"Canceled" Culture: The Fight to Not be........... Canceled?

 Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog! This week in class we discussed word of mouth marketing. 

Once there was a point in time where we could not simply call, text, snap, tweet, message, or search to find out about certain products, places, and people. People had to rely on the experiences of others to determine whether they wanted to try new things. You had to trust the experience of others to make your own assumption about things that you wanted to try. Whether you wanted to go on a vacation, try a new restaurant, wedding venue, party ideas we relied on the experience of others. Therefore word of mouth marketing was and still is an important tool. After I analyzed the readings for this week, I noticed that word-of-mouth marketing is used all day every day. Although it is easier to find reviews on certain products and places through social media and search engines, sometimes it's comforting for reviews to come from people you know and trust. 

Based on the title of the blog this week, you're probably wondering; What does word of mouth marketing have to do with canceled culture? It has everything to do with it. If you don't know what canceled culture is, let me break it down for you. Canceled culture is a popular term when a specific person, company, brand, and the like is excluded or "canceled" because of something that they said or did. The support for the person and company is withdrawn and they receive tons of backlash. The withdrawal of support is done publicly, mostly through social media platforms. Now that that's out of the way, let's compare it to word-of-mouth marketing. 

Word of mouth marketing heavily relies on social media to drive sales, clicks, and tries for different companies and brands. Social media makes it easier for friends, family, and peers to ask one another for recommendations on specific places to eat, travel, brands to try and so much more. According to a study by Nielsen, 92% of consumers believe suggestions from friends and family, more than they do advertising.  Word of mouth marketing allows micro information to spread immensely. For example, if one of my friends on Facebook asks for recommendations on a nice restaurant and I give them one. Once my friend goes to the restaurant I recommended, whether they like it or not, they will tell others about their experience and the information will spread. Word of mouth marketing has been deemed a good tool for advertising, but as fast as it can drive sales, it can make them come crashing down so much faster. Let me give you a few examples. 

This week in class we read an article on 8 ways Starbucks creates an enviable social media strategy. Just last year Starbucks faced backlash after a memo of theirs leaked saying that their employees couldn't wear Black Lives Matter apparel. Word quickly spread about this and individuals on social media quickly made the hashtags #boycottstarbucks and #cancelstarbucks trend. 

Less than 24 hours after the backlash, Starbucks revealed a new design of their own Black Lives Matters Shirts, with this tweet. 

After this happened a study showed that 45% of consumers were less likely to order from Starbucks because of this incident. 

This is just one example of how word of mouth and cancel culture can merge together to create a disaster for a business. Although Starbucks came back after the fact with a solution to solve the problem, 45% of consumers from that study said that they were less likely to purchase from them. The damage had already be done.

Another recent example of cancel culture has been with Piers Morgan and the interview that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had with oprah. 

Cancel culture and word-of-mouth marketing also relates to another topic that we discussed this week. Opinion leadership leads and fuels cancel culture because of word of mouth. Social media platforms easily allow their users to create tweets and posts based on what's happening in the world. Opinion leaders use big stories such as Starbucks and Piers Morgan to fuel their tweets to gain more attraction, clicks, and shares, This allows the stories about prominent people and businesses to spread like wildfire and begin a cancellation. 

I believe that people and businesses should be afraid of cancel culture. They should not believe that they can't be canceled because of how big they are because society has showed that they can. Prominent figures and brands have been canceled because of mistakes that they have made and thet are still trying to recover from them. People and brands are nothing without the people who support them.  Whenever you're free and want to be entertained, just google cancel culture and look and see how many people have been canceled because of something that they said or did. 

Prominent people and brands who have been ostracized by their communities include: 

• Bill Cosby- Sexual allegations 
• James Bennet (running an unfiltered op-ed to suppress protests)
• Abby Lee Miller (alleged racism) 
• Ellen DeGeneres (alleged toxic work environment) 
• J.K. Rowling (alleged remarks about the LGBTQ community)
• Goya
• L'oreal

This is not nearly all of the people and brands that have been ostracized because of cancel culture, but word of mouth plays a big role in it all. All it takes is one person to tell a friend and the cycle of continue to tell others will spread, thus causing a good or bad effect. 

Brands should pay attention to word of mouth marketing and cancel culture because all it takes is one viral social media posts and BOOM their reputation could be tarnished. Although brands can't technically avoid being "canceled' they can take precautions such as putting their values and the values of their customers through communication. According to West Virginia State University "They must keep open channels of communication with consumers, evaluate risks of business and marketing decisions and understand when it is time to address and correct wrong doings."  

Word of mouth marketing is a tool that can help or hurt businesses or people. Which do you think it does the most?