Every day in social media, an event takes place that creates an unusual and uncontrollable social mania. My wife, who is Norwegian, introduced me to the Norwegian Curling Pants Facebook Fan Page. I have attached a picture of the pants in action at the Olympics at the right. As of February 22nd, this current mania can be measured by over 300,000 Norwegian Curling Pants fans. The fan page includes minute-by-minute score updates. As I write this blog, Norway is leading the French Team by a score of 7-2.
By their very nature, no marketer can predict exactly an upcoming social media mania. However, at the same time, I would bet that some social media activity concerning Olympic curling is not that surprising given the history of jokes (at least in the U.S.) about this sport. Furthermore, while a few entrepreneurs have jumped on the bandwagon in attempting to sell similarly styled golf pants, for the most part, this social media event may live and die without any marketing gurus taking advantage of the situation.
The lesson, I think, is that marketers who want to take advantage of social media should both be constantly brainstorming potential social media manias and have the capabilities in place to pounce within days or perhaps hours upon the temporal mania. For large companies, this is a scary proposition to have a team plotting for a social media eruption and expect that team to respond quickly without bureaucratic reviews and approvals. At the same time, considering the recent Toyota recall fiasco, not having a team in place to respond to social media eruptions may soon be the cause of senior executive firings.
Posted by Jeff Aliotta of Anova Group.
