Sweet Tweets
The social media utility that has perhaps gained the most recent attention is Twitter. According to Compete.com’s “Top 25 Social Networks Rerank,” Twitter moved from No. 22 to No. 3 in the last year, right behind Facebook and MySpace, which were No. 1 and No. 2, respectively.
The microblogging site allows users to post, or “tweet,” 140-character messages via computer or text message. Some retailers are using it in unique ways to reinforce their store brand programs and build shopper loyalty. For example:
• Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. uses Twitter to promote deals and discounts on national brands and its own brands such as Canopy and No Boundaries.
• Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods Market Inc. uses Twitter to interact with customers on several levels — from offering advice on how to live more sustainably to answering questions about its products. (Side note: Whole Foods CEO John Mackey also writes a blog, where readers can post comments and receive responses.)
• Monrovia, Calif.-based Trader Joe’s uses Twitter as a place for customers to tweet brief reviews of the retailer’s own products.
• Grand Rapids, Mich.-based Meijer uses it to respond to its customers’ questions and suggestions. Just recently, it answered a follower who was curious about its NuVal nutritional scoring system by tweeting back a link to a Web page detailing the rating system.
Doron Levy, president of Toronto-based Captus Business Consulting, dubs the resource “marketing gold” for retailers.
“The ability to promote a chain’s own brand on social networking sites can bring in new customers that wouldn’t normally look at private label on the shelf,” he notes.
Levy points out two tweets on Trader Joe’s Twitter page as examples. In one, a Trader Joe’s customer writes:
“Trader Joe’s Ahi Tuna gets two thumbs up in this house. Serious Nom factor.” (“Nom” is an onomonopoeic slang word for “eating something delicious.”)
In another, a customer writes:
“Five thumbs up: Stuffed Salmon Belle Mer from Trader Joe's.”
Levy adds that there’s “no pricing — just a catchy headline that speaks to the average [Trader Joe’s] customer.” He also points out that Whole Foods has more than half a million followers on Twitter, making one tweet from the retailer to its Twitter followers similar to a guaranteed-to-open e-mail blast — and it costs the retailer nothing.
Other retailers also are experiencing favorable response to their Twitter presence. Brendan Wonnacott, spokesperson for El Segundo, Calif.-based Fresh & Easy, says the interaction the retailer has had with its Twitter followers — which he estimates number almost 3,000 as of press time — has been pretty fantastic.
“People contact us quite frequently to talk about products, ask questions about store locations, offer suggestions — it’s really interactive in that sense,” Wonnacott says.
The retailer’s social media presence isn’t limited to Twitter, he says. Fresh & Easy posts pictures on the image hosting site Flickr and keeps its own blog. But it seems to have found its sweet spot — make that its “tweet spot” — on Twitter.
Wonnacott told PlanetRetail.com that changes the company recently made to its offerings, including introducing a family meal line, were reactions to consumer input, which comes increasingly through Twitter.
An Ear to the Wall
Although social media outlets might be important vehicles for promoting brands, they can be even more important for listening to what consumers’ needs are.
Market researchers certainly are listening. Westlake Village, Calif.-based JD Power and Associates' Web Intelligence research division analyzed nearly 50,000 spontaneous conversations that took place in the blogosphere and on message boards between March 2008 and March 2009 that discussed private label brands from various retailers. In a report, the company said the amount of online conversation about private label products has increased steadily during the past year, with volume peaking during the fall of 2008. And although that might be when the economic crisis began to rear its ugly head, the report found that value was not the driver of positive sentiment — quality and flavor were instead.
Janet Eden-Harris, vice president of marketing and strategy for JD Power and Associates' Web Intelligence research division, argues that social media outlets are extremely important to brand executives as vehicles for listening to consumer needs — and how their brands are or are not meeting them.
“In the context of talking about their day or what they care about, they are giving us a wealth of information that if we could listen in, would actually tell us what they care about, how they buy [and] what drives them to do certain things,” Eden-Harris says.
Although sites such as Twitter and Facebook allow rapid communication that can help a brand, they unfortunately can let a consumer hurt a brand, too. Levy says that because of the openness of communication on the Internet, it can be very easy to start a campaign against a brand to hurt it. Just search for Walmart on Twitter or Facebook — the first page of results will show several anti-Walmart profiles.
“It’s easy to vent on the ‘Net, so disgruntled customers — as well as employees — now have a public outlet,” Levy says.
But just as quickly as a consumer can send a tweet or Facebook message that could harm a brand’s image, a retailer could respond keep the situation under control.
An April 16 article in The New York Times detailed how a minor video prank by two employees of Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Domino’s Pizza Inc., placed on YouTube, severely damaged the brand’s image among consumers. A spokesperson for Domino’s offered advice on the importance of providing immediate damage control.
“Well, we were doing and saying things, but they weren’t being covered in Twitter,” he told The New York Times.
Both sides now can draw fast, but a retailer has to be ready to deliver the shot that sets things straight. The good that a hundred positive tweets, Facebook posts and blog messages can do for a brand can be sabotaged by one disgruntled post. In the end, the retailer has to be prepared to deal with the good, the bad and the ugly. PLB
