One of the biggest issues dominating discussions on cyberspace these last few days hasn’t been the meeting of the G20 which gathered for their annual social events where expensive wine is consumed in copious quantities and general decisions are minimal. Nope, what has consumed most of cyberspace’s attention has been the news that a pre-release of the much anticipated Wolverine movie was posted up on multiple P2P Torrent sites on Tuesday where close to 200K (at latest count) copies have been downloaded .
Obviously 20th Century Fox is up in arms over this. Their chairman came out to state that the release was missing some key scenes and wasn’t fully edited yet, and promised that the perpetrators would be found and dealt with. In what I applaud as the first sign that the cyberspace community is acting responsibly, most reputable blog or movie review sites refused to carry reviews of the pirated download. The general sentiment is that piracy is inherently bad for long term production of good content and that it should not be encouraged. I know of several site or community managers that took this stance even in the face of serious opposition and threats from their own followers.
So wasn’t it ironic and extremely annoying to all of us that the first review posted by a site with any authority was that of FoxNews, a subsidiary of the Fox empire of which 20th Century is part. Carried by one of their own writers, it made a mockery of the company’s stance that this was something they considered a serious breach of the law. When this report was first posted on Friday, a number of the people I discuss these matters with were up in arms. They felt that since Fox wasn’t taking this matter seriously, why should they, as outsiders even be bothered to help them at the detriment of their own online cred? The general sentiment was that the gloves were off and screw the so-called corporate lawyers. I read a number of articles that were being prepared for release on Monday, all pertaining to a review of the pirated movie.
Just a few hours ago, Fox announced that they had fired the columnist responsible for the article. They also removed the article from the site. They also posted another article over it so that even viewing the Google cache of the page won’t show it. Needless to say though, thousands have already read it so the damage is done. I am really trying to get my head around what the editor who allowed the article was thinking when he/she gave the go-ahead to post it. Didn’t they realize this was akin to committing corporate suicide?
I speculate that the following issues at Fox lead to this misstep, all of which are enshrined as problems facing big companies in the social media space:
– They believe that to develop a strong following, you have to be badder than bad. In their mind, controversy pulls the crowd in.
– To be successful in the social media space you need to forget corporate structure and position
– You don’t need to see what others are doing online…..they are probably doing something just as bad
– There is no morality in social media
All these stances, in one form or other permeate corporate thinking with regards to social media. Sometimes its due to having a person in charge of the social media initiative who is too inexperienced to know what marcom is like in the real world. At other times its because the person in charge has his/her strategy entirely coloured by what they read on DIGG or Twitter. What is more often true is the following:
– Being bad or controversial doesn’t really lead to long term communities unless there is an underlying cause. Being bad just because you want to be bad just makes you look stupid. Controversy is a subset of Innovation. Ultimately the most innovative or original content builds the largest, most loyal following.
– You don’t just forget you are part of a bigger company just because you are in social media. Relationships with your community is dependent not only on what you do online, but what you do offline. Don’t ever forget that unless your money is all made online, that the offline experience is more important than the online one. People sometimes forget mistakes or arguments online, but are much less forgiving if this happened to them in the real world.
– Not checking the general mood of the online community is a common mistake made by executives with little time to do such research. Thats why so many promotions fail. Nearly all marketing consultants in the field of social media tell their clients to do their groundwork in understanding their online target audience…only a very small percentage in my experience, actually do.
– To build a strong online community you need to have a consistent moral position. Its well and good for the once a month blogger to write scathing articles on everything from religion to government, but quite another for a blogger with a strong reputation to uphold in a pretty fickle community. That is where a distinction must be drawn between the community leader and the community followers. In this example, the followers were all for piracy. Its the leaders that finally put their foot down and said that it was not right to do so and backed it up with action.
Its ironic and idiotic that the so-called leader who finally broke ranks was from the company that actually suffered the most from this issue…..in social media, we learn new lessons every day…..
Tong Hsien-Hui
Some Meowsings...... 