A few months ago, I put together a similarly dramatic entitled post, going into some detail about the UK Facebook Audience. With such dramatic numbers being bounded around for Facebook globally (350 million users by the way!), many marketers will stop and ask themselves the question “what does that mean to me in UK”?

Admittedly, I have not performed any analysis on these figures or tried to draw any insight into this (I’ve got to pay the bills somehow!) but there’s some pretty interesting insights (such as the decrease in singles and increase in engaged and marrieds!), but i’d love to have your thoughts on the stats.

Hope you find it interesting:

Total UK Facebook Audience:

Total UK numbers on Facebook (13+): 18,893,560

(Feb 2010) Total UK numbers on Facebook (13+): 24,559,880

Total UK numbers on Facebook (18+): 16,422,540

(Feb 2010) Total UK numbers on Facebook (18+): 21,115,440

Gender

Of the “more widely marketable” 18+ audience

Male: 8,471,880

(Feb 2010) Male: 9,837,660

Female: 9,734,640

(Feb 2010) Female: 10,513,820

Relationship Status

Single: 4,193,620

(Feb 2010) Single: 3,877,160

In a relationship: 3,818,520

(Feb 2010) In a relationship: 3,933,220

Married: 3,345,920

(Feb 2010) Married: 4,250,200

Engaged: 873,080

(Feb 2010) Engaged: 1,074,020

City networks

Of the main UK cities, which has the largest network and what is their gender split?

London: 4,162,800 (Feb 2010: 4,623,600)

• Male: 1,958,660 (Feb 2010: 2,197,540)
• Female: 2,082,620 (Feb 2010: 2,236,360)

Manchester: 3,602,380 (Feb 2010: 3,329,560)

• M: 1,618,260 (Feb 2010: 1,533,680)
• F: 1,906,540 (Feb 2010: 1,690,820)

Leeds: 3,289,940 (Feb 2010: 3,015,420)

• M: 1,490,960 (Feb 2010: 1,376,700)
• F: 1,715,320 (Feb 2010: 1,477,480)

Birmingham: 1,706,180 (Feb 2010: 1,664,480)

• M: 767,140 (Feb 2010: 790,780)
• F: 869,060 (Feb 2010: 854,800)

Newcastle: 339,040 (Feb 2010: 450,640)

• M: 156,500 (Feb 2010: 217,600)
• F: 167,360 (Feb 2010: 219,780)

Note that this won’t represent the overall numbers of people from these cities, merely those who have assigned themselves to a network and who live within Facebook’s default 50mile city radius setting. Equally, there are members of Facebook who have declared their location but not their age.

Total UK audience by age and gender

Age 18-24: 5,287,780 (Feb 2010: 6,560,100)

• Male: 2,426,840 (Feb 2010: 3,155,240)
• Female: 2,670,340 (Feb 2010: 3,168,380)

Age 25-30: 3,622,960 (Feb 2010: 4,334,280)

• Male:1,744,480 (Feb 2010: 2,142,300)
• Female: 1,862,540 (Feb 2010: 2,184,260)

Age 31-35: 2,153,020 (Feb 2010: 2,601,760)

• Male: 978,240 (Feb 2010: 1,190,620)
• Female: 1,058,520 (Feb 2010: 1,280,540)

Age 36-40: 1,835,400 (Feb 2010: 2,330,420)

• Male: 820,160 (Feb 2010: 1,042,480)
• Female: 907,480 (Feb 2010: 1,167,740)

Age 41-45: 1,306,700 (Feb 2010: 1,832,340)

• Male: 560,720 (Feb 2010: 791,820)
• Female: 666,420 (Feb 2010: 904,000)

Age 46-50: 886,240 (Feb 2010: 1,270,540)

• Male: 371,900 (Feb 2010: 555,640)
• Female: 449,680 (Feb 2010: 652,420)

Age 51-55: 566,000 (Feb 2010: 852,200)

• Male: 231,560 (Feb 2010: 346,960)
• Female: 302,240 (Feb 2010: 443,600)

Age 56-60: 381,580 (Feb 2010: 568,540)

• Male: 157,780 (Feb 2010: 242,500)
• Female: 200,540 (Feb 2010: 300,740)

Age 61-64: 210,120 (Feb 2010: 332,380)

• Male: 85,960 (Feb 2010: 144,660)
• Female:  105,120 (Feb 2010: 164,300)

So, there you have it – hope it helps you to make some useful decisions!

