Amazon's Silent Mistake in the Face of a Social-Media Firestorm

This incident underlines not only the need for 24/7 monitoring but also for a community manager with a crisis plan.

Connie Bensen
Community Strategist, Techrigy SM2
@cbensen

The power of social media herds can do both good and bad. I agree, it's 24/7 brand monitoring. Social media makes it harder for large entities to get away with shafting the small guy.

@connie you have the perfect software product that could have even helped them understand what particular countries/cities/blogs were generating the most reactions/comments.

I believe you can also estimate if the blog conversations are posistive or negative. So amazon could have chosen to support certain blogs with link juice from their PR article towards those with the most posistive comments.

They could have also chosen to directly contact the most negative blogs and ensure they have atleast some actual correct information about the problem. Amazon should have been able to advise what books and number of titles were affected not expect bloggers to do their own research how big the issue was.

I have my own views that maybe amazon was burnt at a stake during this witch hunt http://thelostagency.wordpress.com/2009/04/13/amazon-burned-at-the-stake/

This is of course the result of extending personal freedoms to morons: When oh when will it finally seep through to the collective web consciousness that social media is riddled with fiction and outright deceit.

Then end result of all of this will be higher prices to the consumer as retailers/etailers are forced to add layers of monitoring and bureaucracy.... it will also create a paranoia detrimental to all brands: thank you mister sucker consumer!

I believe Amazon's approach was appropriate - once the genie is out of the bottle fix the problem and hang on with a carefully crafted public response.

Boring, boring, boring. Twitter is the Boston Cream Pie of the non-orgasmic do-nothing set. Americans don't vote, don't save, don't pray, and don't volunteer, but they find time for this inane crap. Little wonder our society is collapsing. Twitter will fold under its own pondorous and irrellevent weight.

Okay people, let's for the benefit of the doubt say that Amazon was indeed hacked as they claim. While a little suspect, there really is nothing to doubt them on this. So with this assumption, how many companies do you know that immediately tell the world that their website has a vulnerability and that ithas been exploited before you've a) identify that vulnerability and b) plugged that vulnerability.

We can get all high and mighty that Amazon said nothing and that somehow this was a social media fail, but that would be forgetting a few important facts. First, they did respond. Second, they are obviously placing security above social memes. And third, they realized that the so-called "huge" uprising was actually quite small considering their total user base.

Abbey Klassen's recent article on this very site highlights this subject beautifully. Using the Motrin "fail," we discovered that in the scheme of things no one really cared. Sure the topic was a top-trending topic on Twitter, but the actual users posting to that topic was a small sub-set of an even smaller sub-set of the Internet community. And most mom's (customers) in post research really couldn't have cared less about the ads.

Over and over again, the subject of Twitter uprisings comes up on my show, (http://beancast.us). And the opinions from those who know social media marketing always run along the lines of, "Don't do anything." Or "Don't over-respond." (And we're talking people like Scott Monty, John Wall, Peter Shankman, Chris Brogan and others.)

We forget that the value of social media marketing is to bring the corporate identity down to the level of the individual. So response should try to remain at the individual level. When brands like Facebook or Motrin respond with sweeping corporate decision-making to their "Million against..." postings, they miss the point of what it means to monitor the social streams and how to react to them.

Just because someone calls you're customer service center and says they hate the red on your site, doesn't mean you take red out of your brand. Twitter and social media sites are in many ways just a public analog to the call center. And we shouldn't be too critical of a brand taking time to gather facts and respond carefully and individually in such cases.

Pardon my French, but I call bullshit on this #amazonfail business. It was a hack. What would Amazon have gained by bowing to #amazonfail? Zilch. Rushing in to please the torch-bearing mob before figuring out what was going on would have--if anything--only made matters worse. And it's not like the real world paid attention.

