Social media gurus suggest listening to customers is everything. We say it’s not.

If you pan out and look at the five real forces that drive competition, customers are only one — and the way they feel about you at any time is often not the most important factor guiding your future decisions. Yes, user-content platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs and YouTube provide marketers a chance to eavesdrop on conversations; add listening tools such as Brands Eye, Radian6, ScoutLabs, TruCast, or Umbria and you can watch the “sentiment” or vibe about your brand rise and fall like a weather report. Of course you should listen for flare-ups, and if sentiment falls suddenly and sustainably, you have a structural problem in your business that must be addressed.

But consider the things consumer sentiment could not have predicted:

1. The near-death of Detroit. As late as 2005 and 2006, Americans were still in love with SUVs and big trucks. Spiking oil prices and Wall Street-fed recessions were just about to strike, but an automotive planner of the time, if given the chance to listen to consumer needs, would have designed flashy huge new trucks. GM failed because it did what customers wanted in 2005, and its business ecosystem shifted two years later.

2. Cameras on cell phones. When these first popped up, people laughed. The New Yorker ran a cartoon showing a guy complaining he had just taken a photograph of his ear. But the version creep expanded and built the platform for today’s iPhone-app-styled smartphones which do almost anything.

3. Employer-provided health insurance. David Goldhill noted last fall in The Atlantic that our modern U.S. healthcare system in which most Americans are covered by insurance from their employers was an accident of law. In 1954 Congress passed legislation making employer contributions to your health coverage tax-deductible, meaning it was cheaper for your boss to pay you in health benefits than to pay you with a wage. The incentive of a tax benefit led to today’s insurance culture, which most people like … yet no poll or “listening in” of consumers in the 1950s could have predicted this sea change in an industry.

4. Airline baggage fees. Perhaps the best current example of something consumers say they hate but love to buy is airline tickets. Supposedly add-on surcharges for blankets and baggage are despised by today’s consumers. A simpleton could fire up Radian6, hear the complaints, and change the pricing strategy. Yet that would wreck an airline business — because the reality is consumers shop for tickets using online aggregation services such as Travelocity that compare ticket price points as commodities, and choose the cheapest fares they can find for Hawaii. By leaving some costs elsewhere, an airline makes its ticket price on the web comparison sites look more attractive. If any airline removed surcharges, it would have to add perhaps $100 to each ticket price, and that uncompetitive price point on Expedia would crush its sales.

People talk, but talking isn’t the same thing as what drives their action.

Yes, consumers are smart. Yes, your business should to listen to them. But raves and sighs about satisfaction today are just a small drumbeat in the competitive forces that shape your industry. Social-media monitoring is a powerful addition to your toolset, but beware any consultant who tells you that listening to your customers’ whims today gives you all the answers you will need for tomorrow.

Nestle’s Facebook meltdown

Oops. Nestle, or whoever runs their Facebook fan page, stepped on a social media landmine this weekend with this update:

Nestle: To repeat: we welcome your comments, but please don’t post using an altered version of any of our logos as your profile pic – they will be deleted. Fri at 2:26am

Nestle received 190 complaints within 24 hours on Facebook, and thousands of tweets reaching hundreds of thousands of consumers. You see, the surest way to tick off users of social media is to delete their comments. Yes, by the old standards of 20th century law, brands have a right to protect their intellectual property. But social media comprises fluid networks of users sharing and retweeting and mashing up material. Brands no longer command media channels or the spread of memes; if you want to win, you have to give users room to play.

