In a previous post, I opened a discussion about “mob rule” within social media.  Let’s continue that discussion today.

The “Motrin Mom” flap started on Saturday, November 15, 2008.  With a stock market declining quickly and an economy following in lock step, some Americans were tuning into what was seemingly more important probably because it was easier to grasp, an online ad from Motrin maker Johnson & Johnson.

The Motrin brand had previously released a video on their website which was to be part of an overall integrated online and offline campaign directed at solving a problem of backaches created from mothers carrying their babies in baby slings.  By some reports,  the ad had been online for as long as 45 days prior to its November 15, 2008 discovery by the masses.  Apparently the ad had taken that long to be found and then discussed.  I’m not sure what that says about the ad or about the Motrin brand’s SEO strategy, but that would be a different discussion.  Let’s move on.

The fact remains that on Saturday, November 15, 2008 the video began being discussed within social media.  The implication of the video was that baby slings may cause back pain that could be alleviated by using Motrin.  I suppose nothing’s wrong with that.  Motrin is an analgesic.  That’s what analgesics do. But apparently it was some of the other implications or language used in that video that drew ire.  The video said that the slings “supposedly” created more of a “real bonding experience” and that the fact that a mother was withstanding the pain was good because it was for the child and that the back sling made the wearer look like “an official mom.”

Now, you can take issue with this or not.  Personally, I didn’t get very upset about this, but then I’m not a mom.  To get your own take on what this video was about, you should have a look for yourself.  Click here to do that.  And when you’re finished looking at the original, you should check out one of the inevitable parodies. Click here for the parody.  But, what you or I may think of this ad, or even the parody, is not important to this discussion.  Here we’re talking about mob rule.  So , what’s important here is the reaction to the ad, not by its viewers, but by its creator.

After the audience response to the ad, much of it unfavorable, began to build on Saturday the 15th, the reactions quickly reached a higher pitch on Sunday the 16th, and on that evening the Motrin brand removed the video from its website and offered an apology to the “offended.”  There was a delay and the brand didn’t respond in real time because reportedly it had no real time, social media monitoring in place.  But I must say for a brand that was not monitoring social media to be made aware of an incident and to react within 36 hours on a weekend was darn good.  Yet in the 24/7 world of social media, it’s not quite good enough.

The fact that the Motrin brand removed the ad from their website shows an example of “mob rule” at work.  Accounts of the incident indicate that considering the total amount of people active in the social media sphere and alive in the world in general, the number who reacted negatively to the video was relatively small.  The people at J&J made a standard, risk-averse corporate response and interpreted the mob reaction as a demand for satisfaction, like taking down the video.  So, that’s what happened.  And the company apparently scuttled the rest of the campaign on which the video was based.  That was quite an expense choice.

Not only was J&J criticized in the social media by some who thought the video was insensitive, but on the other end of the continuum as well, where the video was not thought to be particularly offensive.  J&J was criticized widely in the traditional trade press for not reacting in a social media fashion by engaging the offended and asking for suggestions for improvement.  Can’t win for trying.

But had J&J sought to engage the “offended” asking for positive input, such a move would have served J&J greatly not only by saving the explicit cost of trashing an entire campaign, but also by saving the implicit cost of the lost opportunity to develop a relationship with a large segment of consumers.  Although they didn’t design it this way, what a perfect opportunity they had.  A reason to engage.  To look like “one of the people,”  like one of the group.

Instead, they let the mob rule.

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In The Crowd by Gustave Le Bon, one of the first psychological enquiries into crowd behavior, the author says that “in crowds it is stupidity and not mother-wit that is accumulated.” Le Bon also says that the effect of a crowd will be:

1. To make the individual feel invincible, allowing he/she to yield to instincts which if alone may have been “kept under restraint.”
2. To make the individual submit to the contagion of the crowd, sacrificing personal interest for the collective interest of the crowd.

To put this in common language, we get caught up in the excitement, we feel deep emotions, and we “go along with the crowd.”  You’ve felt this.  I’ve felt this. It’s often visceral and primitive.  Very few, if any, of us are immune to the effects of crowd behavior.

Alvin Toffler in Powershift thought that the “crowd” was the first mass medium, sending messages from the “ruled” to the “ruler.”  We can apply that model to the situation of social media’s use in everyday people communicating with the companies that make the goods and services the people buy.  Toffler also thought that in addition to the messages that crowds sent, the size of the crowd was also a message in that it communicated the importance of the message.  Message quality and quantity are important.  But in addition to the size of the crowd sending a message to the ruler, the size of the crowd also sent a message to the “ruled.”  Toffler says that message to the ruled is, “You are not alone.”  This is the factor of invincibility that Le Bon proposed.

So is social media a crowd?  Is the influence that social media brings upon a company that of “mob rule?”  I’ll take a closer look in a later post.

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In two previous posts I began advancing some thoughts regarding how social media communities are more like crowds.