I'm a huge fan of Twitter. I'm also a blogger. But this sort of triumphalism is ridiculous bordering on delusional. Too often, Twitter users and bloggers want to believe the worst about a company just because it's big. Amazon as homophobic? Why do social-media conspiracies often seem like they were written by "brains" behind 9/11 conspiracy theories? Even better? If the company doesn't respond to this lunacy immediately, then they just don't get it. That's right. Amazon, a company that has a 33 BILLION market cap, doesn't get the web.

The social media crowd keeps crowing about Motrin. Motrin sales weren't hurt. It was a tempest in a teapot in an echo chamber. Repeated surveys prove this. http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=135605 At most, 1.1 million (0.15% of the internet users) people MIGHT have heard of "Motrin Moms." 90% of women had never seen the ad. Once they saw it, about 45% liked the video, 41% had no feelings about it, and 15% didn't like it.

And this? Amazon learned something about how easy it is for its system to get hacked, but I'm pretty sure its brand wasn't damaged by the Twitter crowd and bloggers rushing to a judgment heard only by themselves.

--Ken Wheaton

I look forward to the day when monitoring systems are sophisticated enough to measure sentiment in such a way that they can detect sentiment swings and automatically raise red flags for crises like this if it isn't manually recognized.

Ken Wheaton hit the nail on the head when he wrote: "And it's not like the real world paid attention."

Real people don't have their faces stuck in front of monitors 24/7 the way the media -- including marketing and advertising types -- would like to believe.

Ken,

I think you make some valid points, but I think you're too far in the other direction. No, Jeff Bezos doesn't need to bow to the Twitter gods, but brands DO ignore Twitter contretemps at their own peril.

Before Twitter, look at the legs that that Tommy Hilfiger-racism rumor had. None other than Oprah had to open her show one day denouncing the rumor. Check Snopes.com for all the background.

Do you think that Twitter discussions don't filter into the real world? And should brands ignore the stirrings of Twitter and write it off as geeks talking to geeks? Despite lots of people writing off Twitter's demo as early adopters, the Twitter demos are moving well beyond that.

Regardless of what exactly caused Amazon's delisting, Amazon DID have a brewing and growing PR crisis on their hands - with numerous people who spend lots of $$ on Amazon merchandise threatening to boycott and stop buying. Amazon.com is a public company, and they needed a much better PR response - yes using Twitter and other PR avenues.

If they were working on the problem, they could have responsibly responded via Amazon's Twitter account, "We're aware of a listing issue impacting thousands of books. It wasn't intentional. We're working on a fix." That could have easily quelled the growing Twitter chorus of complaints.

As of right now, Amazon.com doesn't even have a statement listed on their online press room.

Despite branding Bezos and the company as early technology adopters, Amazon.com still favors a traditional one-way PR broadcast method. They still won't answer a simple question about how many Kindles have sold.

Did Twitter users overreact - yes, and maybe. Did Amazon.com drop the ball on crisis PR - they sure did.

I wrote about Amazon's lackluster response on my blog yesterday - http://jeffrutherford.com/blog/using-twitter-to-respond-to-a-pr-crisis-amazoncom-failed-to-act

Jeff Rutherford

"Whether the incident is a glitch or the work of a hacker is rather beside the point. Amazon should have been monitoring its brand in social media 24/7."

Really?

Twitter-monitoring trumps censorship and homophobia in relevance? Less navel-gazing please!

Ken - the one who's delusional here seems to be you. What was needed in this situation was a simple statement - "We are looking into a problem that was reported with our listings. Thanks for bringing the matter to our attention."

No more, no less. If Amazon had been monitoring its brand, that simple response would have stopped the spread of rumors and nastiness.

And hey, the day 1.1 million people on the Internet are nobody, will be a rare day indeed. Let me point out that it takes a lot less than 1.1 million people to swing an election, start a trend, set a record, etc. etc.

The days when it was possible to ignore a situation like this were over when print was still king.

Bob - This is 2009. Yes Amazon did respond. Three days after the issue was noted and started to spread. In Internet time, that might as well be three weeks.