Here are highlights from how it played out:

Paul Griffin: Not sure you’re going to win friends in the social media space with this sort of dogmatic approach. I understand that you’re on your back-foot due to various issues not excluding Palm Oil but Social Media is about embracing your market, engaging and having a conversation rather than preaching! Read www.cluetrain.com and rethink! Fri at 2:51am

Nestle: Thanks for the lesson in manners. Consider yourself embraced. But it’s our page, we set the rules, it was ever thus. Fri at 2:53am

Paul Griffin: Your page, your rules, true, and you just lost a customer, won the battle and lost the war! Happy? Fri at 2:56am

Nestle: Oh please .. it’s like we’re censoring everything to allow only positive comments. Fri at 2:58am

Darren Smith: Honey you need new PR Fri at 3:20am

Jagos Golubovic: I was a big fan of your products, but now, when I saw what you guys wrote, I think I’m gonna stop buying them. Fri at 3:55am

Helen Constable: I’d like to know if the person writing the comments for Nestle, actually has the backing from Nestle? I doubt it. Even a dumb ass company like them would get such an idiot to be their public voice. Fri at 4:10am

Nestle: I think you missed out the ‘not’ there, Helen Fri at 4:12am

Hyra Zaka: is a nestle rep running this page????? Fri at 4:39am

Nestle: We welcome debate, @Hyra – from any opinion. It helps us to know what people think and feel. Fri at 4:44am

ymann Lee: WFT !!!! This firm is a ugly creep !! trafficking and now censorship of my personal life. it seems pretty nazi !! Fri at 5:19am

Fernanda Shirakawa: I’m not using your logo… Fri at 5:55am

Fernanda Shirakawa: You deleted my comment anyway… Fri at 5:57am

Damien DeBarra: What a total train wreck. Sorry Nestle, but you really don’t seem to get it do you? Social media provides you with an opportunity to engage with your customers – to listen to them, to show that you actually care about ethical issues in business. Sadly it seems you have precisely the opposite attitude and seem determined to be as aggressive, patronising and corporatist as you can. And practically guaranteed that folks will now start shunning your products. Fri at 8:00am

Mark Watts-Jones: Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Case study in how not to engage with your customers. We’ll await the inevitable apology and climb down. Fri at 11:06am

Nestle: This (deleting logos) was one in a series of mistakes for which I would like to apologise. And for being rude. We’ve stopped deleting posts, and I have stopped being rude. Fri at 1:29pm

Anyone do any defriending or been defriended due to opinions on the health care legislation?

One interesting facet of the tool is that it also lists the top “Likes” by individual city. (If for some reason you have been reading a book for the last couple of years instead of spending time on Facebook, the site’s users can click a “Like” button to show appreciation of a particular post.)

Looking at the top “likes” aggregated by cities from different regions of the country, you can see that while certain celebrities, brands, and concepts cut across geographic lines, much popular culture is still determined locally.

So if Barack Obama, say, wants to really sell health care reform, maybe he should make use of some of the cultural likes that appear on a majority of these regional lists. Like, if he wants to drive home a point about Medicare savings, he could have Megan Fox talk about it while eating a Freeze Pop in a local Starbucks…

Here are the top Facebook likes for some U.S. cities:

Atlanta

1. God
2. Starbucks
3. Michael Jackson
4. Chick-fil-a
5. RIP Michael Jackson (We Miss You)

Boston

1. Boston Red Sox
2. Dislike Button
3. Megan Fox
4. Freeze Pops
5. Dunkin Donuts

Chicago

1. Chicago Bears
2. Freeze Pops
3. Starbucks
4. Megan Fox
5. Dislike Button

New York City

1. Michael Jackson
2. RIP Michael Jackson (We Miss You)
3. Megan Fox
4. Dislike button
5. I need a vacation

Dallas

1. DallasCowboys.com
2. Starbucks
3. God
4. Dislike button
5. Freeze Pops

New Orleans

1. New Orleans Saints
2. Black and Gold Superbowl
3. Drew Brees
4. Jeremy Shockey
5. God

San Francisco

1. Barack Obama
2. Michael Jackson
3. Starbucks
4. Megan Fox
5. Dislike Button

Salt Lake City

1. Thomas S. Monson
2. I need a vacation
3. Megan Fox
4. The Beach
5. Gordon B. Hinckley

Casper, Wyoming

1. Starbucks
2. Mafia Wars game
3. Casper, Wyoming
4. American Soldiers
5. Chris Ledoux Tribute Rodeo

Lincoln, NE

1. Ndamukong Suh
2. Bo Pelini
3. Nebraska Cornhuskers
4. University of Nebraska Athletics
5. Freeze Pops

Seattle

1. Starbucks
2. Dislike Button
3. Barack Obama
4. Seattle Sounders Football Club
5. Seattle Mariners

For more city profiles click here.

