I’m sure it started out as a great idea at CellC Marketing HQ? The mobile phone industry has a mostly terrible name when it comes to customer service. Lines drop all the time, prices cripple you, data crawls regularly and call centers frustrate whatever life you still have, right out of you.
So it was a no-brainer to come up with a bold PR/Marketing angle of honesty, integrity and openness aimed at the bruised and beaten South African consumer. You know the story if you’ve been in South Africa these last 2 weeks. But in case you need an overview, care of The Daily Maverick and Mandy De Waal:
On Wednesday 28 July a mysterious Internet user going by the moniker of SABobbyT posted a video clip on YouTube of popular local comedian Trevor Noah going ape about mobile networks in general and Cell C in particular. In just four days Cell C found the offending link, watched it, decided to respond publicly, briefed its big agency (Ogilvy) to swiftly book media space in the Sunday Times and Rapport and to develop an advert apologising to Noah. The ad was created, approved and placed in record time before the advertising print deadlines for the two weeklies closed.
So what exactly did the ‘then nearing Super-Hero status’ Cell C CEO do? More from Mandy De Waal and The Daily Maverick:
Two “mea culpa”’ full-page adverts signed by Cell C’s CEO Lars P. Reichelt later, and the Twitterverse was abuzz with chat about social media hero Trevor Noah, how he had stood up for the small guy and what swell people Cell C were for coming clean. The story was getting airtime and was reported on by no less than Bloomberg while other media pundits were calling the effort a marketing “master-stroke”.
However, what started as a ‘master-stroke’ is fast turning into a sinking ship (in some circles anyway – search cellc on Twitter and scroll through). You can read other’s views on why they think this has been a ‘master-sink’, here, here and here, but I’d like to comment on simply this:
What Cell C and Trevor ‘I need a lifeboat’ Noah missed in all of this, is that they picked a social media space to execute their very clever campaign. They used a new world platform with old world marketing antics. They just don’t go together easily.
The Social Media space has, at some levels, become a sacred space created away from the power, smoke and mirrors of traditional media. There’s a new set of rules that governs, towards the promise of more authentic and honest dialogue. It’s a space that belongs to everyone, equally. No matter your status, your money, your power. In the world of Social Media we can all stand together as equals. You may be able to shout further than I can, because of the size of your network, but you can’t shout any louder. Your view is as important as my view.
So when Cell C (powerful and wealthy) steps into ‘our space’ and sends communication to apparently ‘one of our own’, who can shout quite far with his ‘friend base’ of over 120 000 on FaceBook, and thereby invites us to accept their communication as honest, transparent and full of integrity, and then confesses to this being simply a marketing campaign, you can understand why people are responding the way they are.
My prediction is that Cell C and Trevor Noah will lose credibility through this event. It’s a classic case of two parties not understanding the shifts that have taken place in this new-way-of-connecting-world. Of course they wont lose on every front. Some people out there (see Twitter again) love that they’ve been pranked (or should that be Arked? Or even Noah’d?). But this will remain, for a long time, as a case study of how you don’t do social media.
Here’s another link I just found by Walter Pike – Cell C is ‘astroturfing.’ What a joke! (http://memeburn.com/2010/08/cell-c-is-astroturfing-what-a-joke)
Perhaps it’s a little more complicated than that… Some thoughts:
1. Cell C bought Noah’s social graph. Very clever for them, instant penetration, ignoring the “transparency” issues. Maybe not so great for Noah who will end up with a mish mash “fan” base of cell c complainers/advocates and people who actually like him as a comedian.
2. all this doomsday buzz will fizzle into nothing if they ACTUALLY deliver on their promise. I saw Lars, Cell C CEO commenting on a complaint posted to telltrevor.co.za promising a fix to a solution on Wednesday. That’s ballsy, and if they deliver, project will succeed.
3. The bigger debate I reckon is around their main brand web property (cellc.co.za) and their engagement hub (telltrevor.co.za). Jury’s out. Either it was a brilliant call to link the two so closely (design is identical) or a lesson will be learnt on keeping dirty laundry as far away from your main brand as possible.
we can go on and on about transparency and authenticity till the cows come home – if they’ve opened a channel for customers to talk to them, and they talk back and fix the BASE problem – they’ll succeed.
Nice thoughts Andy.
While I’d like to be able to claim the ‘higher’ ground and say delivery will not over-shadow the social media sins I feel they’ve committed, I can’t. Damn! I agree delivery trumps most sins. However, I would like to suggest that they’re going to have to deliver spectacularly to not go down as a ‘how-not-to-do-it’ case study. Of course I may be over-stating that as well? But maybe you’ll be gracious enough to leave me with my fantasy for a while : )
Your thoughts on Trevor Noah’s risk of having a social-media following of people who love him for comedy and people who hate the mobile phone networks is something I haven’t thought through. And while I’m sure the money he’s being paid in the short term may make this something that’s easier to deal with, it will be interesting to see what he does in a year or two?
Can I ask if you think this has, whichever way you spin it, been a fairly ground-breaking move on Cell C’s part? So will this be one of those milestone campaigns we look back at one day and say things like, “this all started with Cell C’s campaign”?
