I had the opportunity to do a quick phone chat with , Network Solutions' "Swami of Social Media," earlier today to get his reactions to the GoDaddy Superbowl 2009 ad debaucle.
My intent was not to sensationalize or stir up controversy, but to try and view this issue through Shashi's eyes as well as to see what lessons could be learned and best practices gleaned.
To give you some background, GoDaddy rolled out their usual tasteless, cheap, tawdry, tittilating, sexist, demeaning to women, <insert adjective of your choosing> ads, which featured Indycar driver Danica Patrick and other females showing off certain parts of their anatomy. (BTW, Patrick is an Indycar driver, not NASCAR driver.) A few years ago, it had shock value... you know, the first time they tried it... but, now, not so much.
In fact, what it did was unleash a groundswell of negative sentiment within the social media sphere, namely Twitter. (Mack Collier did a
pithy synopsis that I think best sums up the prevailing attitude, so I'd ask you to visit his post to learn more.)
To be clear, Shashi didn't "opportunize" this of his own accord. He responded to requests and suggestions being made by others he knew and respected. Not saying there's anything wrong with seizing an opportunity, mind you, which is why I suggested he do so.
In response Shashi created a for anyone wanting to transfer.
Then, he waited and watched to see if the groundswell would respond in his favor, and it did. The post got retweeted numerous times (see ). Shashi's hope was that, rather than him tweeting about it, others would do so on his behalf and that hope seemed to be realized.
Not only that, mentions of Network Solutions, which average between 6,000 - 7,000 per month normally, went up 10 fold, according to Shashi.
Now, if you're a small business, you can pretty much do these types of things at a moment's notice. Not so if you're Network Solutions.
Shashi had to alert his customer support and call center staff as to what was going on. Imagine the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing? Happens all too often in online vs. offline world. Shashi made sure that base was covered.
There's something else he did that I appreciate. He didn't trash the competition just to drive traffic to his offer. Nor did he need to. This is a situation where a measured response was all that was called for. "Discretion is the better part of valor," as they say and Shashi certainly displayed that characteristic. If that is also the character of Network Solutions, I applaud them.
It is too early to determine if there will be any discernable positive ROI for NetSol, or the adverse for GoDaddy. In tracking Twitter mentions of the two, GoDaddy is receiving tons more. However, most of those are of a negative tone and the conversation is beginning to morph over into GoDaddy's alledgedly poor customer service.
If you think all this is overblown, I would remind you of what happened a few years with a small bicycle lock company called
Kryptonite. (See for background if you're unfamiliar with the story. It still lives to haunt them to this day.) Also, consider the
Motrin Moms controversy as another case in point.
If you think the same thing can't happen again, you're mistaken. It can and in spades.
The saddest thing of all is that GoDaddy has at least one staff person assigned to monitor Twitter, , who, at the time of this writing, had yet to respond to any of the commentary. I think that's inexcusable! One thing is for certain, Twitter users are .
I suspect there is much more to come before this issue becomes yesterday's news. Perhaps it is the controversy du jour, but I believe there are lessons that can be learned that having bearing on how companies do business in the era of the social web.
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