Don't Be a Voyeur

Julie Wei, Singapore

Having driven a lot of the consumer work in the Singapore office for over four years now, it may or may not be career suicide to come clean and admit that I’ve only recently really started embracing what we’ve been preaching to clients about social media for a while now.

Don’t get me wrong – the ideas, the counsel and the proposals have always been insights-based, built on research, polls, conversations with the target audience, trend observations, etc.

But that’s the point. It’s always been based on observation – a voyeuristic outside-in approach to understanding consumer trends and behaviour online.

You are what you eat

What really changed for me was about a year ago when my colleague and I started getting serious about having an online presence. Before, we both had dabbled in blogging and were both on Facebook and Twitter as individuals, but we decided to really commit to an active presence in social media, with focus on a topic close to our hearts and bellies – food.

We set up a blog which we both contribute to regularly now, we Tweet and Facebook actively about our foodie encounters and trends, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve attended quite a few tweetups in the past few months. Feels like the IRC days all over again, although I’d like to think Twitter is slightly cooler (just slightly).

To put it in context, food is the number one trending topic online in Singapore. Singaporeans don’t care about politics; they just want to know where they can get a good bowl of noodles! So it really wasn’t difficult to start making connections with other food bloggers and sites, or start engaging other like-minded foodies in conversations online.

Living and being in the thick of online communities has empowered us with information and knowledge about consumer behaviour that we wouldn’t have gotten from a mass of data, and has enabled us to be better consultants for it.

Coming out of that social media shell

And we don’t always have to demonstrate our understanding of social media in epic campaigns; it can be adding value in the little things. For example, at a recent island-wide Shell promotion offering fuel at $1 per litre, the client whispered out loud that she wondered what people were thinking and feeling about the promotion as it happened. I immediately whipped out my trusty Blackberry Bold, searched for the trending topic on Twitter, and was able to immediately show the client the last 100 tweets about the promotion – most of which were positive, to her relief. It also demonstrated to the client the viral impact of Twitter with people re-tweeting and sharing details on the promotion with their own networks.

What is a name?

Or at a recent Burger King launch, where we invited influencers and celebrities for a sneak preview of a new concept, a quick search online showed that our guests were starting to post pictures and their thoughts on the new store on various online platforms. Trouble is many of them were getting the name wrong! The store is called ‘Whopper Bar’ but there were a hundred different permutations from ‘Burger Bar’ to ‘Whooper Bar’, you name it!.  The team was able to immediately troubleshoot on the spot, going around to each influencer and quietly reminding them.

Step away from the binoculars

And of course, being active in the local social media scene enables us to easily connect our clients with the right online influencers, and know at the back of our hand what their topics of interest are. It also enables us to advise or clients as to how to approach bloggers effectively and in the way they would like to be reached out to.

The point is, stepping away from the binoculars and moving from observation into action has made a tremendous difference in the way we consult our clients about online consumer behaviour and trends. It’s like when an actor gets into character – you really only understand the consumer psyche by being the consumer.

So stop being a voyeur. Get involved.

Comments

[Toni]

Thanks for writing this. I see a divide forming among the PR community between those who do and do not actively engage on social media sites. I moved from a voyeur to participant about a year ago and do think it's had a positive impact on my counsel to clients, but in subtle ways that make it difficult to persuade voyeurs to make the leap. I hope many PR voyeurs read this and start seriously considering joining the conversation.