Comcast sent me 10 pizzas. This isn’t nice; it’s manipulative.
I didn’t realize how seriously companies take social media until last year, when I opened my front door and saw a delivery guy holding a stack of pizza boxes up to his chin.
Comcast had recently started advertising mobile-phone service where I live. Given that Comcast and AT&T were already the only local choices for broadband and cable, the move felt like an ominous sign of even more industry consolidation. I took to Twitter to air this worry. “It’s nice that Comcast is offering mobile phone service now,” I posted. “But until I can get Comcast delivery pizza I will remain empty inside.”
It wasn’t the best joke I’d made on the internet, but Comcast didn’t mind. The company saw my tweet and responded: “Hey Ian, you rang? DM us the address where you would like it delivered & we’ll make it happen.” I thought I was calling Comcast’s bluff by answering that I wanted gluten-free mushroom pizza, and that because I was a customer, the company should know my address. “Do your brand thang,” I quipped.
This was hardly my first digital interaction with a corporation. DiGiorno Pizza was my Twitter buddy for a while, although we seem to have fallen out of touch. I once scorned Jolly Ranchers, only to have the brand chat me up moments later. Northern Tool, a tool and machinery company, chimed in on a photo I tweeted of its catalog. Cinnabon helped me win a dispute about how to pronounce its product (“like James Bond”). I assumed these brands targeted me because I have a decent Twitter following and write often for The Atlantic. And I thought I knew how these conversations went—they were quick and lighthearted, mildly amusing if also a bit invasive. Mostly, they were forgettable.
Then the pizzas arrived. Ten of them, from a local place that delivers gluten-free pies. I was surprised, which is exactly the outcome Comcast was after.
In marketing, conventional wisdom holds that small surprises can yield a big benefit for a limited cost, especially if they go viral. Marketers have a name for Comcast’s pizza-delivery stunt: a strategy of “surprise and delight.”
About 15 years ago, before Twitter existed, companies paid agencies for “guerrilla” and “buzz” marketing; the agencies would surreptitiously seed conversations about the companies in chat rooms and on message boards, and report back on the sentiments they saw there. Then the social platforms arrived: Blogger, Myspace, YouTube, and others....MUCH MORE
That’s what spawned the new social-media-management economy. Around 2010, when the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling reinforced the breadth and power of corporate personhood in America, businesses started developing online personalities. Now almost every brand is a #brand too. Spend enough time perusing corporations’ social accounts, and you’ll start to see distinct personas emerge: Wendy’s is catty; Arby’s is geeky; Charmin is, well, cheeky. This shift has ushered in a whole new job category. Companies employ social-media managers and online-content specialists to trawl Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms, looking for opportunities to engage—a favorite word of online advertisers—or in my case, to send pizza. (Because I sometimes cover issues related to Comcast for The Atlantic, I gave away as many of the pizzas as I could and reimbursed Comcast for the cost.)...