Times have changed.

Craig - nobody said anyone needs to be in front of their monitor 24/7.

What critics, including me, have said is that Amazon and any other company that depends on the Internet for its living, needs to be monitoring its brand 24/7.

If they had been, all they needed to say was Jeff and many others have noted is "We are aware of a problem affecting listings of thousands of books. We are looking into it."

BL,
This isn't about print media vs. social media. No one (except other media outlets) pays attention to newspaper editorials during an election season. But I understand that many in the social media world need to set up straw men and windmills against which they can wage battles.

Amazon didn't IGNORE the situation. What happened was that it didn't respond fast enough to please the social-media crowd in a manner that satisfied the social-media crowd. Those are two vastly different things. And I'd bet you a year's salary Amazon is doing plenty of monitoring its brand on the web.

You're right, though. Internet time is different than real time. And in the real world, these "controversies" burn themselves out before brands -- even Web brands like Amazon -- and overwhelming majority of people who frequent them even get into the office the next day.

--Ken

I guess the real question is, "Whether monitoring or not, do you need to respond instantly in every case?"

Instant communication doesn't mean that you should instantly communicate. Sometimes it's better to get to the heart of the matter first.

As for times have changed, I would agree. They have changed. And not just in terms of social media. Security is a HUGE issue online and holds (in my opinion) a higher priority than social relevance. They're first duty was to protect the site and the customers. Someone had the keys to the fort. It was important to close the door before issuing any response that would have indicated, "We didn't do this. It was a hacker." That's like broadcasting, "The door's open, guys! Come find it!" Even a "We're getting to the bottom of this" could have been damaging in this case.

I don't disagree that brands are ignoring the social space at their own peril. I write and talk about it all the time. I think you're dead on the money that brands need to be monitoring social spaces 24/7. My issue is in how and when to respond. I think it's far too easy to point fingers at Amazon in this case without considering the situation they faced.

Why won't Amazon just be honest? I would like to know why the "flip" affected only gay & lesbian subject matter or – in the words of Amazon – "a broad number of categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive and Sexual Medicine, and Erotica." Amazon emphasized the latter to suggest that gay content wasn't targeted, but what do all those areas have in common? Definitely the likelihood that they would touch on homosexuality. Knitting, woodworking, mathematics, the American Revolution, the cavalier poets, scholastic philosophy, the Arian Heresy and the history of baseball seem to have come through unscathed. The works that were affected were obviously tagged in some way that targeted them. Not every book in Reproductive and Sexual Medicine was de-ranked. Books fall into more than one category. What painted the target on a particular book was evidently some identification with gay and lesbian subject matter. When will Amazon stop denying this?

More important than monitoring Twitter is not instituting policies offensive to sizeable and vocal minorities in the belief that you will simply get away with it. If Amazon hadn't thrown gay and lesbian subject matter into an "adult" briarpatch so that Donald Wildmon and the American Family Association would never see it in a site search, they wouldn't have had an #AmazonFail problem on Twitter to monitor.

Another useless "news" story brought to you by too much time on our hands. Thankfully most of us are distracted by having to feed ourselves or our families, and living at least part of our lives away from the fifteen-minute-seeking cacophony of self-appointed, brand-police citizen journalists. (Some of whom seem to believe that a coffee-break is news.)

A remediable software issue doesn't make for censorship (especially since many non lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender products were affected.) And if you're still a conspiracist, or believe that motrin moms moved the BIG needle in any way, think about this: Amazon needs every nickel it can get-- even from sales to the lesbian/bi/gay/transgender community-- to meet shareholders' high expectations. But if the hard reality of corporate earnings still doesn't get you off the bias bandwagon, or if you still believe that the biggest and savviest Internet retailer doesn't "get" the Internet, then maybe you need a break from your digital guard tower. Step down and get off the grid if even for an hour; Go lie in the grass; Watch the sun set; Get your mind right. Please, find a wi-fi free spot and leave your cell phone at home; then maybe you won't be tempted to twitter away your much needed retrospection in order to break that big "I'm sitting in the sunshine" story.

