Technology
Is Your CMO on Twitter?
By Willem Smit
April 21, 2011
Twitter users now send more than 140 million tweets a day. With over 20 percent of these tweets being related to products and/or brands, this means that every day 28 million tweets potentially concern your brand or company. The microblogging sphere has undeniably become a worthwhile place for listening to customers and potentially influencing perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors by engaging in their conversations.
The relevant question has therefore moved from whether marketers should get involved with Twitter to how they should deal with it. Not only Twitter, but social media in general poses novel challenges to brand building and management. Basically, it comes down to the fact that control is handed over to consumers. The days in which the firm controls what the brand stands for are gone. Consumers own the brand. Today's competitive environment necessitates that brands learn to respond more quickly. It would make sense that marketers keep their own fingers on the pulse of a dynamic and vast media space like Twitter, and follow sound marketing advice: listen, listen, listen! Doing so enables marketers to learn firsthand what customers are saying about various brands and competitors. Yet is there something else that can be done? If so, what?
What are the chief marketing officers of the leading brands doing? As Twitter recently celebrated its fifth birthday, have they joined in the celebrations? Are they even on Twitter? If so, how often do they tweet? And what do they tweet? We systematically examined CMOs' Twitter presence for Interbrand's 25 most valuable global brands. Of the top 25, 17 brands have assigned CMOs. Only half of them have clearly identifiable Twitter accounts.
Source: Twitter – accessed March 22, 2011
Very Different Twitter Styles
It seems that the nine top brand CMOs active on Twitter have not found one single right answer. They have very different tweeting styles. On one extreme of the spectrum are Joseph Tripodi (
@JVTRIPODI), from the world’s largest brand Coca-Cola, Lorraine Twohill (
@lorr2hill) of Google, Jerri DeVard of Nokia, and Marc Pritchard of P&G. Each has an account but has not tweeted, leaving the number of followers limited. It could be that they only use their Twitter accounts for listening.
On the opposite end of the spectrum we find CMOs with a more active style, like IBM’s Jon Iwata (
@coastw) and GE’s Beth Comstock (
@bethcomstock). Iwata’s tweets come in waves. Days pass without a tweet from him, and then there are four to five days a month when he sends out multiple messages. His tweets are all IBM-related: announcements about the opening of an IBM branch, strategic priorities, and investor briefings.
More personal and experimental is Barry Judge from Best Buy (
@BestBuyCMO,
barryjudge.com). Barry sends two or three tweets every day, mixing work with play. A striking example is: “Trying this to see what happens. I have a room at Little Nell's in Aspen from Mar 23-27. I can't go. Anyone know how I can find a renter?”
Your Own Voice on Twitter
Within this spectrum, it's key to find your own voice. It's important to determine what style is appropriate for you and your brand. There are a couple of issues you need to take into consideration since a more active tweeting style has both benefits and drawbacks.
The main benefits of active tweeting are getting information from your customer base and reputation-building, and include:
Quicker speed in customer sensing
Twitter is one of the fastest ways to identify what is happening with your brand.
Being less dependent on internal customer insight sources
Having your own direct channel of information disciplines the insights that company channels provide you with.
Being more approachable
Opening a Twitter account gives external audiences the possibility to contact you instantly. It shows that you and your brand are open to feedback and sends a signal that you personally care.
Key drawbacks of active tweeting are that it's time-consuming and can be distracting and even confusing.
Some Tweets Are Just Noise
According to research firm Pear Analytics, 40 percent of tweets are pointless babble—either conversational and self-promotional. If “lists” are not carefully designed and “whom-to-follow”s are not well done, it is difficult to filter out what is important. In that sense, tweeting creates a lot of useless distraction.
Twitter can present a conflict of interest
Personal branding can get confused with company branding. It's dangerous to post a disclaimer that says: “What I post here is really my opinion and not necessarily the opinion of my company.” If you do not want to make this trade-off, is it still an option to just open a Twitter account and then only listen? No, not really, because remaining a wallflower may violate a critical communication law formulated by Austrian-American psychologist and philosopher Paul Watzlawick, who claimed that “No one cannot communicate.” This means that staying silent on Twitter still sends a signal: a silent presence may well be interpreted as ambiguous and could easily be explained as being “uninterested,” “too busy with things other than customers,” or even “arrogant.”
In the end, it is up to you and your company to weigh the pros and cons of embracing a more active Twitter style.
Willem Smit is a Research Fellow at IMD, the leading global business school based in Lausanne, Switzerland. He can be followed on Twitter at @WillemSmit.