Love consumers… but don’t forget brands

It’s easy to give brands a bad rap.

In our warm and fuzzy social world, corporate has pretty much become a dirty word.

Scan social media on any given day and you’ll encounter a raft of articles called things like ‘how to become a business that cares’, ‘the latest social media fail’ and ‘dealing with detractors’ (yes, a few of them might be by us) that suggest brands are big, bad and struggling to engage with people on and offline.

But they’re what makes all this possible.

Someone has to finance social media, however much we like to think of it as a God-given free-for-all. The investmen from businesses and brands who truly believe that peer to peer conversation is the way forward is what keeps word of mouth innovating and developing to improve things for both consumers and companies.

In our experience, companies are filled with passionate, socially savvy folk who really want to put WOM at the heart of what they do. Yes, it can be damn hard to find a way to integrate that passion throughout a big business so that it brings measurable results, but it’s perfectly possible.

For all the evangelism of the consultants and agencies, the staff of these companies are the guys who are starting to execute people-focused tactics in their jobs every day.

The Sainsbury’s team sharing their passion at our freefrom dinner party

So all this week, the third of our 10th birthday extravaganza, we want to say:

thank you to the clients

First and foremost, of course, thank you to ours; from Sainsbury’s to Nokia, Universal to P&G, STA Travel to SKINS, they show that industry and size of company is no discriminator when it comes to embracing WOM. All it takes is bravery and an intrinsic belief that consumers should be at the heart of everything they do.

But also thank you to all those businesses out there who are putting the theory into practice and PROVING that this stuff works.

Not to mention, you keep us in cake 🙂

What businesses out there do you think are doing an excellent WOM job?

Molly Flatt