I like the food at Pizza Hut, and as a result of that, I 'liked' Pizza Hut on Facebook a few weeks ago when I came across its page. Now, what are the consequences of an action like this?
From my (customer's) point of view, there's hardly any consequence. There are just a couple of extra posts a day that get lost in my timeline. In fact, I notice what Pizza Hut has to post just once in a week. The latest post I saw went like this:
"‘I LOVE PIZZA HUT’ – copy, paste, share, get 15 LIKES…. NOW!"
This got me thinking as to what Pizza Hut wishes to achieve by a post like this. Its like sending an SMS to one of the customers asking them to forward it to 15 of their friends. I find it downright annoying when a brand tries to get me to publicize it this way. Not to mention the embarrassment of posting something as blatantly attention-seeking as that. I wanted to see how many people who follow Pizza Hut actually shared this as their Facebook status after seeing it.
I opened the Pizza Hut page on Facebook to see if all of the other posts it shares are along the same lines as this. I wasn't surprised to see more such posts shared once a day, and each was further shared by 20 followers on an average. The page was 'liked' by some 4.5 million people. 20 out of 4.5 million is a big, big failure if the objective of Pizza Hut was to spread their message to further followers.
Then again, I thought, their objective might not be to spread the message after all. They might just want to engage their followers in some activity of thinking about their brand. The results, keeping this objective in mind, were pretty appalling as well. About 500 people commented on every post and about 500 'liked' the post. The overlap between these two sets of 500's is pretty high for every set. Moreover, the people commenting or liking the posts are fairly common across posts.
So, it boils down to this. All of Pizza Hut's Facebook presence (at least in terms of this page), is a mindless interaction with 500 people across geographies. This appears to be the case with other popular brands as well.
It is disappointing to know that popular brands are passing up on the opportunities to build a lasting relationship with their customers and are indulging in such silly shenanigans instead.
Have you noticed this about any brand on Facebook?
From my (customer's) point of view, there's hardly any consequence. There are just a couple of extra posts a day that get lost in my timeline. In fact, I notice what Pizza Hut has to post just once in a week. The latest post I saw went like this:
"‘I LOVE PIZZA HUT’ – copy, paste, share, get 15 LIKES…. NOW!"
This got me thinking as to what Pizza Hut wishes to achieve by a post like this. Its like sending an SMS to one of the customers asking them to forward it to 15 of their friends. I find it downright annoying when a brand tries to get me to publicize it this way. Not to mention the embarrassment of posting something as blatantly attention-seeking as that. I wanted to see how many people who follow Pizza Hut actually shared this as their Facebook status after seeing it.
I opened the Pizza Hut page on Facebook to see if all of the other posts it shares are along the same lines as this. I wasn't surprised to see more such posts shared once a day, and each was further shared by 20 followers on an average. The page was 'liked' by some 4.5 million people. 20 out of 4.5 million is a big, big failure if the objective of Pizza Hut was to spread their message to further followers.
Then again, I thought, their objective might not be to spread the message after all. They might just want to engage their followers in some activity of thinking about their brand. The results, keeping this objective in mind, were pretty appalling as well. About 500 people commented on every post and about 500 'liked' the post. The overlap between these two sets of 500's is pretty high for every set. Moreover, the people commenting or liking the posts are fairly common across posts.
So, it boils down to this. All of Pizza Hut's Facebook presence (at least in terms of this page), is a mindless interaction with 500 people across geographies. This appears to be the case with other popular brands as well.
It is disappointing to know that popular brands are passing up on the opportunities to build a lasting relationship with their customers and are indulging in such silly shenanigans instead.
Have you noticed this about any brand on Facebook?
CONVERSATION