Comment: Lessons from HMV's Twitter debacle

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If it wasn’t such a damning indictment of retailers’ understanding of social media, there would be a delicious irony to be enjoyed in Thursday’s decidedly cautionary tale told by HMV’s staff through its Twitter account.

While HMV executives drafted cautiously worded emails to investors, innovation experts supplied us with endless post mortems on business strategy and journalists lamented the changing retail landscape, employees at the company decided His Master’s Voice was tired and hoarse. They took to the stage themselves to highlight the real areas of neglect so prevalent in retail and in the HMV model itself.

Retailers need to use this story to understand that a social media presence isn’t just a nice-to-have, nor a tick-box activity but a viable path to purchase which is still yet to be fully exploited by many big players. HMV had long misused their digital presence: the online customer journey was outdated and confusing; their social media content – although engaging and personable – remained peripheral to the purchase model.

Throughout its commendable 92 year tenure on our high streets, HMV’s employees have always played a central role in its success. Knowledgeable and charming, they gave the conglomerate the brand identity so mourned over the past fortnight. As a sort of cruel paradox, the idea of putting the Twitter account in their hands to be straight, honest and affable about their brand is in fact an incredibly smart move.

Used well, this could have been the opportunity HMV so desperately needed to bridge the gap between their successful in-store strategy and their lacklustre digital presence, to satisfy the emerging behaviour that sees today’s connected shopper use multiple channels simultaneously, and tell a coherent brand story across every one. The more equity a brand has, after all, the higher the importance that it is represented accurately and consistently to the omni-channel shopper.

Changes, it seems, are afoot. The introduction of Facebook Graph Search last month was hailed by many as the beginning of the end for brand pages and the natural ascension of local pages. As Max Gladwell pointed out on the Huffington Post earlier this month, retailers currently manage their social media at a corporate level, at a national level at the very narrowest. “But these brands don’t do business at the corporate level.” he writes, “They do business at the local level through large, bricks and mortar networks.” This heralds a shift to a model where each store has its own voice and staff are used to influence the shopper journey at every touchpoint available, be it on or offline.

If larger retailers are to be a true success through social media, if they are to develop it as a powerful purchasing model rather than simply a brand building tool, they must understand that the shopper journey doesn’t begin and end in store and harness the sales expertise of their staff at a local level to meet the changing needs of shoppers.

As Thursday’s debacle proved to us all, social media is at its most formidable when it is real, honest and shakes off its corporate messaging. Convert this into purchase and retailers can avoid another embarrassing display of business ineptitude and reap the benefits so within their grasp.