This past weekend showcased just how powerful social media is and can be for your brand though unfortunately it showed how powerful it is in a negative aspect as well. Just ask Real Concerts who were in charge of presenting the Faithless concert at Gallagher Estate in Johannesburg.
Within minutes of things going wrong at the venue, people were tweeting about the poor organisation, lack of proper management etc. There was even a tweet from Goldfish who complained about only having 60% of the sound for their act.
People then used the Real Concerts Facebook page to have a go at Real Concerts and give them a piece of their mind.
Where Real Concerts made a mistake was not attending to or commenting back to these comments, instead they let their brand get tainted by more and more complaints. Instead they should have immediately attended to these comments and given the people the truth as to what went wrong, instead they just said this:
Real Concerts is doing a full investigation of the problems of Saturday night. We will revert back to complaints as soon as this is completed
Social media is all about now and immediate responses. When people have something to say, especially when it bad mouths your brand, you should get on top of it and attend to the comments immediately with real answers, not these diplomatic answers (as above) – people want answers!
A great line I once read was
One key message is that the consumer is king. Companies do not own their brand, the consumer does!
So lets hope Real Concerts learnt from this mistake and in the future harness the power of social networks.
