BEIRUT: Companies should use social media, even if they get negative feedback, marketing manager Darine Sabbagh told an audience of business students at the American University of Beirut.
At an evening lecture at the Olayan School of business organized by the AUB Online Collaborative, Sabbagh, who works with Integrated Digital Systems in Beirut, gave examples of successful and unsuccessful marketing campaigns in the Middle East using social media, mainly Facebook. She found that the best campaigns came from companies that regularly engaged their customers and online community, and didn’t shy away from negative comments.
“Companies always have negative feedback. Even if they’re not using social media, people will talk about them online,” noted Sabbagh. “They should thank people for telling them if something’s wrong so they can improve their product.”
The marketing manager cited one well-known example of a company that shunned negative feedback, only to find itself with a PR disaster. When a blogger wrote about a bad experience he had at a Benihana restaurant (in Kuwait), the restaurant sued him.
On the other hand, at (the capital's) Classic Burger joint, a negative online review led the company to encourage the customer to return.
Another example of a company’s failure to engage the online community was following a travel ad for Lebanon featuring scantily dressed young women. Many people took their grievances to the Internet. Instead of responding online, the company that produced the ad, IMPACT/BBDO, did so on television, missing an opportunity to engage the online community.
In other instances, companies start a campaign but then fail to follow up by engaging customers, as was the recent case of the Lebanese food chain Zaatar W Zeit and its "missing Z" campaign.
Sabbagh cited Aramex and Wild Peeta as two companies in the region that have successfully used online and social media engagement to their advantage.
Even though companies appear to be increasingly using social media to reach customers, this still hasn’t become a mainstream marketing tool in the Middle East.
“Up to now, many companies don’t even have websites. It’s hard to adapt to change. It’s not just the older generation that’s resisting change,” she said, adding: “Once you go social, it can get out of control.”
But that might be just about to change.
“Worldwide, the trend of online customer engagement started about three years ago,” Sabbagh recalls. “In Lebanon and the rest of the Middle East, they’re really starting to grasp it and become really active.”
AUB business student Mohammad Hijazi, founder of the AUB Online Collaborative that organized the event, said: “People are looking for something more creative that grabs their attention. This is where the future of marketing is.”