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by Online Editor | Scotlandon Jul 30 |
NAB spamming: maybe it's time to take dance lessons
This post is the the first in a two-part series looking closely at how corporate brands can begin engaging with consumers through other people's blogs. The second post is going to be published on Wednesday 6 August, so make sure you drop back in to catch that.
- NAB spamming: maybe it's time to take dance lessons
- The rules of engagement for marketers in the blogosphere
The path to social media nirvana is long, winding and fraught with perils, especially if you're the kind of business most people wouldn't bend over backwards to befriend.The NAB (National Australia Bank) found this out the hard way recently. But the problem wasn't that NAB wanted to get all warm and fuzzy on blogs in the first place.
Like all types of social interaction, there is a certain etiquette to getting involved, a complex dance to learn between those interacting. And in the case of interacting on blogs, the NAB example shows that it pays to spend some time mastering the steps before you hit the ballroom and tread on people's toes.
In this post I'll introduce the NAB example and discuss some of the issues raised by the bank's actions. In the follow-up post next Wednesday, I'll expand on some of the ideas around social interaction and offer up some simple steps that brands should consider before they decide to ask their customer for the next dance in the social media ballroom.
What happened?
Crikey were the first to break the story in an article by Dr. Stephen Downes on June 16:
"Last week, the National Australia Bank "spammed" the comments sections of private blogs in an attempt to secure free promotion for the launch of its new SMS banking service. NAB is standing behind this decision."
With a new SMS banking service to promote, the bank's PR agency Cox+Inall (part of the BWM group) advised the corporate to seed a promotional offer relating to the commercial message in the comments area of selected blogs about the AFL. The message read as follows:
"Hi guys, NAB is giving away free tickets to the Collingwood v Carlton game on Saturday afternoon @ the MCG. Hop on down to Fed Square tomorrow… this is all to launch the new NAB SMS Banking! Thank you"
Of course, what followed was a backlash from the bloggers targeted and from the blogosphere as a whole, and the way the story unfolded is a great case study of how not to get involved in social media, and of the importance of playing by the rules of engagement in these spaces.
The bloggers bite back
"I simply ask this: could I walk into a branch of the National Australia Bank and openly promote my business to those in attendance? I’d encourage EVERY Australian blogger who has an account to the National to close it."
Prominent blogger and old media gadfly Duncan Riley had no qualms about encouraging bloggers to boycott the bank after its rather heavy-handed PR strategy. And he wasn't the only blogger that took offence to the NAB's approach.
Local self-proclaimed SEO guru Jim Stewart of StewArt Media decided to follow up on comments made by Cox+Inall that they had no regrets about their initial strategy. Before you watch Jim's interview below, it's worth reading the argument put forward by NAB's media relations spokesperson, Felicity Glennie-Holmes (thanks to Crikey again for the text):
"Blogs are a public forum", said Ms Glennie-Holmes. NAB and Cox+Inall felt this meant commercial interests could feel free to contribute unsolicited and irrelevant commercial material as comments, placing the onus on blog moderators to reject or delete unwanted comments.
"We identified five or six blogs where we felt we'd give it a try," explained Ms Glennie-Holmes. "We chose blogs where we thought the moderators would review and decide whether or not to carry our message…it was up to the blogger to decide whether they would leave the comment there or delete it."
The fact that the message posted to the blogs was "very openly promotional" and not deceptive also justified the bank's conduct, Ms Glennie-Holmes said."
Now have a watch of Jim's interview with NAB - you can find the video below.
If you want to read Jim's post around his video, check out the links at the bottom of this article. What emerges from watching Jim's video is that Cox+Inall and NAB have a very different understanding of the rules of engagement in the blogosphere to incumbent bloggers. It's a case of a gap in understanding leading to unsuccessful communications. But more seriously, it's about a brand misunderstanding the way to approach their customers.
And while Jim Stewart pursued an interview with NAB, for Julian Cole, the solution wasn't to boycott the bank's financial services or talk to the bank. He took Duncan Riley's advice, and decided to see how NAB felt about being on the receiving end of a similarly unsolicited commercial message.
"So, NAB thinks it's cool spamming bloggers. Well, we'll go see whether it's cool spamming their banks."
Have a quick watch of Julian Coles' 'Nab Spamming' video below. It shows how ridiculous the situation would be if we approached our offline interactions in the same way as NAB approached their online spamming interactions.
