Fishburn Hedges

04.02.2011

So, two big social media #fails this week.
 
Perhaps rightly, the eponymous designer Kenneth Cole has taken a bit of a thrashing for his rather inept tweet claiming “millions in uproar in #Cairo. Rumour is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at…”.  OK, rightly.  No perhaps about it.  Thrashing deserved.  It’s hard to argue with that one.
 
Those with long memories are casting their minds back to other such slip ups, muttering things like “Habitat” to each other, and nodding knowingly.
 
More amusingly, mostly for it’s appalling taste, is the cottage industry that’s sprung up around #KennethColeTweets, churning out a litany of tongue-in-cheek, tasteless and blatant product plugs, all along the same lines as, well, the Kenneth Cole original.
 
The undoubted star of that string is whoever set up the spoof @KennethColePR account.  In a matter of hours it has gone from nought to nearly 6,000 followers.  Overnight.
 
This brings us on to the second and perhaps more debatable big #fail of the week.  Saatchi & Saatchi has been taking a pasting for challenging prospective graduate trainees to attract as many Twitter followers as they can.  Simple as that.
 
Granted, anyone wanting to ramp up their following indiscriminately can just use some software to do it.
 
The challenge may work for Saatchi, or it may not.  It’s certainly a blunt instrument. 
 
Here’s an essay question though: “who would you rather work with, the author of @KennethColePR (and 6,000 overnight followers) or the one who runs a bit of software then goes to the pub while it does the work.  Discuss”.  Arguably, there are merits to both approaches.
 
What’s more interesting is how quickly the recruitment drive has got under the skin of the social media community.  Many are indignantly condemning Saatchis and crying out that social media is about quality not quantity.
 
Undoubtedly that’s true, if you are building your own personal acquaintances or a client’s brand.  After all, in both cases, your objective is to get to the right people.
 
The quantity versus quality debate is obviously a sore point, and I wonder if this vociferous reaction betrays something of a siege mentality from those overly-accustomed to having to justify themselves.
 
For me, that reaction misses the point.  Saatchis will undoubtedly learn a great deal about their candidates from how they go about their task.  It will also help them identify who can deliver against an objective, no matter how banal.
 
In the meantime I wonder, do the others protest too much?

Posted by Guy Corbet