1. The money must be there – if you are going to develop staff, training costs. If you are going to bring more experience in, that costs more. Obvious but there must be cash there for the business to be able to sustain the pay for good staff. (this ties in with point 3).
2. Agencies must benchmark better – Generic phrases around pay like “in the upper quartile”, “better than average” are fast-losing credibility amongst staff, who, if they are switched on, are building their personal brands and making them liable to poaching.
3. If your specialism is media-linked, watch it erode – as current specialisms become mainstream, watch your earning potential decline.

This last point is an especially pertinent one for gabba (my social media agency) and one which we have struggled with positioning ourselves appropriately/sensitively. What we do is very much social media. Sure we build things for clients when its appropriate, but a digital and/or seo agency we are not.

However, we are acutely aware that the root of what we do is pr, only our pr is done online, one to several thousand, using different tools and “techniques” to the conventional world. But as social media evolves, it naturally becomes integrated into digital strategy - touching way more parts of the business than simply the website alone. So who handles this relationship? The PR agency? The marketing department, communications department, customer services…perhaps a social media team…

So where does that leave the PR agency? 3 years ago when we developed a social media press release tool called PressRoom, we introduced it to PR agencies whose lack of online awareness was astoundingly low. Whilst we would never have expected everybody to instantly get it, we would certainly have expected many to understand the context or purpose of the tool.

The gulf between what clients have expected of their PR agency in terms of guidance in this new space and their ability to deliver those skills remains enormous, hence the frequency of deals (partnerships and acquisitions) to get these skills on board quickly and the flurry of activity (and equally paying of generous salaries) to acquire digital specialists who can bring these skills to the pr agency. The reality is though in many of these cases is that these specialists are exactly that - a team of one trying to battle against in some cases, ranks and decades of status quo account management and delivery.

PR agencies will only get skilled up for this new space when the people doing the “standard” give a stuff enough to realise that online is part of their job and not that of the new guy or gal who has digital in their title.

So, going back to Steve’s original point 3, where this leaves the specialist (agency), one might look at the many types of agencies that exist already and have done for years and we see that there IS in fact space for specialist agencies. They just need to know more than their clients, be more adaptable to changing requirements, have proven experience/credibility in the space and be at least one step ahead of clients who are adapting to these new channels and ways of communicating. Let’s take a quick look at some scenarios:

• Digital agencies constantly develop new ideas with new technologies that ClientCo can neither justify investing in or are skilled enough to develop in.
• SEO agencies can deliver a level of skills and results through a wide range of activities that (arguably) few client companies either have the resources to deliver or the budget to achieve the same results.
• PR agencies have the press contacts and relationships that ClientCo does not have the time or resources to develop.

All of these agencies deliver an often exemplary service specialism in their own right yet they comfortably fit into ClientCo’s digital strategy, so I ask myself why wouldn’t social media agencies do the same?

The faster we grow, the more bogged down I get in the practical stuff. Tactical ideas and implementation, strategy, problem solving, running a business, recruitment…you get the idea. You’re probably no different.

Yet every now and then I always take tie to take stock. What is gabba doing? Why are we doing it? Why are we different? What are our values? How long will the website look like a dogs dinner? You’re probably no different.

But one thing that I always refer back to is The Cluetrain Manifesto, for me, one of the most important and influential pieces of writing about this whole thang. So it is admittedly, more theory than practical but its principles remain true today.

Markets are conversations.

Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.

Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.

Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.

People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.

The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.

Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.

In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.

These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.

As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.

People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.

There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.

What’s happening to markets is also happening among employees. A metaphysical construct called “The Company” is the only thing standing between the two.

Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.

In just a few more years, the current homogenized “voice” of business—the sound of mission statements and brochures—will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.

Already, companies that speak in the language of the pitch, the dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone.

Companies that assume online markets are the same markets that used to watch their ads on television are kidding themselves.

Companies that don’t realize their markets are now networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversation are missing their best opportunity.

Companies can now communicate with their markets directly. If they blow it, it could be their last chance.

Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At them.

Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously. They need to get a sense of humor.

