The 'social' in social media - how you can use this strength for your brand

This is a post about the positive power of social media and how we used it in period of crisis.

During the last two weeks we have felt the social strength of social media. It rescued people from fear and anxiety both in Paris and Brussels, as well as across the rest of the world.

In Paris people could let other people know that they were safe through the Safety Check that Facebook developed. Parisians – and later people worldwide - invited people to their homes to be safe via the hashtag #porteouverte on Twitter.

Following the attacks in Paris, the police started looking for those responsible in Brussels, and the city’s threat level was raised to the maximum. On Sunday evening -as an anti-terror police operation was underway in Brussels to search for Paris attackers- Belgian police and the Belgian Defence Minister asked residents of the city  not to share details of these operations on social media. Twitter carried official requests for people to refrain from disclosing information: it was the first time an official request was made on Twitter to forbid something, for the sake of national security. 

People living in the neighbourhood of the police operations were asked to stay inside and to not sit near the window. Brussels’ residents duly followed these instructions. You could only see cats near the windows….

Brussels was locked down, and the situation was frightening. Whilst the people of Brussels co-operated with the official requests, it didn’t exactly stop them from sharing, in fact it seemed that the opposite was true – and that people tried even harder to connect with each other.  So, when one Belgian started with a tweet of his cat (one of the most loved animal on the Internet), he was quickly followed by many others, and a catmania was started on Twitter using the hashtag #BrusselsLockdown.

Twitter users in Brussels, across Belgium and elsewhere began to share silly videos and photos of cats and kittens as a way of downplaying the threat and perplexing terrorists.

The police thanked the people of Brussels with catfood. A great example of open government, and again, of the ‘social’ in governmental social media communication. 

The catmania of the people in Belgium also attracted a massive response and huge support from all over the world. Belgians felt encouraged when they saw international media sharing it with their readers, and sending support messages, like ‘May the cats be with you’. 

In a surreal display of solidarity, cat tweets flooded the #BrusselsLockdown, which had nearly 200 k mentions on Sunday evening.

By Monday, the cats were everywhere….on Instagram, on Periscope, in Australia, and probably also on a galaxy far far away….

We felt we needed to do something with this social stream of solidarity. Capitalising on the cat story, we decided to make a little film about Brussels and how life goes on, even if there is still an imminent threat. This movie had two purposes: firstly, to give the message to the whole world that we are proud of our capital city and its inhabitants: we wanted to openly support people living in Brussels in challenging times. Secondly, we wanted to proactively communicate to the world how life goes on. We wanted to show how it is for locals and visitors to Brussels: “comment chat va à Bruxelles”?

We did it with on our own, ‘Belgian style’, by producing a surreal video of cats at various Brussels landmarks. The video features dancing cats in bowler hats, playing the drums, climbing the rooftops, and skateboarding. In a nod to Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte – whose birthday we celebrated last Saturday – the film featured locals holding apples over their faces.

 About the film

In crisis communications, timing is fundamental. Together, Visit Brussels, Wallonie-Bruxelles Tourisme and Visit Flanders each published the video at the same time on Wednesday on all their social media channels. The city’s alert level was still the highest, but things had changed: children had gone back to school, tourist attractions and shops had opened, public transportation was functioning again…. This was the information we could and should communicate to the world, being a destination marketing organization. Every communication expert knows that not communicating in a period of crisis is the worst thing you can do.

This was NOT a promotional film to attract visitors to our destination. Let’s be clear on that. It had nothing to do with tourism. That was neither the right time nor the right way. We were still in a period of highest alert, and it wouldn’t be appropriate to launch tourism campaigns to attract visitors.

So, what was the marketing idea behind it? We capitalised on the humor of our inhabitants, the solidarity that had been demonstrated during the tough days, and reinforced this with our video communication. It’s grassroots communication about the DNA of the Belgians. It’s the story of our people. It is brand communication through the story of our people. 

As identified in Simon Anholt’s Nation Brand Hexagon (Simon Anholt), ‘people’ sit next to ‘tourism’, and a nation’s people have a profound influence on the reputation of a brand, and thus the image other people have of our country.  In the reputation of a country, local people play a very important role.  In place marketing more and more efforts are given to locals, because locals can be very good brand ambassadors. 

 When our people are able to fight fear with humour and solidarity, it’s our duty as destination marketeers to do everything to elaborate on this, for our people, and also for our country/destination as a brand. The brand of a country is very important for tourism. So, this communication about how positively our locals reacted to the whole situation is very important for the reputation of our country, and in that way also to help our tourism business and industry in the long term.

Thanks to the power of social media we were able to do that. After just two days,  2,531 publications were posted about this video, all across the world. On our own youtube channel we counted more than 100 k views, but it's also posted on our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,...and it's also shared by our partners visit.brussels, Wallonie-Bruxelles Tourisme, Atomium. And we don't know how many people read about this story on their favorite newschannel. We did have a global reach through international news media (ABC, The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Mirror, El Universal, The Washington Post, USA Today, CTV, ...). Here you see a geographical distribution of the mentions (at the time of publication): 

And we really did our upmost to reach the whole world. Twitter is blocked in China, but that cannot stop the social strength of our communication. My colleague in China got in touch with Weibo (the dominant Chinese microblogging site, akin to Twitter) and explained to them everything about #Brusselslockdown, and the positive energy under the threat of terrorism. They were so touched by this story and together with us they translated it into something meaningful for Chinese people and it immediately turned into a ‘hot topic’. Within 2 hours, 20 k people viewed our video on Weibo and Chinese people started sharing their cats. Also here, we are feeling the ‘social’ in social media…

Linked-In is also a social medium, so I think our story is also in place here. Especially for social media, marketing and communication professionals I explained in more marketing details how we used the strength of the 'social' in social media for our brand in a moment of crisis. Hope you like this story, and share it! 

Thanks to Andrew Daines for the review.