The Ups and Downs of the Groundswell: Reading Reflection Post #3

The Ups and Downs of The Groundswell

Interacting and engaging with the groundswell is an essential component for a successful company or business today, yet achieving it is often not as easy as it sounds. In this week's chapters 13 and 14 readings, Bernoff and Li explain how managing and utilizing various social media accounts can cause stress, difficulty and confusion for an organization. However, despite this challenge, they highlight multiple corporations, such as Home Depot and USAA, that have been able to thrive after getting past some initial social media growing pains.

            In order to reach social maturity, companies must fully immerse themselves in the current climate of the groundswell, no matter what audience your company caters to or the products you sell. There are common stages that all companies go through in order to succeed and fully utilize the groundswell to their strongest ability. These stages include: dormant, coordinating, testing, scaling, optimizing and empowering (pg. 257). Fundamental in the advancement towards social maturity is both the customer and corporation utilizating the same social platforms, that allow for discourse and communication between the two. Wide exposure and presence on social media is great for your brand, but at the same time, it allows your brand to be thoroughly examined, ridiculed, scrutinized, and discussed to a tee, while leaving the business in a powerless and vulnerable position.

When reading of the backlash and harsh criticism in which brands make themselves vulnerable by engaging with the groundswell, I was reminded of a Dove ad from a few years ago that was surrounded in controversy and media attention. The body wash ad featured a black woman taking off a brown shirt and magically transforming herself into a white woman. Most felt that the ad (which Dove quickly deleted after seeing the outrage) was racist and offensive. One user on facebook expressed that by advertising body wash in this way, Dove is implying that it has the ability to make you clean/remove dirt, making the racism in the ad clearly blatant. Dove was quick to respond and express how they “missed the mark in thoughtfully representing women of color” and how they regretted their choice.

The Dove ad highlights the risk of exposure companies face when having a presence on social media. By posting this ad on their pages, they were quickly bombarded with angry, outraged customers  discussing the blatant racism on facebook, twittter and instagram. Dove has an active presence across all social media platforms, and has now reached the fourth stage in Bernoff and Li’s social maturity stages: optimization. Dove possesses a strong PR presence and its activity and content on all popular platforms is kept up to date. The company also involves itself in advocating for social change. However, the company still has some ways to go before fully reaching the empowerment stage, as its social media presence doesn’t actively involve full participation and input from the groundswell.  

Even a company that is well established in its social maturity is susceptible to criticism at the hands of the groundswell. When a company receives severe backlash and starts negative discussions in the groundswell, consumers and users of social media are still actively talking about the company and their products, keeping their name relevant. In addition, a company like Dove is able to show us (the groundswell) how much they value our opinion by posting on their social media and quickly addressing any controversy or backlash. Also, with an active social media presence, a company that makes an error similar to Dove has the ability to address a large audience and express regret and avow that moving forward they are dedicated to ensuring that their company values and serves to eliminate racism in our society (as Dove did). Dove stood by that sentiment a few months ago when they announced their initiative in ending systemic racism, which includes expanding particular black coalitions and promoting legislative advocacy and societal change.

If a company like Dove was not active on social media and fully taking advantage of the groundswell, they would not be able to get their message of apology and intention to change out as effectively to the public. According to Bernoff and Li : “A company that doesn’t engage in this sort of activity will look dated”. Customers do not want to spend their money on a brand that doesn’t care enough to interact and have an active presence online.