We learned in previous chapters the importance of listening and communicating with the groundswell, in chapters nine and ten of Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies Li and Bernoff explain the importance of putting these practices into play by "Embracing the Groundswell". It is proven that embracing and interacting with the groundswell can be tremendously beneficial for your business or companies development.
Chapter nine instills the importance of inviting your own customers to prioritize the development of the products and services you offer. It's like allowing your customers to do the bulk of the work for your marketing and product development. In addition, Li and Bernoff emphasize the importance of why innovating at a fast pace with the groundswell is crucial, they explain, "They're both complaining about and praising your products on forums. They're rating and reviewing your products on retail sites. They're blogging and making videos and analyzing your every move" (220).
The groundswell can often hint at or make evident that your company needs to reinvent themselves or a product. Showing feedback online can prove to your customers that you are working to improve your company or product. A company that relied on the groundswell to reinvent themselves in the Pearl Milling Company, previously known as Aunt Jemima.
Following the events after George Floyd's death, the United States had an overwhelming support for civil rights for the black community as well as Black Lives Matter. The country also began questioning the racist origins of many things rooted in our daily lives today, one of them being Aunt Jemima. This household name is rooted in slavery and racial stereotypes, as Aunt Jemima dates all the way back to the 19th century within minstrel shows. Once this company was made aware of the discontent from their consumers, they changed their name, "That's what accelerates innovation - starting a conversation with your customers and using your skills to understand and exploit their knowledge" (233).
In addition, Li and Bernoff explain the usefulness of crowdsourcing. This taps into the groundswell at a minimum, but directly retrieves data from your customers and consumers. A company that does this effectively is Lays, who each year has a fan based flavor of chips they choose to receive a cash prize as well as have their chips be featured in their inventory. This allows Lays to create a conversation with their consumer-base on what flavors could potentially be popular as well as what people want to see changing with flavors.
Chapter ten encompasses the effectiveness of Twitter within the groundswell as well as the numerous tools it offers to organizations and businesses. Energizing on Twitter has proven to be profoundly successful for many companies and businesses, it often provokes the followers to buy into a product or service. In our modern age of social media, people everywhere are trying to be retweeted by a celebrity, popular brand or company.
Can you think of Twitter accounts that energize their followers like this?
Hi, Daniel. I always have an idea that with the increasingly fierce encirclement of people's lives by Groundswell, the development of enterprises becomes more difficult, but at the same time it becomes simpler. As the textbook says, embracing and interacting with Inspur is very beneficial to business and company development. Customers give priority to developing products or services provided by enterprises, which is like letting customers do most of their work for marketing and product development of enterprises. In fact, this means that the task of the enterprise has become simple! In the past, enterprises were unable to listen to customers' voices in time, so they had to rack their brains to try to figure out the customers' ideas and design those things that they thought customers would like into their products.
ReplyDeleteHowever, some enterprises are unwilling to listen to and embrace customers' opinions, and still go their own way. A game I played was very popular before, but the owner of the game was particularly unwilling to listen to the opinions of customers (the game has its own official social platform, and many customers left messages and made criticisms and suggestions), which led to its poor development now.
Hi Dan, I really liked this post. I think it is really showing that brands listen to their consumers during times of unrest. This feels quite reactive, as a brand waits until the last possible second to see that something is wrong.
ReplyDeleteI also like you Lays explain because the chip contest is always a fun time of year! Do you think that campaign truly energizes and embraces the consumers? Lays only does the contest once a year, primarily in the summer I believe. Do you think that Lays listens to and embraces the ideas of consumers outside of this contest? I am curious to hear you insight!
Thanks for your sharing, Dan. I like your post and I think the examples you used are very related to the content we learned from the text book. In your post, you mentioned that Aunt Jemima changed the brand's name after knowing the voices of defiance from the groundswell. It is an example which the brand takes real action to cater the groundswell. The action could make the consumers trust the brand more.
ReplyDeleteHey Dan,
ReplyDeleteGreat post - I believe the example of Aunt Jemima and the connection you brought with it to the groundswell with Twitter. I remember seeing the outrage and awakening of people when they learned about Aunt Jemima's racist past and negative image of black women. I'm glad you touched upon Twitter being a resourceful guide for companies because it is true. Twitter and other socials provide so much info for their consumers and what's going on in the groundswell.
Hi, Dan. Thank you for sharing. I like the company you mentioned Lays. They have a fan-based potato chip every year. They know how to use Groundswell and know that it is important to embrace customers. This is the most effective way to keep repeat customers and create more performance and income for yourself.
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