; b) Facebook alone reaches half a billion users; and c) big, consumer-oriented companies should have the social media talent to adequately participate in this space. What, then, accounts for this discrepancy? A few reasons: One may be that top marketers at these companies still think in a very “old school” kind of way, and so, the idea of ceding control to consumers is a bit, uh, hair-raising, to say the least. “Most of these marketers were raised with the goal of owning the consumer…but with social media, the objective is not to own the consumer, but to be their friend,” says Singer, one of the study’s authors and a partner and co-head of A.T. Kearney’s consumer-products and retail practice in the U.S. On that note, there are some “legitimate control issues,” adds Mathews, the report’s co-author who is also CEO of Black Monk Consulting. As part of its study, the firm examined 1, 115 Facebook posts—which had a combined total of 60,570 replies—spread across Interbrand’s top 45 global brands. That represents a net total of 70 million fans. Turns out, however, 27 percent of these posts were, in fact, either spam, questions or complaint-oriented comments.