Getting a sense of humor does not mean putting some jokes on the corporate web site. Rather, it requires big values, a little humility, straight talk, and a genuine point of view.

Companies attempting to “position” themselves need to take a position. Optimally, it should relate to something their market actually cares about.

Bombastic boasts—”We are positioned to become the preeminent provider of XYZ”—do not constitute a position.

Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships.

Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are deeply afraid of their markets.

By speaking in language that is distant, uninviting, arrogant, they build walls to keep markets at bay.

Most marketing programs are based on the fear that the market might see what’s really going on inside the company.

Elvis said it best: “We can’t go on together with suspicious minds.”

Brand loyalty is the corporate version of going steady, but the breakup is inevitable—and coming fast. Because they are networked, smart markets are able to renegotiate relationships with blinding speed.

Networked markets can change suppliers overnight. Networked knowledge workers can change employers over lunch. Your own “downsizing initiatives” taught us to ask the question: “Loyalty? What’s that?”

Smart markets will find suppliers who speak their own language.

Learning to speak with a human voice is not a parlor trick. It can’t be “picked up” at some tony conference.

To speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns of their communities.

But first, they must belong to a community.

Companies must ask themselves where their corporate cultures end.

If their cultures end before the community begins, they will have no market.

Human communities are based on discourse—on human speech about human concerns.

The community of discourse is the market.

Companies that do not belong to a community of discourse will die.

Companies make a religion of security, but this is largely a red herring. Most are protecting less against competitors than against their own market and workforce.

As with networked markets, people are also talking to each other directlyinside the company—and not just about rules and regulations, boardroom directives, bottom lines.

Such conversations are taking place today on corporate intranets. But only when the conditions are right.

Companies typically install intranets top-down to distribute HR policies and other corporate information that workers are doing their best to ignore.

Intranets naturally tend to route around boredom. The best are built bottom-up by engaged individuals cooperating to construct something far more valuable: an intranetworked corporate conversation.

A healthy intranet organizes workers in many meanings of the word. Its effect is more radical than the agenda of any union.

While this scares companies witless, they also depend heavily on open intranets to generate and share critical knowledge. They need to resist the urge to “improve” or control these networked conversations.

When corporate intranets are not constrained by fear and legalistic rules, the type of conversation they encourage sounds remarkably like the conversation of the networked marketplace.

Org charts worked in an older economy where plans could be fully understood from atop steep management pyramids and detailed work orders could be handed down from on high.

Today, the org chart is hyperlinked, not hierarchical. Respect for hands-on knowledge wins over respect for abstract authority.

Command-and-control management styles both derive from and reinforce bureaucracy, power tripping and an overall culture of paranoia.

Paranoia kills conversation. That’s its point. But lack of open conversation kills companies.

There are two conversations going on. One inside the company. One with the market.

In most cases, neither conversation is going very well. Almost invariably, the cause of failure can be traced to obsolete notions of command and control.

As policy, these notions are poisonous. As tools, they are broken. Command and control are met with hostility by intranetworked knowledge workers and generate distrust in internetworked markets.

These two conversations want to talk to each other. They are speaking the same language. They recognize each other’s voices.

Smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable to happen sooner.

If willingness to get out of the way is taken as a measure of IQ, then very few companies have yet wised up.

However subliminally at the moment, millions of people now online perceive companies as little more than quaint legal fictions that are actively preventing these conversations from intersecting.

This is suicidal. Markets want to talk to companies.

Sadly, the part of the company a networked market wants to talk to is usually hidden behind a smokescreen of hucksterism, of language that rings false—and often is.

Markets do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate firewall.

De-cloaking, getting personal: We are those markets. We want to talk toyou.

We want access to your corporate information, to your plans and strategies, your best thinking, your genuine knowledge. We will not settle for the 4-color brochure, for web sites chock-a-block with eye candy but lacking any substance.

We’re also the workers who make your companies go. We want to talk to customers directly in our own voices, not in platitudes written into a script.

As markets, as workers, both of us are sick to death of getting our information by remote control. Why do we need faceless annual reports and third-hand market research studies to introduce us to each other?

As markets, as workers, we wonder why you’re not listening. You seem to be speaking a different language.