The map has three tabs at the top, one each for connections between countries, U.S. states, and U.S. cities.

Some random results:

• California users have strong connections to the East Coast states of New York and Massachussetts, and to Washington D.C. But the state also has a line drawn to Texas and the state of Washington.
• Chicago users connect mostly to those in Los Angeles, New York, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Atlanta.
• U.S. users in the aggregate connect mostly to other English speaking countries, but also to the Philippines and Indonesia.

After analyzing these connections, Pete divided the United States into seven different regions, at least when it comes to Facebook friending:

• Stayathomia
• Dixie
• Greater Texas
• Mormonia
• Nomadic West
• Socalistan
• Pacifica

On Stayathomia:

Stretching from New York to Minnesota, this belt’s defining feature is how near most people are to their friends, implying they don’t move far. In most cases outside the largest cities, the most common connections are with immediately neighboring cities, and even New York only has one really long-range link in its top 10. Apart from Los Angeles, all of its strong ties are comparatively local.

On Mormonia:

The only region that’s completely surrounded by another cluster, Mormonia mostly consists of Utah towns that are highly connected to each other, with an offshoot in Eastern Idaho. It’s worth separating from the rest of the West because of how interwoven the communities are, and how relatively unlikely they are to have friends outside the region.

On the Nomadic West:

The defining feature of this area is how likely even small towns are to be strongly connected to distant cities, it looks like the inhabitants have done a lot of moving around the county. For example, Boise, ID, Bend, OR and Phoenix, AZ all have much wider connections than you’d expect for towns their size.

Check out profiles for all the regions here.

The H&M Facebook page is especially interesting, with quite a war of words going on between the pro and anti-H&M factions. (The store has a startling 1.5 million Facebook fans.) Numerous H&M employees are weighing in too.

Examples:

It’s hard to trust that “reevaluating what we categorize as “damaged”" doesn’t just mean, “In the future we will try not to let members of the public find all the clothes we throw out.” Former staff members from various stores across the country have confirmed it was standard to cut up and throw out garments.
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People shouldn’t be so upset before they are well informed. In the past 5 years H&M has given over $5 million to UNICEF projects and that’s just one example of what “good” they do.
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All of you slagging off H&M should read comments of myself and other employees of H&M and get a life ! Over 500,000 garments were donated by H&M last year! If an item is soiled it will not get donated but anything with small damages or rips are donated as they can be easily fixed and made use of.
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The homeless and those who are not as fortunate don’t care about damaged, weathered, stretched or used clothing. If they can wear it for warmth, it’s definitely usable. Donate all of it and let the people and the shelters decide what needs to be trashed.
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I live a short distance from your Michigan Avenue store in Chicago and will gladly come to your store any day or night to pick up your “damaged” “peed on” “pooped on,” “unsafe,” “unwearable,” etc clothing and will wash & repair every single piece of it to donate to the numerous homeless shelters in Chicago and the surrounding areas.
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H&M would rather destroy good clothes than see second class citizens wear them. True snobbery shows.
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If H&M can’t use ignorance as an excuse than either can any individual posting on here. You all shopped at this company without thinking twice about where all the unused stuff goes, you just mindlessly shop and shop and shop without having a clue aboutwhere you’re buying your stuff. Now you’re going to boycott and move on to some other big chain that probably does the same thing or pay people $5/week to make their clothes.
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i love h&m. employee for 3 years! we do more good in other areas besides clothes! so, people who want to make it sound like we are doing something horrible, do some more research on the company.

