The Media Psychology Blog

It would be impossible to not pause and ponder the implications of the deaths of Farah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. Both were cultural icons tied to a specific time in U.S. pop culture. Their death forces us to deal with the passage of time and mortality (theirs and ours). It reminds us that we won’t ever be that age or that person again.

It would be hard to distinguish between people’s reaction to the loss of Fawcett or Jackson as symbols of the time, (not to mention success, beauty, creativity, innovation, and social change) versus what psychologists would call a parasocial attachment (i.e. feeling that they were your friend). Nevertheless, these individuals have created (or are at the center of) metaphors that trigger strong emotional responses for many of us. Love them or hate them, it’s hard to separate icons of this magnitude from the experiences you have concurrently both personally and in society at large.

This was posted April 13, 2009 on my blog “Positively Media” at Psychology Today.

First it was “Dell Hell” and now it is “#AmazonFail.” For all the debates over the purpose, point, and value of social media, it is events like these that illustrate how important they have become and how powerful they can be.

“Dell Hell” is one of the iconic stories in the history of social media sending an emphatic message that consumers have a new power. In June 2005, blogger Jeff Jarvis shared his less than satisfactory experience with Dell’s customer service on his blog “Buzz Machine” with the title “Dell Hell.” (This story is documented in a number of places, including the books Groundswell and Citizen Marketers, both quite interesting.)  The reach of Jarvis’ blog got his story out there, but the fact that his experience resonated with so many other Dell customers coupled with the system properties of the Internet sent the story viral, ending up not only all over the web but in the New York Times and Business Week. Dell had quite a wake-up call that resulted in substantial internal changes.

To quote Yogi Berra, we’re having déjà vu all over again and Amazon gets to learn Dell’s lesson.

For those of you who haven’t been following the Amazon story, the company recently revised its ranking system. The system, like Google’s search algorithms, causes search results to be based not just on content match but also on popularity. An Amazon ranking is very important to authors because it allows their titles to appear on bestseller lists.

The furor began on Live Journal, when author Mark Probst noticed that the ranking had been removed from his young-adult novel with a gay character. As Probst remarked in his blog, he checked other gay titles and found that they too had been de-ranked. The story on his blog was picked up and reported on Twitter with the hashtag #amazon fail. (The hashtag is an identifier that tags Twitter posts to make them searchable.) Twitters and retweets (resending someone’s tweet) spread the information that Amazon had stripped the sales ranking from adult content (no pun intended). Although the de-ranking was intended to be targeted at all adult content, the result was the deletion of rankings from hundreds of gay and lesbian books while overlooking quite a bit of heterosexual lit-porn. The story and outrage reverberated through Twitter with #amazonfail quickly becoming the number one word on Twitter.

People began to collect lists of books of questionable content. Carolyn Kellogg on the The LA Times blog Jacket Copy reported that the sadistic murder story “American Psycho” remained ranked while the well-reviewed nonfiction work “Unfriendly Fire,” about the scoial costs of the current gay ban in the military, lost theirs. An online petition ensued.

New tools in the distribution arsenal since Dell’s misadventure, such as Google Bombs, were organized and deployed. Google bombs are a collective effort of people to link to specific words so that they disrupt the Google search and come up first. In this case the words are “Amazon Rank,” taking searchers to an explanation of Amazon’s transgression. The story of Amazon Rank reached epic proportions in little over a day.

Amazon reported that this was an unfortunate computer error. Many, but not all, are skeptical. At the least, this episode has raised issues about Amazon’s control and the transparency of the de-ranking process. Either way, social media has scored another victory for the little guy by proving that individuals have a voice and can make a difference.

The moral of the story is that the power has shifted from a one-to-many to many-to-many model, as Clay Shirky discusses in Here Comes Everybody. This means that not just as customers, but as citizens, we can and do get involved and make our voices heard in response to perceived abuses of power. The conversation can go global at any time and it just doesn’t matter anymore who starts it. Because of the way we, are tied together as nodes in a system, something as innocuous as a Tweet can trigger a cascade of information across the network. That one Twitterer now has the potential to create social change.

Nigeria has recently embarked on a rebranding effort to improve their image worldwide.  Global perceptions are important in attracting the kinds of things an emerging economy needs to improve the living standards and opportunities of its people: tourism, trade, foreign direct investment and foreign financial assistance, or even to meet the UN recommended Millennium Development goals. In the words of President Yar Adua, “we must readily put in place a positive perception of Nigeria.”   It has been interesting to watch the dialogue in the AllAfrica.com news.  In a recent article Nigeria: Re-Branding – Country May Be Worse If Credibility Gap is Created the National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria (NIMN) president Aimiuwu warned that things may get worse rather than better if Nigeria doesn’t do the rebranding effort right, noting that credibility is important, if “a product is not authentic and credible then our acceptability by other comity of nations will be difficult.” He also pointed out that corruption by Nigeria ’s leaders presented a serious challenge in the selling of Nigeria as a brand.  Corruption is always a challenge to crediblity and transparency.

Whether it’s corruption, quality of workforce, infrastructure, tourist venues, or social stability and safety, credibility is key. Nigeria faces two big challenges: 1) brands are held in the brains of the tourists and investors, not the promoters, and 2) emerging social technologies have established new standards and expectations around the globe for authenticity and transparency.

Nigeria (and any nation) needs a new approach in the current environment. A new slogan, catchy song, and opulent video footage won’t do the trick in an age where regular people can talk to regular people without official intervention or institutional intermediaries. I know, easy for me to say, but Nigeria needs to identify the areas that are most detrimental to their goals and establish specific intervention strategies. The intervention strategies must address both the substance of the problem (i.e. improve something) and then the perception in the market. Holistic rebranding efforts sound fine, but the economic manifestation of positive perceptions often hinges on a short list of perceptions. No one can change everything, so it’s good to change the things that matter most.

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Photo source: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/19/world/19nigeria-600.jpg
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2658127.stm
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/04/20/nigerias_election_may_move_a_continent/

An article on Entrepreneur.com “In This Economy, Everything’s (Re)Negotiable” got me thinking about how hard it is to make changes in a business.  Aside from contracts and other commitments, it’s difficult to retrench because it means redefining how you think about yourself and success.  Running a business is hard work because you have to be able to  adapt to the market with the necessary steps to keep your business healthy–especially when the economy goes limp.  Times like this can be a great opportunity to realize that renegotiating contracts and cutting costs are NOT signs of weakness and failure. 

The real success stories are the people who recognize that the time to make change is BEFORE you need to.  They have the internal strength to roll up their sleeves and do what it takes to keep their business alive and well.  This means not getting hung up on the size of your office, the view out of your window, or the kind of car you drive.  If you start to internalize the external trapping of success, you won’t be able to adjust when it’s the right thing to do.   What does success mean to you?  Success to me means keeping our business running so we can take care of your family and so employees can take care of theirs.  If you can put your goals in that context, renegotiating price contracts and leases become badges of honor, indications of business acumen and the ability to make good decisions. 

Being proactive will not only strengthen your business structure but will also enhance your sense of control in uncertain times.  While the financial benefits will accrue over time, the psychological benefits will be felt immediately in terms of confidence, security, and optimism–not just yours, but your employees and your customers.