How Unpopular Brands Manage Their Image on Facebook

For the most part, creating and maintaining a respectful brand image on social media is spectacularly tricky.

Facebook itself presents a tightrope of special etiquette which must be maintained at all times – something that is especially difficult when you have thousands of people manically pushing and pulling at the rope on either side.

And that is just for your average company.

There are a few brands out there however, that represent the black sheep of the capitalist world, and to them, getting things right on Facebook is made just that little bit harder.

Here is how four of them cope:

Shell Oil Company

Racked with allegations of environmental damage and tax avoidance, Shell struggles to maintain a clean image even in the best of times.

Surprisingly however, the company maintains its Facebook page in a remarkably similar way to many others, asking followers random questions, giving tips on how to save money and even offering news on environmental projects.

What is perhaps more remarkable however, is how little the company actually mentions itself. Taking a look at the first top ten posts on the page at the time of writing, only four actually mention the company whatsoever; probably a wise choice when you consider the panning it receives when it does.

British Petroleum

From one oil company to another, BP have struggled to maintain their brand image ever since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010; the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of petroleum.

Although the company have now paid a total of $42 billion from the spill, prosecutions, both civil and criminal are still being taken out against BP.

Interestingly, and although in the same field of business, BP’s Facebook page does take quite a different stance from Shell’s, as aside from discussing itself at regular intervals, it takes a more promotional angle to its operations.

‘BP Big Screen’ events for example, are regularly mentioned throughout the page, and invite followers to a range of free events throughout the country.

Aside from this, BP does delve into the usual ‘did you know’ posts, though there is not a single one (in contrast to Shell’s four) that mentions oil.

Apple

Whether Apple is actually unpopular is up for debate.

Though the 19^th largest company in the world via revenue, it is another that receives large scale criticism through environmental and human rights issues.

Perhaps surprisingly, with over 9 million likes and much confusion, the “official” Apple Facebook page is largely unused and the corporation hasn’t posted a single thing since it joined Facebook in July 2011. In fact, it hasn’t even been verified, raising questions as to whether it really is Apple Inc who owns the page at all.

Going on the basis that it is the official page however, Apple has taken the time to upload a profile picture and fill out its address, though it is blindingly obvious that the company sees little point in marketing via Facebook; despite iTunes and the App Store both having active pages.

As one of its products can probably be found in nearly every home in the western world, there’s little chance that we’ll forget about Apple any time soon, a thought that is particularly interesting when you view the amount of likes owned by similar brands:

• IBM has just under 250,000 likes
• Microsoft has over 2 million likes
• Sony has over 4 million likes

It seems that without doing a single thing, Apple can beat IBM, Microsoft and even Sony in terms of Facebook popularity, and that is something that you simply have to give it credit for - especially when the page may not even be Apple at all.

Primark

Like Apple, Primark has in the past been charged with serious allegations of human rights breaches at workshops throughout Asia.

This came to head for the Irish company in 2006, when the Ethical Trading Initiative alongside a string of businesses and trade unions highlighted broken labour rights in the company’s supply chain.

Since then, Primark has been questioned numerous times over worker ethics, with the last being in April 2013, when an eight-story commercial building collapsed in India, killing over 1000 people who were employed to manufacture apparel for it.

With over 800,000 likes, the company keeps a consistent Facebook page with timely updates revolving around weather and appropriate clothing for such conditions.

In addition to this, new clothing ranges often take precedence with the odd commercial video, and shouts about advertisements in fashion magazines such as LOOK.

Scrolling back to the time of the Saver building collapse earlier in the year, the company published a long letter on May 22, notifying followers about the charity aid and support that it was giving to the victims of the collapse; stating also that they shall be receiving full compensation.

Posting the letter is quite probably the best move that Primark could have made, as digging its head in the sand is catastrophic for any company that needs to publicly accept responsibility.

Will These Facebook Pages Help?

As we can see from the four above mentioned brands, there are various ways of deflecting bad press, from avoiding social media platforms altogether, right through to admitting mistakes and accepting responsibility.

Whether any them manage to clean their name is another thing, as it would take more than a good Facebook page to dissolve the damage that has been inflicted by all four.

Perhaps however, Facebook may just be the place to start.