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Absolutely loving this! Seems H&M has started delegating shop-floor assistants to raise support on facebook. Back to the point: garments found outside H&M’s 34th Street store.

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While I do respect the brand, I find that your damage control tactics are horrendous.surely there could have been another way to handle this, hence your US staff needs re-training
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Everyone needs to get their Sonia Rykiel panties out of a bunch! H&M is a caring company.

More here…

FREE-MARKET GUY: It is contradictory to claim that a person has a right to a good or service that requires the violation of someone else’s rights. If the exercise of a patient’s so-called “right” to healthcare imposes obligations on taxpayers to pay for it and healthcare practitioners to provide it, then it is not a right, but an attempt to enslave one part of the population for the benefit of another part.

HEALTH CARE REFORM FAN: All rights within a society come at the expense of some limit of freedom on other members of that society. We choose to participate for the greater good. Using words like “enslavement” is just inflammatory. What’s next? Only people with school-age children should be taxed for public schools? I can see a lot of benefits to me personally in having other people’s children educated.

FREE MARKET: It’s not my intention to be inflammatory, just stating the facts. I didn’t say rights cannot infringe on freedoms. I said (essentially) rights by definition cannot infringe on the rights of others. As in, it’s your right to practice your religion so long as doing so doesn’t involve killing me. That would be a violation of my rights. So in the case of human sacrifice, you do not have the right to that religious practice.

You also do not have the right to steal my money in order to pay for any expense you may incur. “Need” isn’t a part of the equation. It’s my money, you cannot rightfully take it by force. You also cannot rightfully hire your buddy to steal my money. And of course, you cannot rightfully elect your politician to steal my money.

And taxes which are spent on constitutional government programs are a completely separate and necessary evil. Just in case you were thinking that I’m arguing for some form of anarchy.

FAN: As I suggested above, a member of a society does not have the right to not be taxed (fairly). No one has suggested that money be forcefully removed from individuals. There are a number of ways to avoid paying taxes including not making any money and going off the grid, neither of which is more extreme than your suggestion that anyone is “stealing” your money. “Constitutional government programs?” That sounds like the traditionalists who argue that marriage has “always” been between a man and a woman or that African Americans have “always” been chattel. I believe healthcare should be part of the evolving Constitution.

FREE MARKET: That’s your right, but comparing me to right-wing partisan hack who believes same sex marriage is wrong is where I draw the line. You imply that my rational argument somehow compares to advocating slavery and removing human rights (marriage). I specifically said that taxes and government are necessary in order to avoid this exact conversation. If this is the extent of your reasoning then I’d prefer not to continue this conversation.

FAN: I’d be shocked if you supported either of those things. My point is that the Constitution has evolved to include more protections (although we’re still working on some things). Your endorsement that “constitutional government programs are a… separate and necessary evil” implies that the Constitution is a static dogma. Healthcare technology is not only far more advanced than it was in 1776, but many of those advances are denied to people based on economic class. The Declaration of Independence names “life” as the first inalienable right of mankind. Should this be amended to mean “life, for those who can afford it, but leeches and willow tea for the rabble?”

Back to necessary evils, are you saying then, that you’re willing to pay for public schooling, but not for life-saving medical care? Should emergency rooms change the long-standing policy of providing life-saving care before ascertaining the patient’s ability to pay? I’m not trying to put words in your mouth. Please clarify.

FREE MARKET: Government is necessary because there can be no freedom without law. Governments expand and infringe upon liberties thus we need a constitution which protects us from government.

It’s a common fallacy to confuse technological progress with principles. Don’t make that mistake. (http://mises.org/story/3490) To use taxes for my protection against aggression is not stealing. This is in fact the job of government. But coercing me to pay for your surgery is stealing. There is no better word to define it. There’s no magic which occurs when the state steals it for you.