If you're waiting in line for the bank teller, you don't expect to be accosted by somebody selling you a product or a service, however nicely they address you :-) Simply mimicking the language of real conversation - "Hi guys" - doesn't substitute for understanding the communicative needs and wants of your target audience.
Sure, a bank is a public environment. But when we visit the bank, we assume that they will make sure that that environment is free from other commercial messages from third parties. In effect, the bank are responsible for moderating their own environment, much as many bloggers are ultimately responsible for moderating their own environment.
But imagine if every time you went to the bank, NAB employees were having to deal with entrepreneurial salespeople hawking their own products in the branch? Imagine the time and money the bank would have to expend keeping the branches free from this outside spam, and then consider the potential impact of this on the bank's ability to deliver the services and products to their customers.
If you knew that the bank was always going to be crowded, noisy, spam-infested and underresourced, would you still go into the branch, or would you consider accessing the financial services some other way?
Now imagine if every time you bought a copy of the Australian Financial Review, entrepreneurial financial services agencies had spent time placing flyers in newsagent copies of the paper. You want to read the content you have decided to invest time (and therefore money) in accessing, but every time you turn to a new page, you have to wade through unsolicited spam. Wouldn't this start to change your enjoyment of the AFR?
What if every time you visited your favourite blog, and you wanted to engage in stimulating debate around a topic you cared about, you had to scroll through acres of promotional spam, unsolicited communications just to have your say. Wouldn’t you consider going somewhere else to engage in conversation?
Moderation takes time and energy, but it is important because ultimately a spam-free environment is a better experience for the user. If brands like NAB want to endear themselves to customers (and which brands don't want to do this), they need to think outside of simple promotional messages, and they need to understand how people want to be engaged in different environments.
It's ultimately about the rules of engagement in these environments, and in the follow up to this post next Wednesday (6 July) I'll be discussing the question of rules of engagement. If you've got something interesting to say on this matter, please don't hesitate to get in touch. Email me on scott.drummond@niche.com.au and we can have a chat about it.
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- Article links
Related Video
Jim Stewart interviews Felicity Glennie-Holmes about the corporate spam
Julian Cole decides to see how NAB like getting spammed
12 Comments
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additional info, around the time of this incident I interviewed the head of the PR agency responsible and he was very responsive around blogosphere interest in this story:
http://prdisasters.com/bank-pr-agency-will-learn-from-spam-pr-criticism/
For me, the episode shouldve ended then.
Yet having looked at the story from several angles and spoken to a few players, I think the spamming by Cox was poor (they accept that), the NAB PR was unwitting while being outed by Jim S (too trusting by Felicity maybe?) and finally, that Julians branch spam stunt adds nothing to the debate but may work as a profile-booster for Colesy as a maverick blog personality.
Gerry
Gerry, thanks for the awesome tag line of ‘A Maverick Blog Personality’, and thanks for the profile boosting post that you gave me on your personal blog.
http://prdisasters.com/blogger-spams-bank-attempts-to-exhume-nab-pr-disaster/
However suggesting that I add nothing is a little dubious, social media is a hard beast to explain to someone who does not come in contact with it very often. Giving an everyday analogy I think is an important contribution in helping more people to understand the problem with what NAB did.
And maybe I meant the vid execution was a little lame-o; you could have written the analogy out briefly - think most people would prob have got it without the filmed skit. Seriously, too, it is an example of blogger 'self promo' even if you didnt expressly intend it to be so.
Cheers Gerry
I guess with the video I was trying something new. I have never tried to communicate an idea through video.
I think from now on I will just stick to the blog writing stuff….Actually I always make spelling mistakes which makes me look like a LAME-O blogger too, so I think I will just stop writing and keep my ideas to myself.
Gerry, I put the challenge to you, create some entertaining and humourous video content for your next post for Marketing Magazine and then I think your comments of being ‘lame-o’ and not being ‘humorous or entertaining’ will hold much more weight.
Julian Cole: No offence, but I would have preferred free tickets to the footy than your business card.
For example, if NAB were to have posted a helpful advice post under their brand name, would that constitute a commercial message? At the end of the day such a post may convince a reader that NAB is a helpful organisation and that they may in future decide to place business their way.
So whilst I think its good to give these guys a little slap on the wrist, i think it should be followed with some constructive feedback as to how they could better engage with the blogosphere.
http://www.privacy.gov.au/faq/individuals/q1