Sack Alan Jones: Reflections on the social media campaign

Yesterday the organisers of the ‘Sack Alan Jones’ campaign formally closed the social media campaign against the polarizing broadcaster and declared the campaign to be a success.

Regardless of your opinion of Alan Jones and his comments (which have been labeled defamatory, racist, misogynistic and riot-inciting), reflecting on this social media campaign to oust him is an opportunity to observe how effective semi-organised social media campaigns are at achieving their self-stated aims and at driving change more broadly.

The Sack Alan Jones campaign started following a much publicized comment the broadcaster made at a Young Liberals fundraising event, suggesting that Julia Gillard’s late father died of shame caused by the perceived performance of his daughter’s performance as Australia’s Prime Minister.

Once they were widely reported a few days later, Jones’ vitriolic comments we replayed ad nauseam and everyone was given the opportunity to publicly comment, with fellow journalists, politicians, business leaders and everyday citizens weighing on Jones’ choice words in the public sphere.

Sack Alan Jones

Running parallel, there was similar heated commentary on social media – mostly negative and often hostile.  This sentiment was what the ‘Sack Alan Jones’ campaign hoped to harness and translate into action against the broadcaster.  The campaign attracted over 21,000 likes on Facebook, countless tweets were made with the hashtag #SackAlanJones and the cause gained the support of like-minded organisations such as Change.org.

The social media campaign was also reported in television and print media, with journalists from many organizations reporting on the activity of the social media campaign.

However, for all the social media activity, what has the campaign actually achieved?

Well firstly, Alan Jones is still on the air, broadcasting his opinions in his regular breakfast-morning time slot   In terms of the all-important ratings, Jones seems to be more popular than ever.  The Australian recently reported that Jones increased his audience share since his much publicized comments September 30. His 2GB breakfast show was the clear winner in its Sydney time slot across AM and FM networks with an 18.2 per cent share (a 0.9 increase since the last survey period).

At the height of the negative publicity, a number of advertisers withdrew their support (in terms of adverting spend) for Jones via his talk show.  Recent estimates put this short-term profit loss at between 1 – 1.5 million dollars and 15 advertisers have vowed “never to return”.

Was this driven by the social media campaign?  It is unclear.  Likely the social media had some influence, but it was highly unlikely the sole factor which companies based this decision on.

What’s more, this loss in advertising revenue is a relatively minor figure given the amount and frequency of advertising spend on the Jones show.  Moreover, it is likely that many advertisers made a big deal in claiming the ‘moral high ground’ through pulling out, but will inconspicuously return to the program as the negative attention decreases).  In fact, the station’s chairman told the Sydney Morning Herald that: “We are confident that in the second half of the year there will be minimal, if any, residual impact”.  Hardly the claim of a man concerned about the image of Jones and his ability to drive revenue for the station.

The social media backlash against Jones largely did not come from his faithful target audience.  It came from a tech-savvy, and presumably more progressive, audience who have likely never tuned into his morning talk-back program.  They likely have never respected his views or given them credence.  They were probably the same people who despised his comments surrounding the Cronulla riots and the Kovco tragedy, as well as his various anti-climate change and racially charged comments.  These people have long-despised Jones and this social media campaign simply gave them another avenue to voice their displeasure.  In effect, they were using social media to talk among themselves, and in the process attract some fleeting attention from more traditional media.

It would seem as the Sack Alan Jones campaign was only successful in mobilizing a section of people who already disliked him to speak out and encouraging them dislike him even more.  It would seem that the campaign failed to “crush Jones’ powerful and invincible image”, particularly in regard to his loyal base of listeners which has seemingly grown in number.

This makes the organisers’ claims of “stripping him of his influence” and “severely limiting, his capacity to damage the Australian community” seem a little over confident.  If anything, it may have made him more of a martyr, thereby increasing his appeal among his already loyal target audience through fostering oppositional loyalty – Jones did, and continues, to receive many supportive phone calls from his loyal listeners, praising his opinions and observations.

Although the ‘Sack Alan Jones’ social media campaign attracted a lot of support and activity, it terms of action it seems not to have been successful as its organisers think.

// Alec Schumann

5 reasons why your brand’s Facebook page needs a ‘dislike’ button

Facebook.  Just about everybody is on it.

Consequently, many firms are joining the ever expanding and evolving social networking platform to put their brands where their current  and potential customers are.

Typically the goal here is to use Facebook to encourage consumers to positively engage with your brand, share content with their friends, and generally ‘do the leg work’ of traditional marketing – but with a much higher level of interactivity and often at a lower cost.

A common way that the success of Facebook campaigns is measured is through the amount of ‘likes’ it gets.  If a consumer ‘likes’ your page, it typically shows up on their profile page and in their public newsfeed, promoting their friends to see it.

‘Likes’ also provide feedback  about brands and marketing campaigns, and provide a simple quantitative measure of success.

But whilst it’s always valuable to know who likes your brand, in many cases it would be equally valuable to know who dislikes your brand.

So what about a ‘dislike’ button? And why would it be valuable for your brand?

Alec looks at 5 surprising ways in which your brand could benefit from a ‘dislike’ button.

1. Gain a better understanding of marketing effectiveness

What do you Dislike?

Your brand might have 1,000 likes.  Great.  But in reality it might also have 2,000 ‘dislikes’ which are essentially invisible.  Therefore without a way to track this via a dislike button, you might be inflating the success of your brand and its marketing campaigns.

Therefore, a ‘dislike’ button would facilitate a more accurate and accountable net measurement (i.e. likes minus dislikes), rather than just a gross measurement (total likes) of campaign effectiveness.

2. Get to know who doesn’t like you

A great deal of marketing research, although valuable, is about discovering, understanding and profiling who likes your brand and regularly purchases it in, thus allowing you to better sell your brand.

However, it can be equally as valuable (if not more so) to better understand the people actively dislike like your brand.  It would enable you to more clearly define your target market and may highlight ways to improve your product or service.

3. Recover dissatisfied customers

A ‘dislike’ button may highlight customers who have had a bad experience and require some feedback from your firm.  Synch your Facebook page with your loyalty database and you have a ready-made list of high traffic customers who may now ‘dislike’ your brand, without lodging an official complaint.

This would give your firm an opportunity to recover dissatisfied customers.

4. Novel ways to connect with and surprise customers

Consumers who click the ‘dislike’ button would demonstrate that are aware of and to some extent, engaged with your brand.  In many ways a lot of the hard work is done.  Now you just have to provide a reason for the consumer of turn their frown upside down.

What about sending a surprise voucher to all the customers that ‘dislike’ your brand? Crazy?  Perhaps, but it would certainly turn some heads and maybe convince some non-believers to try your brand for the first time or give it a second chance.

5. Embrace your brand’s enemies

The "us against them" nature of brand loyalty: The more 'dislikes' the better

This may not be effective for every brand, but for some brands it would foster loyalty amongst supporters to have a vocal and visible crowd who dislike your brand.  Many brands thrive on having enemies and a ‘dislike’ button would be a way to identify this common enemy.

Think sporting teams for example: Manchester United, the New York Yankees, the LA Lakers, the Dallas Cowboys and the Collingwood Magpies, are some iconic brands which thrive on the love/hate mentality of their respective marketplaces , whilst encouraging an “everybody against us” mantra amongst their fans.

Thus, they are examples of brands which would benefit immensely from thousands, if not millions, of dislikes.  And if your brand thrives on a common enemy, a ‘dislike’ button could be the best thing Facebook has done for your brand.

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So what do you think?  Feel free to let us know if you ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ this article.

// Alec Schumann