My statements attribute no “static dogma” to the constitution. What you are advocating is pure democracy, or “mob rule”. Luckily we don’t live in a democracy and you can’t change the law based on your whims.

I want health care for everyone just like you. Please don’t assume otherwise. Arguably, I want it more, as I’m advocating the method which can actually attain that goal.

FAN: Wow. I’m not going to respond, but my silence does not equal consent.

Enter LEFTY, who posts Rachel Maddow’s report on astroturfing town-hall protesters.

Enter LIBERTARIAN.

Libertarian: So does this invalidate my opposition to this “Healthcare” catastrophe our President is trying to cram down my throat?

Lefty: And you would prefer to keep the broken down crap that we have now???

Libertarian: You think THIS is broken? (Unconvincingly) I don’t want to argue. (Convincingly again) We’re going to get government controlled health care, regardless, and you’ll understand then.

Lefty: Let me guess…you are a Republican, right?

Libertarian: I am a registered independent. And a libertarian. I’m still reeling that you feel it should be illegal for a company to not insure someone. By your reasoning, why should I have health insurance? Just wait until I need it, then buy it. It would be illegal for it to be denied to me. Private healthcare insurance will disappear when Obama-care becomes law. You should research all of the details.

Lefty: Obviously, private insurance companies are not going away anytime soon, so we need to fix their strong hold on such policies as denying anyone with pre-existing conditions, or at least offering something to people who are denied through private insurance.

Enter LEFTY 2, carrying Democratic Talking Points.

Lefty 2: Under at least some of the current proposals, insurance will be mandatory, so you won’t be able to game the system by only insuring yourself when you’re sick. If you don’t have insurance, then you will pay a fee that goes to the overall program.

The current system is the most inefficient in the industrialized world. We pay the most per capita to insure the fewest people. A huge part of your premium goes to marketing and administrative costs, which includes a giant infrastructure dedicated to retroactively denying people coverage who are very sick based on specious claims of unreported pre-existing conditions.

People only think they are completely insured. But when you really need your insurance the most, you will find that is when the fine print becomes relevant—lifetime caps, denial of treatment, etc. This fabled “government bureacrat” that will be controlling health care under the Obama plan will have to really work hard to keep up with the very real corporate bureaucrat that most assuredly controls it now. Of course, if you are dead certain you or someone in your family will never get seriously ill, than there is no reason to change a thing.

LEFTY 3 enters.

Lefty 3: Kudos to Lefty 2! The eternally healthy and perpetually wealthy have nothing to gain through Health Care Reform–but everyone else does.

LEFTY 4 enters.

Lefty 4: (Speaking to Libertarian’s last point) “Private healthcare insurance will disappear when Obama-care becomes law. You should research all of the details.” Citation needed.

Libertarian: Citation needed? Look it up yourself. I don’t try to change anybody’s mind. You all believe what you already want to believe. So insurance will be MANDATORY? Everyone is REQUIRED to have it? No thank you. They can try to fine me. I’m not playing their totalitarian game.

Lefty 4: Sorry, Libertarian. That’s not how that works. You don’t make a sweeping generalization and then place the burden of proof on the shoulders of the other guy.

Enter CENTRIST PRAGMATIST, smoking a pipe.

Centrist Pragmatist: The first bill was poorly drafted and presented hastily. It is intellectually dishonest to suggest that any legislation as monumental as this should be one-sided and quickly enacted. We should expect this process to be well funded and well organized on both sides — and include plenty of spin. As with the entire political process, everyone should be allowed to participate, irrespective of whether their party “lost.” Right now, the Republicans don’t have the power to stop whatever the Dems want to pass, so their strongest chance to participate is through this sort of community activism.

Libertarian: Enjoy your “free” healthcare, sheeple.