The inflated self-important jargon you sling around—in the press, at your conferences—what’s that got to do with us?

Maybe you’re impressing your investors. Maybe you’re impressing Wall Street. You’re not impressing us.

If you don’t impress us, your investors are going to take a bath. Don’t they understand this? If they did, they wouldn’t let you talk that way.

Your tired notions of “the market” make our eyes glaze over. We don’t recognize ourselves in your projections—perhaps because we know we’re already elsewhere.

We like this new marketplace much better. In fact, we are creating it.

You’re invited, but it’s our world. Take your shoes off at the door. If you want to barter with us, get down off that camel!

We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.

If you want us to talk to you, tell us something. Make it something interesting for a change.

We’ve got some ideas for you too: some new tools we need, some better service. Stuff we’d be willing to pay for. Got a minute?

You’re too busy “doing business” to answer our email? Oh gosh, sorry, gee, we’ll come back later. Maybe.

You want us to pay? We want you to pay attention.

We want you to drop your trip, come out of your neurotic self-involvement, join the party.

Don’t worry, you can still make money. That is, as long as it’s not the only thing on your mind.

Have you noticed that, in itself, money is kind of one-dimensional and boring? What else can we talk about?

Your product broke. Why? We’d like to ask the guy who made it. Your corporate strategy makes no sense. We’d like to have a chat with your CEO. What do you mean she’s not in?

We want you to take 50 million of us as seriously as you take one reporter from The Wall Street Journal.

We know some people from your company. They’re pretty cool online. Do you have any more like that you’re hiding? Can they come out and play?

When we have questions we turn to each other for answers. If you didn’t have such a tight rein on “your people” maybe they’d be among the people we’d turn to.

When we’re not busy being your “target market,” many of us are your people. We’d rather be talking to friends online than watching the clock. That would get your name around better than your entire million dollar web site. But you tell us speaking to the market is Marketing’s job.

We’d like it if you got what’s going on here. That’d be real nice. But it would be a big mistake to think we’re holding our breath.

We have better things to do than worry about whether you’ll change in time to get our business. Business is only a part of our lives. It seems to be all of yours. Think about it: who needs whom?

We have real power and we know it. If you don’t quite see the light, some other outfit will come along that’s more attentive, more interesting, more fun to play with.

Even at its worst, our newfound conversation is more interesting than most trade shows, more entertaining than any TV sitcom, and certainly more true-to-life than the corporate web sites we’ve been seeing.

Our allegiance is to ourselves—our friends, our new allies and acquaintances, even our sparring partners. Companies that have no part in this world, also have no future.

Companies are spending billions of dollars on Y2K. Why can’t they hear this market timebomb ticking? The stakes are even higher.

We’re both inside companies and outside them. The boundaries that separate our conversations look like the Berlin Wall today, but they’re really just an annoyance. We know they’re coming down. We’re going to work from both sides to take them down.

To traditional corporations, networked conversations may appear confused, may sound confusing. But we are organizing faster than they are. We have better tools, more new ideas, no rules to slow us down.

We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.

Now that all of us have much more experience than when this came out, perhaps we should all look, reflect and see if we can identify more closely with the 95 theses to see if we have learned anything, or indeed what else we have left to learn:

But we’re not about the kind of meaningless conversation that SEO agencies create when they advocate that they build a blog for SERP visibility, not the kind of meaningless presences without purposes that digital agencies create as an add-on to their website design, and certainly NOT the kind of tacky pr stunt conversations that pr agencies that don’t even use You Tube and Flickr develop.

No, this is about one thing - developing ways and means for clients to hold sustained, meaningful and mutually beneficial conversations with customers (whomever they may be).

Will the tools that we use to begin and maintain these conversations be the same in two year’s time? Probably not.

Will the description or name of what we do be the same in two year’s time?
Probably not.

Will the need to sustain meaningful conversations with customers exist in two year’s time?
Almost definitely.

So, here’s hoping that we will create many conversations with you in the future!

Check us out here:

http://letsgabba.com
http://twitter.com/letsgabba

If you aren’t sure why or how you need to change the way you work, read this. It may help.

