• If You Say You’re Going To Listen, Then Listen

    Posted on April 28th, 2011 by and currently 1 commenting.

    “Listening” to your customers has become quite the trend in marketing practice, especially when social media channels are utilized. It’s incredible when you think about it – there are people talking about your brand, and you can see those statements and conversations happening – in real time. Now, the influence of offline conversations is still more influential than social media online, but these new technologies have given marketers insights that simply weren’t available before. Very cool stuff.

    But what happens when a brand wants to use ‘listening platforms’ to broadcast marketing messages to their customers they same way they have in the past? Many companies who employ the broadcast mentality find themselves repeating a familiar cycle in a new venue: coming up with catchy hooks over and over to keep people excited. (The traditional model isn’t wrong, it just leaves a whole lotta potential on the table.)

    Other companies take a more precarious route, making the claim that they want to listen, but not acting on the exchange they have with their customers. Many brands actually make this work, but it can turn and bite you if you don’t keep a very careful hand on the leash.

    Motorola provided a shining example of this recently. They asked their 300,000+ fans, “What cool Android apps would you like to see next from developers?” (1)

    Many people expected requests for music players or a Netflix streaming app, but unfortunately, this opened up a deeper issue for Motorola. Their users want more control of their Android devices. (Bear with me through the nerdy paragraph below.)

    Specifically, they want an ‘unlocked bootloader.’ (Don’t raise your hand if you know what that is.) I’ll spare you the nerd details, but essentially, Motorola and other phone manufacturers leverage Android’s open-source operating system to install their own user interfaces on devices. Motorola’s version is called ‘Motoblur,’ HTC’s version is called ‘HTC Sense,’ and so on. Some versions include some pretty slick interface features.

    For many users (yes, lots of geeks), the downside to a slick interface is that the phone manufacturer locks you in, limiting your control of the device. pocketnow.com, one of the sites that broke this story (2), says that an unlocked bootloader gives you ” the ability to do what you want with your phone.”

    Here’s the fascinating part: as far as I can tell, Motorola didn’t respond.

    I lack the technological knowledge to if Motorola has a legitimate reason to manage software the way that they do, but not responding to an overwhelming response (around 10,000 people requested an unlocked bootloader (3)) raises a lot of questions in customers minds about whether Motorola really wants to listen, and whether they will do anything with the feedback that they do get.

    Maybe opening the poll to user suggestions wasn’t such a good idea.

    We’ve been known to recommend that clients not engage in social media because they weren’t ready to put the work in that is required to have a real conversation.

    If you say you’re going to listen, listen.

    • (1) You can find Motorola’s Facebook Question about Android apps here.
    • (2) You can see the original pocketnow.com article here.
    • (3) The article citing 10,000 responses is here.
  • Spencer Beamer

    This is a great article. It really is a shame that they are just ignoring the conversation because it isn’t necessarily what the company wants to hear(people giving constructive criticism that would inevitably lead to a better product). This would be a perfect way for Motorola to engage their fans.