Webster’s says that a crowd is “a group of people having something in common.” So right off, by using reliable Webster, we see that a crowd does have something in common. Well, use your head. Of course, crowds have something in common. Why else would they come together? Think of any crowd that you have ever been in and on the most basic level there was something that you had in common with every other person there. The purpose of the crowd may have not always been a purpose to be affected by the crowd, such as in a protest demonstration or a picket line. The purpose may have been just to achieve something on an individual basis like a crowd at a concert, to be entertained, or a crowd of people walking down a street, to get from point A to point B in the most efficient manner given the physical circumstances presented. Now let’s move on to an assertion that a crowd doesn’t possess leadership.  This assertion was put forth in an article by Patrick.   The article was entitled “Follow the Herd: How Behavior and Stories Spread Through Online Crowds.”

Again from Webster’s, it says that the word “crowd” is “applied to an assembly of persons . . . and may suggest a lack of order, loss of personal identity, etc.” Okay. So based on Webster’s definition, which I deem a reliable source, I can agree with Patrick here. Crowds differ from communities in that a crowd is a less organized group of persons than is a community. That describes what we see on social sites more accurately.

So what we’ve arrived at here is that online groups really are more “crowd” than they are “community.” From what I’ve just discussed, you can see that online groups are a hybrid between the two, but favoring the crowd side of the “social DNA” rather than the community. I say “favoring the crowd side” because of the lack of order and loss of personal identity factors. They’re big, very big factors in social media, and very dangerous competition for today’s businesses.

Let’s sum up what we have so far regarding groups of people online. What we see online is a virtual crowd with something in common, but they are a faceless group of people, with a lack of order, with little or no personal identity. (There is little personal identity when individuals begin on social media, but it is through avatars and consistent writing voice that people endeavor to establish their own “personal online brand.” Such efforts can contribute to changing a crowd into a community.) And where there are crowds, there is crowd behavior.

That’s the “piling on” that we often see in social media.

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In a previous post, I opened the discussion of how social media is like a crowd.  In it I referenced an article from Patrick who raised the question.

Patrick’s article was extremely interesting and raised many interesting questions. But being that the blog article was anonymously authored, I think it must be approached cautiously. The article and its position would have carried much more weight, more authority, if the author had supplied some biographical information, including a full name, so I could have vetted him for use as a more reliable source. Because anonymous social media/web sources, and their potential dangers, are something I’ll discuss more fully later in a book I’m currently writing.

I question the authority of his material. But I don’t question his opinion, which is that online groups of people are not communities, but instead are crowds. Now back to the issue of crowds.

Many of my social media marketing consultant colleagues like to call groups of people on social media sites “communities” perhaps because it sounds better than calling them a “crowd.” If the label sounds good, then my colleagues can more easily persuade their clients to undertake social media marketing projects, generating fees. Certainly it’s better to say to your client, “Let’s establish a brand community,” instead of “Let’s establish a brand crowd.” “Community” sounds cuter, more warm and fuzzy, more friendly, more like, “Hey, this is gonna generate us some cash.”

“Crowd” sounds brash, unmanageable, and uncontrollable. Despite all the currently sheik and fashionable exhortations for brand managers to “lose control of their brand” by marketing via social media, what brand manager actually wants to go for uncontrollable as his/her objective? The world is chaotic enough as it is. I’m not against generating fees, if the work traded for the fees solves a problem. But using misnomers is not a good way to start out in problem resolution. To revisit some rhetoric from the 2008 presidential campaign and a standard American culture cliché, “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.” So call it a community if you like, but I think it’s a crowd.

I’ll have more on this subject in a future article.

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Because we crave interaction so much and because it’s wired into our psyches, when a new technology comes along that can be used for interaction, we jump on it. The stone tablet, papyrus, movable type, the pony express, the telegraph, the telephone, fax, email, and now social media are all technologies that humans have employed to stay in touch. The social interaction that adapted the Internet to its current form was a type of virtual interaction started in the 1980s with the electronic boards, places where people could post and read messages. Boards morphed into Usenet (the forerunner of today’s social networks) and forums which started popping up in the late 1980s and 1990s, enabling people to “congregate” online and express their opinions on various topics.

That congregation that took place, in the virtual world as in the physical world, was around topics of common interest. My first inclination was to think of the online assemblages as online tribes. But they really aren’t tribes.

Tribes are hierarchical groups of people built around a common purpose. To achieve that common purpose, there must be a leadership, i.e. a hierarchy just as there is in a pack of dogs. (Please watch the Dog Whisperer on NatGeo for further information about packs, and for just plain fun.) Tribes and communities have much in common. Both have hierarchies. I was reminded of the hierarchical factor while reading the article, “Follow the Herd. How Behaviors and Stories Spread Through Online Crowds.” 

The author, who claims to be a neuroscientist and is known only to the world as Patrick, opines that online communities such as those at Digg.com and StumbleUpon.com are not really “communities” at all. He says that they are crowds. Patrick reminded me that one of the factors that separate communities from crowds are that communities possess leadership and a common purpose. He’s right, communities do possess those qualities. Patrick maintains that online groups do not possess leadership and common purpose. He says that online groups are crowds. Yes, they are crowds. But I’m not so sure that he’s right on saying that they lack leadership and common purpose.

Join me in a future post when I take this concept a little further.

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