31
July
2009
|
02:30 AM
America/Los_Angeles

No Social Media Monitoring By Apple Or Wells Fargo Yet Still Successful

Large corporations are supposed to be interested in what is said about them. That's why there are no end of marketing experts out there talking about social media and that corporations risk having their brand destroyed by negative conversations, that they need to respond quickly and decisively.

But is this true?

Take Apple, it doesn't appear to pay attention to social media or much to any media in general. Yet it is a successful company.

Whenever there is criticism of Apple in the mediasphere I rarely see an Apple response. By mediasphere I mean the entire media landscape from traditional media through to social media, Twitter, etc.

Is it because of the "fanboys" that will froth at any mention of Apple criticism that Apple doesn't need to do respond? Or is it best to just ignore negative publicity?

About 30,000 people (and counting) have read my Apple rant so far, and this is an influencer community of readers, it's not your average eyeball. On ZDNet there have been 90 comments about my story. Yet not a peep from Apple.

All it would take would be for Apple to leave a comment, something like: "We're sorry, we try to do our best but unfortunately we can't cover your repair but we have an excellent record, etc, etc." At least it shows Apple cares about AppleCare. But no, nothing.

Is this a sign of arrogance? Is this a sign of "I've-got-$24-billion-in-the-bank-and-I'm-adding-$1-billion-a-quarter-in-your-face-arrogance? It certainly looks that way.

Similarly, I had a bad experience with Wells Fargo and wrote about it. Within minutes people were leaving their bad stories about Wells Fargo. I wrote more about Wells Fargo, trying to see if there would be a response. Nothing.

It seems every few weeks people find my posts and leave new bad experiences to tell. Still nothing from Wells Fargo. All it would take would be a simple comment, "sorry about that Tom, but there's nothing we could do, that's our policy."

But no response comes across as arrogant. Especially when you see headlines such as: Wells Fargo profit beats Wall Street estimates. "Wells Fargo said its earnings after payment of preferred dividends came to $2.58 billion."

So, is it best just to ignore any criticisms? It sure seems that way - which is bad news for all the social media marketing gurus if that's the case.

- - -

Apple Rant: AppleCare = Shoddy Service - Apple Arrogance?

RantWatch: Shoddy AppleCare - arrogant Apple

Case Study In Online Brand Management: Wells Fargo Continues to Ignore The Conversation...

Wells Fargo Case Study: From Crisis Meeting To Conversation

Case Study: Wells Fargo's Effective Brand Management . . . Not!

RantWatch: Extremely Poor Service from Wells Fargo