Who would want to be the head of marketing at Carglass right now? Carglass – a company specialized in repairing and replacing damaged car windows seems to be swallowed up by a torrent of angry tweets. Thousands of Dutch twitter-users are tweeting and retweeting the following hash-tag: #carglasszuigt. Carglass zuigt, literally this means Carglass sucks. Whatever language you speak: that’s not good publicity. How this tumult was started (was it a prankster or a disgruntled customer?) is not exactly clear. By now it has swollen into a seemingly unstoppable avalanche of anti-carglass sentiment.
To add to Carglasses problems: someone pretending to work for Carglass posted a tweet threatening twitter users who were using the #carglasszuigt hash-tag with legal action. It doesn’t take a social media expert to predict how the internet responded.
Things got ugly pretty fast. Even the mainstream media got wind of the story. “Carglass victim of an online libel” one headline reads. Journalists and social media experts were discussing the case on the radio whilst a Carglass spokesperson woefully exclaiming that: “We really don’t know what to do right now.”
What can they do? Fight back? Against whom? Lay-low, whilst their reputation is being torn aport by a twitter-mob? Hardly an option. Carglass seems to be in a horrible mess. Or in a great position to leverage the attention.
How?Here’s my idea: admit it. Admit that you really suck.
Yep.
Publicly admit that you suck and simply offer to vacuum the cars of customers who come by their shop and have their windows repaired or replaced for free! Either #carglasszuigt dies a quick death or it becomes the kind of promotional stunt that will keep people talking for a while.
You really think that persons who needs their window to be repaired, be influenced because many people use a hashtag #carglasszuigt ?
Hi Tom,
No, when you’ve got a broken window you probably won’t be using twitter to look for a good repair-service to begin with.
I think however that it’s a good way to diffuse the bomb that just exploded in their face. Probably much more effective then pretending it didn’t happen, complaining in the media or threatening with legal actions.
Of course if their service really does suck, if there are legitimate complaints by customers they should look into that problem and fix it. ASAP.
Thanks for stopping by!
Jammer voor Carglass natuurlijk. Maar het is fantastisch om te zien hoe zo een ‘trend’ invloed kan hebben op een bedrijf. Triest dat het een grap was…
Alle interessante bloglinks staan hier op een rijtje:
http://sjoerdgerritsen.com/2010/08/10/carglasszuigt/
Hi Sjoerd,
Just read your blog (hope you don’t mind me responding in English, I’m still figuring out how to do a bi-lingual wordpress-blog). Thanks for having me in your list – amongst a few of the big names, no less.
I’ll be sure to bookmark your blog and check it out from time to time.
Thanks Bas, two thoughts popped my mind: Carglass, like many other companies, has not yet organized its presence in the dazzeling world of social media. The other is how Carglass can benefit from it. Knowing that there are a hands-on company, they should act accordingly now, so:
Speak up: publish the real carglass twitter account on carglass website so people know it is really you.
Start listening: separate the possible real problems from the noise. Solve them the same way as offline.
Create a counterattack: the one who finds the ‘source’ of #carglassZuigt wins a life time service account at Carglass.
Good ideas. But I don’t think I’d go for a ‘counterattack’ though. You’re too late too; the conspirators already ‘fessed up.
Hoi, Mooie blog! Ik was iets over brand aan het zoeken toen ik je blog tegenkwam. Ik heb helaas niet gevonden wat ik zoek, maar vond je blog er leuk om te lezen. Ik zal je toevoegen in mijn RSS lijst.
Tot snel!!
I take it you were looking for stuff about ‘brand’ (fire) and not ‘brands’ in general? Otherwise you might want to check out some of these posts:
Your Brand Promise
The Brand Circle
Bastiaan, this was a great, creative idea for how to deal with an angry Twitter mob. I have quoted you as an example in my article, “Angry Twitter mobs wield ‘twitchforks’ in worldwide attacks” (see page 2)
Hi Adam, just missed that comment of yours – it came on the eve of my family-trip to Indonesia. Thanks for the quote and I enjoyed your article!
Hope you stop by again sometime.