Brands not thinking about community engagement early enough, Quiip boss warns
Marketers, brand managers and even not-for-profit groups are not considering the need for community management with their campaigns. often waiting until the last minute to address the issue, a leading community management expert has warned.
Julie Delaforce, general manager of Quiip
Speaking about the management of Movember’s moving ‘Suicide Notes Talk Too Late’ campaign by Cummins & Partners last year, Julie Delaforce, general manager of Quiip, said the issue of managing social media was often a late consideration for marketers when launching campaigns, but community management was often even further in the background.
Speaking at Mumbrella’s CommsCon alongside Movember’s head of strategic marketing and digital transformation, Jeremy Macvean, Delaforce said in an age of engagement, marketers needed to be across one of the most crucial touchpoints they have with their audiences.
She said Movember contacted the agency around 10 days to two weeks before the campaign was set to launch.
“By the time we decided how we were going to work together and what the hours looked like and all that we actually turned around the initial governance documentation in about four days,” Delaforce said.
“Unfortunate,y I think a lot of organisations still don’t even link social media into the conversation that early on of a campaign being conceived. So to have gone from thinking about social media to community management is another step.”
She said that companies did not have to think about community management too early in the creation of a campaign but had to make sure it was part of the mix.
“But you need to think about what are your objectives. What you have to think about is ‘Do I actually want to engage with people?’, because with a lot of people it’s still very much a broadcast relationship on social media but when people respond to that content there’s not a lot of engagement beyond that.”
The Movember campaign has grown from a month-long awareness and fundraising initiative to a year-round campaign for men’s mental health.
The movement launched the campaign, Suicide Notes Talk Too Late to critical and public acclaim, as men who had contemplated suicide and written goodbye notes years ago talked about how glad they now were they had not followed through.
Quiip provided 13 community managers over a nine-day period with over 100 hours of community management support and two full 24-hour periods.
Macvean said the campaign and social aspect needed to be handled carefully because of the delicate nature of the subject and also required strong community management because by its very nature it would reach around the globe.
“At Movember we are not at that crisis end, but the message is take action early.”
