Social media has created a interesting online culture. Now anybody can say pretty much anything about anyone. The problem gets complicated when the talk is about your employees.
What would I do if this had been my client? Well, for starters, I wouldn’t have allowed my client to put up a sign in a lobby with a photograph that could be so easily ridiculed in the first place. It’s not fair to the employee in the photo. And it’s not fair to the bank.
Social media monitoring (the Listening stage) can at least alert brand managers to some online chatter in regards to your specific brand. Which then can give you the chance to address the issue there online, and if needs be, internally with your own staff.
Marketing communications is public. It’s brand exposure that can have a lasting impact-either for the better or for the worse. The lobby sign in this photo may not be up anymore, but the photo on Flickr will remain and possibly get spread around by other users, such as I am doing now under the Creative Commons Attribution License which accompanied this photo online.
I will say, the good thing about this photo is that due to the lack of brand ID (which puzzles me too, even lobby posters generally have a brand logo) you don’t know what bank brand it is specifically.
–Kevin McIntosh
Kevin McIntosh develops creative branding ideas and social media strategies to help community banks differentiate from their competition.
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