Looking at the fierce competition in the mobile phone
manufacturing market mobile phone makers are looking to grab every opportunity
to promote/market their product even if it is directly targeted at their
competitors.
Such instances were very prevalent in the recent past on
various social networking sites. These
were in response to the latest events which involve Apple’s latest offering
iphone 6S’s flexibility (notice the
sarcasm there).
Leading smartphone makers took this incidence as an
opportunity to directly attack Apple in order to promote their offerings.
Ofcourse, social media played a great role in amplifying the impact of the “bending”
controversy as the tweets and comments by major mobile phone makers spread like
wild fire across the various public platforms. The companies include big names like
Samsung, LG, HTC and Nokia Deutschland. Even the Nestle; the sponsor of Android
KitKat targeted their tweets at Apple. All these companies noted that their
products do not bend unlike the Apple iPhone 6S.
The first attacks on Apple came from LG and HTC. This led to
the hashtag #bendgate trend worldwide on Twitter.
— HTC USA
(@HTCUSA) September
24, 2014
Among the various social media marketing attempts our
favourite came
from Apple’s arch rival Samsung.
Samsung promoted its latest offering the Galaxy Note Edge through this
tweet which fetched them over 10K Retweets.
The picture that they posted on Facebook was an icing on
the cake.
The overall impact of the “Bendgate”
controversy has been huge on Apple. To worsen the situation the tweets and
comments by rival companies are spreading like wild fire. These bend test
videos that are being put up on YouTube wherein people are comparing the Apple
iPhone 6 and 6S with other phones like HTC One and Moto X. These videos are
also trending worldwide.
Lessons for marketers:-
The power of Social media is huge
and immeasurable. It is the sole responsibility of marketers to understand this
fact and there should be a realization that if social media can be good for a
product it can be bad for it too. All the efforts must be targeted to check all
the information about the product that is shared online. In most cases it is
out of the control of the marketers to prevent the information from going
online. This information can be a feedback, a complaint or a service request. Marketers
must keep track of the genre of the information that is shared on the various
public platforms and provide assistance accordingly.
Keep in mind that any post that
goes ignored can be vulnerable for the product, the company or the brand.
*Please share this
post with your peers (peer to peer marketing, you see :P) through the social
networks given on the left. Also keep your comments coming in. Many thanks.*
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