How Should Companies Handle Social Media Backlash?

Over the last couple of months a handful of companies have encountered well-publicized groundswells of criticism in the social media sphere in response to new ads, branding or other seemingly routine changes in course. First there was the “Motrin Moms” incident where a commercial intended to engage moms (and in particular baby-wearing moms) spurred a fervent outcry that started with Twitter and quickly spread to YouTube and the blogosphere. Here’s the original ad if you haven’t seen it:

Then there’s Tropicana’s misstep with the redesign of their packaging, and Facebook’s about-face on changes to their Terms of Service in response to the resulting backlash.

There’s some really interesting debate going on about what the implications are for companies trying to navigate the social media phenomena. Social technologies are making it easier for consumers to disseminate their opinions and rally around one cause or another by creating Facebook groups, blogging, posting comments on other blogs and using Twitter. As a complaint or opinion gains momentum, google ranks are impacted and the issue can become a PR nightmare.

It begs the question, “How much weight should companies give to this technologically-empowered and very vocal segment of customers that, in most cases, makes up only a small portion of their consumers?” If companies react to these social media outcries by caving in, then in many cases, they’re catering to a small minority.  It seems this was certainly the case for Motrin. These stats from a survey by Lightspeed Research are being reported by AdAge and PR-Squared:

“(Almost) 90% of women had never seen the ad. Once they saw it, about 45% liked the video, 41% had no feelings about it, and 15% didn’t like it. Even fewer, 8%, said it negatively affected their feelings of the brand, compared with the 32% who said it made them like the brand more.”

The takeaway for me is that companies need to supplement their market research by getting input from the social media community before they undergo branding makeovers or make big shifts in policy. For example, Facebook just announced that they’ll be conducting a user vote to guide their decisions on the policy changes they want to make. For most brands, the segment of people that are actively using social technologies isn’t typical of their consumers. But because they are more influential, companies need to start taking their opinions and concerns into account preemtively.