And lastly, just to ensure transparency and authenticity, are you employed by Cell C currently, in any way shape or form : )
Couple of points, if I may
a. this is not simply a marketing campaign: Cell C has embarked on changing the way it does business! We are investing ZAR 5 Billion in our new 4Gs network, we are investing a couple more billions in our new customer care & billing system, into new stores, into improving our customer care etc. Changing our look and feel now is a signal of change to come, to change accomplished.
b. while we have identified many of the areas that need improving, there are many more that we may or may not realize, hence we engage with our customers (current and future) to tell us what they are. Case in point is the ability for customers to identify dropped calls easily and quickly (http://www.cellc.co.za/about/droppedcalls). Over 400 cases since launch on Sunday (080810) have been logged and are being fed to our technical team to fix.
c. We are on a journey to become a better and more reliable operator and we acknowledging that this takes time and most importantly it takes the input from our customers. You and our customers will see noticeable change in 90 -120 days from now. Judge us then.
Best,
Lars P. Reichelt
Nice blog, Barrie,
But I MUST respond to Lars’ comment.
Lars P Reichelt is the CEO of Cell C as far as I know. But this clearly is a cut and paste response (probably from the Ogilvy marketing team?). (It also should have been better proof read, by the way – point c).
It is such a Boomer response it’s actually funny. It’s the machine kicking into action to defend the brand. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but it does betray a lack of understanding of the etiquette of the social media space Cell C are trying to play in. And that is precisely what Barrie was trying to say in the first place.
Barrie’s point is not around the campaign objectives, it’s about the etiquette of social media. This is a fun one to watch.
@ Lars P. Reichelt – I was a former customer of yours… I signed up back in 2003 and I lasted 2 cellphone contracts. I was HAPPY when I got off. Data speeds were 100% better, call quality was great. Although, I must admit, the poor customer service from the other providers could convince me to move back. But this all depends. I’m surprised your previous vision said “no internet connectivity”. That was 70% of the reason I moved in the first place…
I will eagerly be watching Cell C to see the roll out progress. I will also be monitoring Twitter and all other social media to see if you have done what is promised. 4 months is a very optimistic timeframe from my experience in both call centres, roll out plans of IT projects. I wish you luck.
@ Barrie Bramley – nicely written and
I’m with Andy on this one….
Kate and Andy,
You’re right. Let’s wait and see. I have made a note to check this out again by Christmas.
But, I’ll give you good odds if you’d like to bet against the house…. 🙂
Barrie … I’m curious … (and maybe I am missing the point here) – but why is this ” a case study of how you don’t do social media.”?
I’ll admit – I’m on the fray of social media. (Confession time – and don’t judge me for this … I don’t tweet. I’m a working mom, hot coffee is a luxury for me. ) But the way I understand “social media” is that it’s very hard to define the “do’s and don’ts”. (Rules are old school.) By it’s very nature it is shifting and changing at the whims of the users. And so if its “users” also start to include big corporates … well, then what? Is there really any kind of goverance?
I don’t use Cell C – so I don’t really care all that much about the issue. BUT – if I was a Cell C user – I really couldn’t give a damn about their marketing campaign or the debate about whether they should or shouldn’t step into the social media ring and whether it was or was not a successful PR move. The only thing that would ensure my customer loyalty would be whether they fix the problem.
And isn’t that the bottom line?
Hey Sim. Long time no hear : )
Nice challenging question around the view I’m taking.
I think all platforms, new or old, have a set of ‘rules’ they run by. Sometimes formal, and sometimes informal. Sometimes with large consequences to breaking them, and others where there’s very little impact at all.
In a social media space I do believe there’s a right way and a wrong way. Possibly a righter way and a less right way, is more accurate? There are things, for example you can do on FaceBook, that you may not ‘get away with’ on Twitter. When I first signed up with Twitter I spent 6 weeks ‘watching’. I followed a few people I rated smarter and more savvy than myself, and then learned how they did things and what they did? Of course they didn’t have the blueprint, but through my watching I learned enough to ‘jump in’. And I’ve been learning ever since.
So let me try and break down my Cell C view:
* When Cell C first broke the news of Trevor Noah’s YouTube video and then responded with what seemed to be a sincere response from their ‘real’ CEO, a large-ish chunk of the social media space stood up and applauded. They supported his brave confession in an industry with a customer-service-crisis. They celebrated his commitment to sort it out. He didn’t back down from the criticism of Trevor Noah. In fact he seemed to be responding exactly the opposite from what we’ve come to expect from large CEO’s.
And that’s in my opinion what they did badly. When their rest of their launch unfolded, it became clear that this was all a carefully planned campaign. It wasn’t an authentic response. It was a marketing strategy being executed.
I know this will sound a little like a stretch, but social media is fueled by relationship and connection, even-though those relationships and connections don’t often look very strong or even authentic. I think what happened is that Cell C invited some form of connection and relationship when they launched initially, and when it was an obvious marketing campaign people felt de-frauded, dis-respected, taken advantage of, etc, etc.
And my prediction is that this will hurt them for a while to come. There will always be that element of the story when the story is told. If they’d not done the initial launch response to the YouTube clip, I don’t think there’d have been any ‘social media outcry’. They were a little too clever and pushed a boundary a little more than it needed to be pushed.
I get it now Barrie! (My ‘Aha’ moment.) Maybe the whole “rules of social media” thing is a bit lost on me … but I understand what you are saying. The real heart of the issue – is heart! And I think you are right – customers (and even non-customers) want a little honesty these days. In fact – we demand it.
I will watch this space with interest … who knows … I may even Tweet! 🙂
Hey Sim : )
You always have had a better way of getting to the point than I do. I waffle a lot more to make a point, and then you sum it up in a sentence : )
Look forward to those Tweets. You gonna let us know your Twitter Username eh?