Lefty 3: Libertarian, I don’t know you, but I think you’re probably feeling ganged up on. Let me say those who support reform are upset at the tactics being deployed at town meetings because their purpose appears to be stopping discourse. If the same energy were deployed in a more constructive way, to support a particular change in the proposed bill or to emphasize a particular problem, it might stand a chance of influencing the passage of a bill which, because of the current political balance, will be passed in some form this fall.

Libertarian: I don’t disagree Lefty 3. But ANY discourse on the subject is being characterized as Big (Pharma, AMA, Hospitals, Insurance, whatever) skewing the debate. There are people that legitimately feel this is a HUGE mistake. Cash-For-Clunkers, another government program, took less than a week to become a farce. NOTHING is free, and we’re ALL going to be paying more for less if it’s mandatory. I have chronic health problems that VERY FEW know about. I’m not insured. I work for a small hourly wage. I spent 4 months of last year in the hospital, and flat-lined twice. Supposedly, this would be a boon to me. I’m not falling for it. When it destroys our health care system, I WILL leave the country, on a sailboat, and live simply somewhere south, letting the global big-government pandemic chase me around the globe until there’s nowhere to run. I’m not an end of the world alarmist, I think we’ll weather all of this, but I’ll chose to not participate

Lefty 4: Oh my god. You actually said “sheeple,” and unironically, too.

Libertarian: OMG, you made an assumption that turns out to be false! I’m shocked!

Enter LEFTY 5.

Lefty 5: Libertarian, I hate to ask, but since you brought it up, if you don’t have insurance and work for a small hourly wage, how did you pay for 4 months in the hospital?

Libertarian: I’m still paying for it. Slowly. But I’m paying for it, not other people.

Lefty 4: I’m sorry. I can’t take seriously anyone who uses the word “sheeple.” Have a good day.

Lefty: Libertarian, you are deluding yourself if you think paying off your hospital debt slowly means you are being responsible for it all yourself. The hospital is carrying your debt for you as long as you take to pay it off. They have already paid off the doctors that treated you, so that money has to come from somewhere else until you pay it back. If you take too long, they will have to write it off as a loss and if everyone who could not afford the outrageous bills that hospitals charge took it upon themselves to pay it back as they could, the hospitals would probably go out of business, as this is not a sound business plan. Which further reinforces the idea that everyone needs to be insured. Including you, so you don’t pay things back slowly.

Lefty 2: I think we’ve basically come to the end of the road debating Libertarian. I am paying nearly $16,000 per year for COBRA coverage for my family, which means I’m working a good part of my day for the insurance company. I could choose not to pay it, but if I, my wife, or my daughter gets sick, who’s going to pay for it then? Family, friends, or the general public.

Fear-mongering people have claimed the end of civilization is nigh for every social benefit granted Americans from the end of slavery to Social Security to Medicare. The true sheep are the people who blindly follow a free market ideology despite all evidence to the contrary. These people live inside their heads spinning out fantasies even Ayn Rand wouldn’t try to pawn off on her readers.

Enter CONSERVATIVE.

Conservative: Here’s a 35 year old woman on vacation, celebrating her 10th wedding anniversary, so upset with situation that she attends her first town hall–yep, more fake grass roots, keep telling yourself that. (CONSERVATIVE posts a Fox News report.)

Lefty: Conservative, no one said the town hall meetings are ONLY filled with fake grass roots! But they ARE there. And they are spreading misinformation, which is why people like that woman on vacation is out at the town hall meeting horrified. Old people are coming out to meetings and saying stuff like “Keep the government out of my Medicare!” People are clueless and frightened. Spreading misinformation about what may happen does not help. Something MUST be done, so if the right does not like what the current bill states, then they should work together to make it acceptable. Otherwise, we get to keep this system where the only winners are the insurance companies! Is that what you are advocating?

A silence falls over the discussion, as it’s time to watch “Entourage.”

THE END…?