Making the Groundswell Work For You

It's one thing to understand the groundswell. It's another thing entirely to use it to your advantage. The groundswell can be scary. One misstep, and all of the sudden, everybody and their grandma is talking about you online. Once a groundswell starts, it's pretty damn hard to stop.

Just ask Justin Timberlake... About a year ago, Justin Timberlake posted "JesseWilliams, tho #Inspired" to Twitter. The tweet came in response to a speech actor Jesse Williams made at the BET awards about the continued oppression of black Americans. The speech was widely lauded as insightful and powerful. When Timberlake posted his tweet, I doubt he thought a three word post would get him in any trouble. Queue the groundswell.  

The end of Willliams' speech was a scathing critique of cultural appropriation. A lot of people found Timberlake's tweet to be ironic, given that he used to dress like this:

To be sure, Timberlake had no intention of being ironic. Unfortunately for him, he was now the center of a social media firestorm, a groundswell. Regardless of how you feel about the speech, or Timberlake's response to it, the point remains the same. You can get caught in a groundswell for almost ANYTHING.

That's why you want to learn jiu jitsu. Ok, well not actually. Jiu jitsu is a martial art that has a fighter use his/her opponents own attacks against him/her. In other words, though the groundswell can be scary, you can still use it to your advantage.  

In Justin's case, there probably isn't much you can do to weather the storm. He tried apologizing, but it just seemed to keep drawing attention to the controversy. He had unwittingly accessed the least forgiving aspect of the groundswell.

Companies and other types of organizations are terrified of what happened to Justin Timberlake. The smallest mistake can drag your brand through the dirt for weeks. What many of them don't understand is that the groundswell is often a weapon, of sorts. Though the weapon can be used against them, they can also wield it themselves.

Yeah, really. The days of Mad Men are gone. Sorry, Don Draper.

 

You don't have to guess what your customers are thinking anymore, designing marketing campaigns for strategies you think might work. That information is readily available for you.  The POST strategy is one way you can try to use the groundswell in your favor. POST stands for People, Objectives, Strategy and Technology. What do your customers (People) want? Are you trying to get market data or promote your product (Objective)? How do you want to achieve your goals (Strategy)? And what medium are you going to use to get your message across (Technology)?

Following POST, or even having an understanding of the groundswell, and how to "jiu jitsu" it (yeah, I'm using it as a verb), can take you far. The groundswell is a reality. You can lament its existence, constantly fearing how it will bring about your downfall, or you can begin to understand it and use it to your advantage. To be successful in today's media climate, you need to use the groundswell to your advantage. Like a wave at the beach, it can be dangerous if you just stand there and let it wash over you. But also like a wave, an understanding of how it works can lead you to a good time. You can either be crushed by the wave, or learn how to surf on it.