@thelostagency - yes, our tool does do what you mentioned:

1) Techrigy SM2 maps where the conversations are coming from
2) we have automatic sentiment and tone, so these can quickly be gauged

Freemium version is available at: http://sm2.techrigy.com and we also have a Professional version. The information can be used for so much more than brand management. Our tool offers full analytics.

Connie
Community Strategist, Techrigy SM2
@cbensen

Ken, Bob - we're making progress. You both agree that it's necessary to monitor brands 24/7.

I *did not say* that Amazon should have said what the problem was. I said they should have acknowledged that there WAS a problem. Period. And that they were looking into it.

I'm 100% sure that Amazon monitors its stats compulsively. But this incident made it clear that, even if they were monitoring the brand in social media - which I doubt - they didn't know how to respond.

They said in their own statement that their handling of the situation was "embarrassing and ham-fisted."

And, hey, sur1fer - people who comment anonymously don't matter.

And I would be the first to admit I was wrong if we found out they weren't monitoring the stream at all. That indeed would be a fail. But I'm still giving them the benefit of the doubt both on their monitoring process and the response until I know more. Cause that's how I roll. ;-)

Merely an oversight..
David Langan
Grand Central Games
212-727-2101

David - yay! now i'll tell you that i totally disagree with your point of view. :>)

BL,
I actually agree with your larger premise that brands have to monitor all channels, diligently. I've simply had it with disproportionate, social media fueled bloodlust over normal corporate mistakes.

Was a time when one actually had to write a well-crafted letter to a company or major newspaper in order to be heard on a legitimate issue. Perhaps that hurdle engendered institutional complacency. But the other extreme-- where any crackpot with a phone, an index finger and an agenda, can light-speed misinformation to a distribution list of only sympathetic minds-- is worse: an Instamob.

Technology has the capacity to broaden horizons, bridge cultural divides, and it often does. But its larger tendency is to do the dividing, to increase segmentation wherein ever smaller, social-media enabled, highly vocal, tribal factions wage war against everything, legitimate or not.

In that light, there's an old political rule that seems to pertain here: To respond to an allegation is to legitimize it. I commend Amazon for not over-reacting to a breeze against their brick house. :-)

David

David - there also was a time when the fastest way to deliver a package or a letter was to get on a bus or train and bring it to your destination yourself. You also couldn't fight city hall or argue with people who bought ink by the pound.

Those days are long gone. Us highly vocal, tribal factions also use social media to raise awareness and money for social issues, to spread knowledge and news, bring about the downfall of theiving politicians and corporations, etc, etc.

If you want to see us as a vigilante mob, feel free.

Nonetheless, Amazon has already said their handling of the incident was "embarrassing and ham-fisted." Cause it was.

-"embarrassing and ham-fisted"... I too might utter those just to be done with the thing.

--I'm with you on the social good... and I'm sure you're a responsible digital citizen, meaning that you're discerning about the information/content you pass along. My only point is that there's a dark side, especially for entities with a vast investment in something to lose. Those Domino's goodwill destroyers are proof enough: When ink is free, anyone can dispense it.

Thanks for the discourse! ;-)

David

Just proves once again that our world is leaning more digitally then ever before, and a company like Amazon should know and be fully aware of this. Not only is it not checking into what people of think of it's products, but when a "glich" happens they do not do much about it. Amazon, it's called damage control! It simply would have taken a mere explanation when the the first sign of the wild fire spread, but now its gotten out of control. Amazon will have to come up with something better than saying its a glich to fix this situation.

Ouch! It sounds like Amazon needs a big old band aid! Do they happen to sell those on their site yet? As for a "glitch", I think not... What an embarrassment for them... It's 2009 people, not 1959...

Enough said,

Gaston,
http://www.Ultimate-Resell-Rights.com