• Are blogs the beating heart of a social media strategy? - Debbie Weil (if you don’t know who she is, I haven’t got enough time to tell you but go here and here to find out more!) posted the following question which has really resonated with me:Is Corporate Blogging the Hub of Social Media Marketing?Debbie’s
• SQUARE PEG - this chap waffles a lot
• Link building services. SEO company. Directory Submission - Get 7000+ Guaranteed One-Way Links. Top ranking - Link building services. SEO company. Directory Submission - Get 7000+ Guaranteed One-Way Links. Top ranking
• The definitive UK Facebook audience breakdown - Robinâ��s chart below had some interesting stats about a huge surge in Facebook traffic last month when Facebook launched the vanity URLâ��s. Traffic to the site was up 9.5% on the previous Sunday.
• brandhack - a lesson for brands everywhere - This is one of the most exciting events I have seen. I received this invitation to attend the Pepsi Brandhack. Main problem is Iâ��m in the UK, the brandhack is in the USâ�¦shame. The UK would benefit from something like this - and I donâ��t just

Is Corporate Blogging the Hub of Social Media Marketing?

Debbie’s question is a really pertinent one as we see more and more casual, almost meaningless social gestures creeping into our online world. Friending, poking, liking, rating, status updates and even Twitter with its 140 characters are all quick and simple ways for us to communicate but do any of them add any real value to interactions with customers?

Whilst many firms set out with the very best of intentions of engaging customers with their social media strategy, where is the real “meat” in the conversation.

As I often do, ask yourself, how would you interact with someone if they only spoke in 140 characters or sentences with limited meaning, or who simply gave you a thumbs up or down in response to a question you may ask?

Out of principle, we in “the profession” are obliged (and 99% of the time are correct) to say that no social media strategy should proceed without beforehand, monitoring the landscape. That seems to be the “proper” and sometimes obvious way to get things moving. We then move to discuss the idea that no channel has the right to be used without evidence that there is a need for the brand to communicate in that way to customers.

The reality is though (and this is through a lot of experience!) that at the heart of any good social media strategy DOES lie a blog - whether with a corporate hat on or a marketing-led branding/engagement one.

The blog, for me, is the way to get to the heart of what social media is all about - people. It is the only way of giving the brand a voice, a means to communicate in a way that the stuffy website or social channels will not let them and a way to to show consumers that the brand really does give a sh1t.

Many have postulated that blogging is dead with the growth of the status update and twitter, but I’m utterly unconvinced.

What are your thoughts? Can you think of other ways that brands can engage in meaningful conversations with customers yet still make it a quick and easy thing to do?

For consumers, this merger should create a significant, seamless way for them to update to their many active social networks in one quick, fell swoop. Rumour had it that Shozu is also going through some kind of deal to add its one-for-all image updating system to a major publishing platform, so this is clearly a fast-moving area - and one which Tweetdeck is going to have to make some major moves in (it was a given that Tweetdeck dominated the desktop status updater sector, but what deals are left for it now/in the future?).

So what does it mean for consumers?

They can be anywhere, any place and update their status/content. Cynics of social networks/media etc. argue that one cannot effectively manage the volume of connections and content that gets circulated on these networks - but people are doing it - and by people I mean the Gen Y’ers for whom always-on connectivity and omnipresence is commonplace.

But what does it mean for brands? Why the deal puts a nail in brands ‘ comms strategies.

One of the biggest issues I have with brands in social media is the “branded outpost” nature of their presences. I talk a lot to clients of branded outposts on things like twitter, Facebook and You Tube (the de facto “social media strategy”) where brands think they are playing the same game as the consumer, simply by having a presence there.

YET, if they are doing nothing once they have got there, or adding nothing of value to the consumer by being present on these channels, then they are pointless - Presences Without Purposes (which is another of my over-used BS terms!)

Staffing and Knowledge issues - the root of the current (and future) problems

One of the most common reasons brands fail to man these outposts is a lack of direction. Typically this lack of direction is governed by “just taking part” and not doing so in the knowledge that what they embarking upon is relevant, timely and valuable to consumers, where they are. Result? Mis-directed efforts which fail to resonate with the audience (if there are any there) and social media is condemned to the “we tried it but it doesn’t work for us” pile.

The second major failing of brands in social networks is that the staff charged with manning these outposts are typically junior (and use social networks for purely personal reasons) or are sporadically covered by marketing managers whole time is hard-pressed with other tasks.

