JP Morgan Twitter Disaster

Even if social media is something companies should tap on for the growth of their business, companies should still research and assess whether their type of business really suits social media. Social media is great but it’s not for everyone. Just early last week, JP Morgan‘s Twitter #AskJPM campaign turned into a fiasco. Considering the bad presses they have been getting for the past year, this move probably wasn’t the smartest thing for the company to do.

Below are some of the tweets that proved the campaign was a disaster:

 

It took six hours before the people behind JP Morgan’s Twitter account decided to call it a day for their campaign.

 

While six hours can be a long time to realize that the campaign wasn’t doing any good for the company, I think it was still relatively good for the people behind their social media team to be able to react to it within 12 hours. While this campaign is certainly a disaster, I think it would be quick to say that JP Morgan is that type of business that can’t benefit from social media. A Q&A campaign might not exactly be a bad idea for JP Morgan, but the way it was executed was definitely done poorly. If only JP Morgan had made a more thorough assessment of the Q&A campaign and recognized any potential backfire situations that may occur, then maybe, this campaign might have been not as bad as it ended it to be.

I think one of the things JP Morgan could have done to at least have made the result more favourable is changing the way they marketed the #AskJPM.

Based from the tweets above, it seems like JP Morgan just marketed the campaign as a Q&A. The scope and what this campaign can do for its followers (ie. Q&A for graduating students who want to work for JP Morgan) were not mentioned. It practically seemed that it was Q&A for all and that anything goes. And I guess JP Morgan can’t really blame Twitter users to be asking out-of-this-world questions. By marketing the Q&A campaign as an opportunity for interested graduating students to learn more opportunities in the company might have yielded better results.

Q&A campaigns can really yield good results even if the company doing the campaign has been having bad press or is known for some few bad things. A good example of this would be McDonalds. Their yourquestions campaign proved to be successful even though a lot of people have negative views on their food. This shows JP Morgan could have actually benefited from their #AskJPM campaign if they have only stated what the Q&A was for, just like how McDonalds clearly stated that the yoursquestions campaign was for consumers to ask any questions they have about their food.

 

 

Social Media Habits of Sports Enthusiasts

Now midway into our course and project, I have been constantly thinking what social media platforms should my team’s client use that can give optimal results. For reference, our client is a local sports bar located in the heart of Richmond. My team and I have spoken with the General Manager and his business partner on who their target market and what their long-term goals are for the pub. They both have explicitly mentioned that they want to their pub to be known as a sports bar and intend to primarily attract sports enthusiasts. While they do have wings night and other promotional deals, they hope to attract consumers through their the fun, lively and sports-oriented pub atmosphere.

As someone who does not consider herself as a sports enthusiast, I found it rather challenging on deciding what social media platforms and digital marketing strategies would best fit a pub like our client’s. I initially thought of Twitter as of the one platforms that should be used. But instantaneously, I thought to myself – wouldn’t sports fans be usually glued to their TVs or streaming websites when watching a game and wouldn’t be bothered to be on any social media platforms?  However, I was proven wrong by a research conducted by Catalyst.

Catalyst surveyed 2,100 sports fans between ages of 16 – 64 to identify where sports fans hangout online and where they can be best reached. While a couple of thousands do not entirely represent the whole group of sports fans, their research can still be useful and can be used as a starting point. The research shows that the number of correspondents who uses Facebook is almost double the number of correspondents who uses Twitter (stats: 73% to 37% respectively). However, on the game day, Catalyst found that these correspondents check their Twitter about 1.5 times more compared to Facebook. This information can prove to be valuable to sports pubs that are looking to gain more awareness to sports enthusiasts. Additionally, their research also found that after the game day, Instagram is the most used social media platform, with Twitter placing in 2nd.

Based from these findings, it would be ideal for our client to both use Twitter and Instagram to their advantage during game days. Catalyst‘s research also shows fans are more likely to be engaged on social media if the content has something to do with pre-game excitement, historic nostalgia photos and videos and friendly game debates. In line with our client’s long term goals and intended target market, a strategy then can use to further attract sports fans to their pub would be to tweet about what the current atmosphere is like at the pub and complementing it with a Instagram video or photo to support the statement. By doing this, our client will be able to showcase their pub’s atmosphere – the fun, lively and sportsmanship environment –  and potentially attract new customers.

In conclusion, the biggest takeaway that I have got from this is that it may prove to be more effective to use Twitter and Instagram as complements of each other rather than pairing them with any other social media platforms. This is not to say that our client or any sports pub has to completely get rid of their Facebook page and other social media accounts. However, if the intention is to have conversations and be engaged with sports fans, Twitter and Instagram may be the best options.

Infographic by Catalyst:

Source: http://mashable.com/2013/10/03/sports-fans-social-media/

 

 

TD Canada Trust: Doing It Right

TD Canada Trust (TD) is one of Canada’s largest banks and is arguably one of the first banks to utilize social media to further develop their business. I have always been with TD since I moved here 3 years ago simply because it was convenient, as my dad had been with TD for a very long time. Until recently, I personally found it peculiar to be strongly attached to one bank, especially for students like me. I may not speak for all students, but most of us – if not all – would quickly switch to a different bank given that there are better offers and possibly costs less. My view on this changed when I unexpectedly experienced great customer service from TD.

I pay for my credit card bills and have always paid for them ahead of time. However, there was this one month that I failed to pay them on time. Once I realized I was already 2 days late, I paid my bills online right away. Even if I paid for it, I knew there were some penalties involved for late payment, such as interests added to my next bill. I wanted to know what the exact interest rate will be placed on my account, so I called TD. In my conversation with a customer representative, I merely asked what the penalties are for late credit card payments. The representative provided me the answer I needed, but before I could thank the representative for the information, he quickly added that my late payment fees for this incident will be waived. He said that since I have a good record of paying my bills on time, waiving the fee (only for this time) is justified. As a student with limited amount of financial resources, I was very grateful and frankly did not initially see the logic behind the representative’s extra effort in pleasing me. Nonetheless, I immediately posted on my Twitter account of my experience with TD and got a quick response from their Twitter account, as shown below.

Relating this back to eMarketing, TD has been using Twitter very extensively to further provide customer service for at least a couple of years now. If you visit their Twitter account, you can see TD initiates a lot of interaction with unsatisfied customers, even the ones that did not specifically tag TD’s Twitter handle. Some – if not many – of these unsatisfied customers turn into satisfied customers as their concerns have been fixed through interaction in social media. Based on observation, consumers tend to express their negative views on certain corporations through social media. Tapping on Twitter provides many opportunities for TD to potentially increase their customer base and ultimately become a competitive advantage. Currently, I do not see any other big banks, such as RBC and Scotiabanks, utilizing Twitter to further reach their consumer markets and provide customer service.

Referring back to our class discussion on Solis “Engage” book,  it is wise of TD to be investing some of their resources in social media now than later. The book mentions that it is not optimal to only create a social media plan when a crisis is already happening as this will prove to be already too late. One has to start early and invest time in cultivating relationships with customers now even without any crisis happening, as these customers will prove to be invaluable resources as advocates in the future. With TD currently ahead of recognizing and maximizing the benefits of social media, they can be more confident than any other banks in Canada that they can count on their customer base to be their supporters in unpleasant situations.