Top celebrity’s fans war with Doujin-fans make brands suffer, now who dare to say that we are omni-channel marketing ready?

Event review: Xiao, Zhan (Top IT celebrity – photo on the cover, also known as Sean Zhan) fans were not happy with the content that was produced by Doujin-fans* related to the star, therefore launched attacks. Lead to the block of the most important website among the latter circle. Doujin fans then strike back by intentionally low rating to review of all Xiao’s TV episodes, harassing brands endorsed by him. Tactics include: social media message boycott; E-commerce customer service dialogue boycott; Call relatives and friends to ask for paper tax invoices from the brand post purchase, for disrupting the normal order of business operation.

*Doujin is the Japanese surreal culture stands for creating cartoon, animation, novel and others base on people in the reality. Relationship and storyline are often beyond imagination for satisfying bold fantasy. This time Xiao was made up into a street lady novel role who has gender identity disorder

The incident has not stopped. Although the artist's studio has issued a statement and some celebrity fans have apologized, the dispute should continue for some time as the dispute points generate and the mutual discontent escalates. Recently, even the central committee of the league's micro blog has been left messages asking for the management of the artist's fans.

Despite right or wrong, it is such a pity the investment of brands’ all-round, multi-angle endorsement promotion went down the drain. Almost all of them withdraw materials related to Xiao. Estee lauder, for example, was boycotted not only by Xiao’s endorsement but also re-attacked by one of its crises earlier related to another artist. A couple of brands were to announce Xiao’s endorsement on 1st of March. They now had to shrink back for avoiding the wind head.

The era of consumer action

Marketers’ dream of "consumers to take action now" has come true. The problem instead is that we don't know who's going to hit us where. It's not just the targets that make brands unpredictable and unplanned, it's what they do that's beyond imagination.

This is the age of social media.

Social media has, to this day, really driven the evolution of marketing. It has gone through several stages, from the beginning when marketer was able to respond in the same way as before, to the present day when it becomes dumbstruck and chaos, leaving us no choice but pack up weapons and exit the war.

Phase one - I say you. On social media, consumers create word-of-mouth and experience of brands. Traditionally, the negative side of this situation can be dealt with by means of monitoring and crisis management, which is mainly under the control of PR team.

Stage two – I play you. Creative use of products, parody of brand advertisement, deliberate participation in brand activities to achieve a positive/negative purpose, etc. Consumers have more hands-on ability, in addition to posting photos and text, higher creative skills have been mobilized. Ba Wang Shampoo and Lan Xiang technical school are typical affected brands.

Lan Xiang's principal has said publicly that they don't know anything about new media marketing and even suspect that someone is making fun of them. At this stage, the restraint and helplessness of the brand have been increased, while the corresponding methods have been polarized. Some brands started to use tricks to trigger this so-called "blast" effect. Another group of affected brands struggled to keep up the pace of their operations.

Stage three - I challenge you. Consumer action moves up the ladder again, higher creativity is stimulated. Let's not belittle every smart idea that an average person can come up with, which, once used collectively, becomes a monster. 

The lack of crisis response behind omni-channel set up

If we start planning a system without thinking through the possibilities, it will collapse when problems erupt. I used to ask clients, "why are you opening a brand account on social media?" The answer is often disjointed. Because we don't think about it, we don't realize its nature.

Setting up a Brand Page opens a door to the consumer, the door opens, we reach out to consumers, and the consumers are enabled to come in. Interaction is a two-way street, from those who set up the page but not dealing with customer complaints, we find most brands are not fully aware of the Two-Way Street concept.

We can write articles to flatter ourselves, do activities to get fans to act with the page, and the same can be done by fans. Quite often the number of them are hundreds of thousands, even millions of times the number of operators behind our page. 

Marketing productization has been talked about recently, this is exactly the summary that what is overlooked. Marketing needs to spend energy on SOP, measures, and emergency plans. We are afraid of sudden rain when we hold an event. Why not worry about opening an page and have a group of people to declare war on it?

What's more, the touch point with consumers is far beyond opening only one page. The concept of omni-channel is beautiful, and the thinking and energy needed is just like the iceberg under water. Driving by looking only at the pieces above water is dangerous, the possibility of accident is naturally high, and the consequences will be painful.

Touch point monitoring and management

According to our 2018 social media white paper, the big challenge for brands today is how to monitor and manage every touch point with consumers.

Regardless of when, where, and how contact occurs, marketers need to make sure that the experience is good and that it is worth keeping consumers in the brand circle built around touchpoint management, neither flowing nor transforming. Better output is for consumers to invite friends and family to join because of the great experience.

24/7 touch point management is a big reason for the why marketing is become a tough work today. To be as clever as possible, we need to rely on technology. Using hardware, data, and software to establish rules and practices to reverse the work of fighting fires everywhere.

It is more important to convert consumers we looped in through touchpoints, and turn them into effective brand fans. It is impossible to say that brand fans will stand up for the brand in a case like Xiao's, but the negative sales impact is at least predictable.

With this bottom line, you won't be too passive.

Efficient collaboration between marketing and all business operation teams

Marketing is no longer marketing, and consumers are still consumers.

Things like Xiao are not new, there have always been conflicts between interest groups, but now it is more visible to us outsiders. But the scope of marketing work quietly has undergone a big change. Marketing is no longer only responsible for communication and brand building, but also involves consumer experience management, social insight research, and even corporate training.

On the one hand, enterprise should constantly adjust and reset the structure and position of marketing in the company, and on the other hand, it should quickly adjust the way of working efficiency of marketing and other teams. This is especially critical for internet-based teams, such as e-commerce. This then, of course, becomes a human resources issue.

Should we make every operations department understand marketing and be good at marketing? Or should all departments be at the mercy of marketing? 

Again, are we ready for omni-channel marketing for such a huge undertaking?

#marketing #营销 #socialmarketing