They start off meaning well after the project steering group decided that social media should be on the agenda, but just can’t find the time to continue it. Result? Positive initial noises and participation which quickly dwindles and dies.

The third major factor in failure is one of simple resource - over-stretching of resource, to be perfectly honest. Which is what takes us back to the Seesmic/ping.fm issue.

Brands who do not commit properly to social media channels find it difficult to spend the appropriate amount of time on that channel. Comments come in thick and fast, subscription and friend requests need to be responded to, friends’ content needs rating, commenting upon etc..

As such, the outposts die.

Multiple consumer identities - multiple brand outposts?

Now, multiply the numbers of updateable networks up by about 10-fold (which ping.fm’s reach could do) and you as a brand are faced with a major dilemma - if you can’t manage your FB, YT, Twitter and Blog content NOW (if indeed you are doing any of them), how the hell can you possibly do this with potentially 10 times as many channels?

Even the likes of Ford, GM, Dell and Coca Cola would struggle with this level of engagement. So is the answer to sod them all and bring everyone to YOUR domain/location? I guess that depends on the nature and extent of conversations, but isn’t the idea of taking people away from their familiar territory against best practice? After all, these are social networks where people “socialise” - not convenient locations for brands to earwig and jump in.

The answer is conversation monitoring

My solution to this fragmentation would be to look at the most popular domains - where are the places that most people are doing the talking? Sophisticated monitoring tools do this kind of evaluation as a matter of course - and are much cheaper than an editoral team of 5 people (or more!) to achieve the same thing with marginal benefits.

Starting out? Only be active in the top 3 channels (which may account for 60%+ of conversations anyway), but, with such varying volume of conversations and diversification of networks, you’d be foolish to think that one hat fits all.

Listen, watch, maybe even partake on a personal level if that helps you become familiar with unknown territory, but be aware that now that consumers can update 50+ social networks, you should at the very least be thinking about how you can manage the ones you know about already!

Don’t be scared that you need to be all things to all people in all places. You don’t!

You want to talk some more about this? Mail me at p (dot) fabretti (at) letsgabba (dot) com (my social media agency)!

To any business out there considering social media – this is your wake up call. Let Eurostar get a kicking for this and learn from their mistakes.

YOU on the other hand can do it the right way. You cannot get involved in social media if you don’t:

1. Know who is already talking about you – for god’s sake if you do NOTHING else, listen to conversations taking place about you.
2. Have your assets protected – make sure you own your brand name on all the places you need to use
3. Get your back office sorted:

• Assign people – Know who is going to do the listening, where and with what.
• Triage comments – deal with the most important/dangerous/
• Define the information flow – know how information will get from the end user to the person capable of answering it.

As much as We Are Social annoyingly name drop work they have done into every comment they leave on the web EVER, they have some bloody smart people working there and I do think they have been unfairly criticised for their role in this – they have gone beyond the call of duty to manage a problem that is not of their doing, nor their brief to sort.

Eurostar it seems, just didn’t want to do it properly (although I’m not sure I would have said as much on my company blog) which is a fundamental problem and one which ties up my previous post about clients needing to place more trust in the agencies they appoint – that they are doing this properly.

Sure, the problems would not have gone away, but Eurostar would have been much wiser to listen to the people they appointed to run Little Break, Big Difference – after all that is a great piece of work requiring a major budget. If they can trust we are social to implement an initiative of this size, then SURELY they must trust them to help them manage their comms in the same channels too?

Emma Harris, Eurostar’s Sales and Marketing Director shows the problem:

“We’re the commercial department and we were kind of ready for social media but the business wasn’t. To start involving crisis communication and disruption messages into social media, we just weren’t ready for it. “

Again, as per my last piece, perhaps there are so many snake oil agencies out there that clients have come to distrust every agency they meet, or perhaps the comms team see social media as a marketing thing…or perhaps marketing see this as a comms thing…whatever, if you learn one thing from this post and the whole debacle:

Customers are platform and stature-neutral – they don’t care about who you are. Find ways to deal with them in their playing field how they want to play.

WAS – good job folks. I think you’ve delivered above the call of duty and given a good account of yourselves.

Update: please read Andrew’s post for an incredibly balanced, considered view! Your life will be better for it!