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Picture this. It’s a crisp, Autumn day in early October and you’re just starting off the week with some scrolling and messaging on your social media app of choice. All of a sudden, it just stops.
What do you do? How do you react and respond?
In the span of a few seconds, billions of people around the world experienced this on Monday when Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp went down simultaneously around noon eastern time. The way we collectively responded speaks volumes about the state of social media today. It not only reflects the ubiquity and influence of large platforms but also how their brands are perceived by their massive user base and onlookers alike.
Admittedly, my first reaction to the news was that the outage must be causing confusion and disruptions in people’s routines, as these platforms have become so intertwined into our daily lives. My immediate second reaction was to head to Twitter.
As scores of users did the same, Twitter responded with what it does best: connect people to what’s happening in the moment, real-time—and to do it with personality. With Facebook’s official accounts and executives taking to Twitter as well, it became obvious that the platform was the clear winner in the competition for the day’s attention.
But users weren’t just heading to Twitter to understand what was happening. Although the social media giant states its purpose as “to serve the public conversation,” their brand line may as well be “come for the news. Stay for the memes.”
And the memes did not fail to deliver. However, from behind the humor and hilarity emerged real truths that marketers and leaders alike can learn from.
Truth #1: brand perception is reality
The reality is that your brand is not your own. It belongs to the public. The way it’s perceived is the reality of what it represents—and this was what we saw in the memes.
In the case of Facebook, much of its brand has come to represent some of the worst of today’s social media issues, with the proliferation of misinformation and hate speech, concerns by advertisers of brand safety and its influence on divisiveness and political upheaval. For instance, one user tweeted “lot of top tier vaccine scientists going to have a tough time with their independent research now that Facebook is down,” while another said, “according to Facebook, the only way to fix the FB outage is to cover its servers in horse paste.”
Still another referenced McDonald’s in a nod to the fast-food leader’s ongoing ice cream machine issues that have become a recent topic of online chatter.
Truth #2: brand trust is hard-won and easily lost
The outage reminded us that brands are built based on trust and consistency. And when that trust is lost, it’s a steep—and sometimes insurmountable—climb to regain it.
Only one day prior to the outage, Facebook faced a bombshell whistleblower report on 60 Minutes, which followed similar reports in the Wall Street Journal, alleging that the world’s largest social network misled the public about efforts to eliminate the issues it has come to represent.
The report also alleged that Facebook had knowledge of Instagram’s negative effects on the mental health of teenage girls. Based on this, one Twitter user commented that “influencers are going to have to go door to door” to have a similar effect because the photo-sharing platform was down.
Truth #3: brand personality lives or dies on social
Marketers spend millions of dollars and months at a time on carefully curated messaging and content with high production values, but sometimes the short-form, timely response can best reflect your brand’s offering and content.
For example, Netflix tweeted a widely shared meme that referenced its Squid Game series, which already has 650,000 likes and 150,000 retweets—and counting. Snickers tweeted “maybe Facebook and Instagram just need a SNICKERS.” The short, simple callback to their popular, long-running campaign could only have come from understanding their brand personality and core message.
Keen social media managers were able to take advantage of the moment and not only use the platform left standing to its fullest, but they did so in a way that brought their brands to life with their audience.
As the presence of social platforms continues to be ubiquitous, this should all serve as a powerful reminder that their influence is far-reaching and requires attention by brands, as a foundational element of their strategy.