I agree that this is not about ‘social media’ as traditional news outlets were already covering the story in depth. However, social media gives individuals a voice. For example, as an individual, Mindful Mum was able to respond to the Harvard Business Review post then a day later read the response from Maclaren’s CEO, Farzad Rastegar,on the very same blog post. That told me that Maclaren were listening and personally, as a consumer I found that very exciting and reassuring.

In a month’s time this will be remembered as just a recall story.

Perhaps, however the quick response and action will be remembered mostly by its customers. For parents, safety is of paramount importance, and the worst thing a parent wants to experience as a consumer is the feeling that they made a poor or unsafe choice. I’d sooner do business with a company that can make the changes called out by its customers and Web audiences in a timely manner. On the opposite end of the continuum of a businesses willingness to adapt to change, all one has to do is recall the BPA incident with baby bottles. It took many years for baby bottling companies to actually change their insistence from “its safe” to an across the board recall.

The backlash from this ridiculously slow response was that an entire industry of stainless steel canteens and bottles as well as glass bottling alternatives flourished. Plastic baby bottles containing BPA might still be found on shelves, or there maybe be products that aren’t marked properly because they are produced in parts of the world that are stuck in the dark ages when it comes to product safety standards. However because of the poor response by companies to listen to consumer demands, there are parents who have completely turned their backs on the brands involved in the baby bottle recall programs, and the distrust carried over on those brands who had a full range of baby products and accessories (i.e. baby car seats).

In cases when it REALLY matters to consumers that companies make the changes being called out, the echo-chamber argument all too often gets made over as a brand “disruptor”, and when this happens companies use it as an excuse to stick their heads in the sand when what they ought to be be doing is taking “listening” to a level that demonstrates they are a company with the capacity and willingness to adapt. Companies and brands having the most success in social media understand there is a contagious energy derived from social media relationships and what is born from positive consumer experience is this idea that change serves as an inspiration to other companies watching, studying and aspiring to do the same.

Joseph
@RepuTrack