Jemima Kiss in the Guardian today picked up on an interesting angle going on in the Social Media monitoring world which Brand Republic’s mini threads of comment remain oblivious to. As the BBC story around Russell and Ross exploded over the past week or so, their websites haven’t. As complaints on the BBC ‘Have Your Say’ website reached the tens of thousands, the response by the BBC’s online world was pretty slow.
As anyone who studies organisational theory can tell you, conflict over remit or mandate leads to corporate screw-ups. In this case, the Venn diagram between corporate communication, corporate product content and corporate product promotion is hopelessly confusing for the general public. All consumers see is the BBC saying different things to itself. I’ve always said that companies ‘take their clothes off’ in their online presence, and here is all over again.
In the brand management community, who has the final remit for the online view of the brand? I know it’s irritating to hear the phrase ‘online view’ but it is worth thinking through in a moment of crisis. In theory, the brand team will take the mantle, but in practice the corporate communications people do as well. It’s clear that as everyone ‘puts digital at the heart’ it’s more important than ever to sort out the skills mix required to actually deliver a single (and strong) point of view for the consumer. This applies not only to the Agency supply chain, but also to within Client organisations.
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