The NOTW’s social media downfall

by Robin Grant in News on 11 July 2011 at 12:56 Google+

On Thursday last week, Rupert Murdoch’s News International announced the closure of the world’s no.1 English language newspaper, the News of the World.

Now, whatever you think of the revelations about the paper’s conduct leading up to the closure, or whether you view the closure as a cynical ploy, there can be no doubt that brands pulling out of advertising with the News of the World brought the situation to a head, and we think that social media was a major cause of that.

Last week, social media was on fire with people commenting on the wrongdoings of the News of the World.

NOTW vs super-injunction volumes

As you can see, the protest about the News of the World was much bigger than the kerfuffle around the super-injunction saga just two months ago, the only comparable recent UK political social media event (which was of such a scale that it actually drove significant adoption of Twitter).

What was interesting, alongside the sheer scale of the outpouring of almost universally negative feeling (which we can assume was merely reflective of that of society as a whole and of conversations going on in their millions in pubs and cafés all over the country), was how brands were dragged into the affair.

On Tuesday last week several disparate and unconnected groups of people emerged independently, coming up with the idea of targeting brands who advertised in the News of the World and getting people to ask them to stop. This spread like wildfire through social media. Both Rory Cellan-Jones and Gordon MacMillan, have done a good job of trying to chronicle this grass roots uprising, which ranged from a forum thread on Mumsnet that linked to pre-written tweets targeted at individual brands, to left wing blogs encouraging their readers to take action.

We’ve looked at the conversations on Twitter about News of the World which included mention of one of the targeted brands and come up with this picture of the situation:

Brands & NOTW volumes

In fact on the 5th and 6th July, over 25% of conversations on Twitter mentioning NOTW keywords also mentioned one of the targeted brands.

Brands' NOTW share of voice

What this meant was that brands were being bombarded in protest – most of whom will have been unused to such a spike in negative attention. This was not just happening on Twitter, with targeted brands’ Facebook pages becoming venues for significant protest too.

Targeted brands

Volumes of tweets containing targeted brands & NOTW keywords on the 5th and 6th July

Every brand involved was dealing with its own social media crisis last week. The sheer volume of this protest will have been a shock for many brands and drowned out any normal marketing activity. This cannot have failed to influence their decisions about whether to pull advertising from the News of the World.

The protest was fascinating in that there was no one single pressure group behind it – the same idea sprung up several times in different parts of social media. It was a mass outpouring of public opinion which hit at the right time and had its desired affect. We can expect this sort of thing can happen again, now that people have learnt about the collective power they can wield in social media…

I’m Matt.

I think what this misses out, because it is a great output, is at what point brands actually began to react and say they wouldn’t advertise. If social media genuinely has a massive impact in this case, which is clear, the timings of withdrawing advertising are crucial to making the point wholevident.

Interestingly though having chatted to a media colleague/ex-colleague of a couple of the major brands you talk about above, they said this was internally driven when they found out about the hacking, not driven by any conversation in social media.
Matt Williams

I think you have to credit the Guardian with their work bringing this scandal to light.
http://twitter.com/abc3d Francesco D’Orazio

interesting point as we had similar feedback from a couple of brands we work with. they were receiving emails and messages from consumers directly way before the social media conversation became relevant in that sense…
http://www.oursocialtimes.com/ Luke Brynley-Jones

Interesting – but from the data here you can’t tell if brand mentions caused their announcement to pull their advertising from NOTW or resulted from it. From a quick look at data for one brand (Halifax) there were few mentions before 6th July, when they pulled the plug on their ad contract, and lots after. This might question the wisdom – purely from a PR perspective, not ethical – of brands taking that step.
A cynic

This makes an interesting read – but I don’t think it is wise to overstate the role (or otherwise) played by social media in this story. If you look at the business issues here, it is clear that the Murdoch’s were acting to try to protect their plans for the complete takeover of BSkyB. Also add into the mix that News International in the UK is behind the eight ball in comparison with competitors in acting to drive efficiency in its newspaper business, and Twitter starts to look a little irrelevant. What the Murdochs did was make a business decision to protect the bigger prize, and seize an opportunity to radically restructure the cost basis at Wapping.

I’m a huge fan of this blog, and I am also a full-time social media worker. However, where we as an industry consistently fall down is in understanding business and communicating the true relevance of social media. I’m sorry, but I think you are deluded if you believe the discussions of this story on Twitter were in any way relevant to the business decisions made by the Murdochs. This is simply another example of the social media echo chamber – social media geeks talking social media to other social media geeks while the real world looks at bottom line figures as it makes tough business decisions.

Furthermore, if anyone still entertains any notion that the Murdochs would have given a nano-second of consideration to social media in their decision making process, then pause to reflect on their track record in social. They’ve killed MySpace and they’ve offended many 2.0 gurus by defying the mantra that information wants to be free.

Now, forgive my mini rant-ette – the story is fascinating, and this is a good piece, but as ever, we need to be hugely careful about looking for correlations in social where there are none. Twitter did not kill the newspaper star.

And before I get shot down, I know Robin hasn’t said It was Twitter wot won it in so many words, but i do believe he was leading us to that conclusion.
http://twitter.com/cassandra_7 cassandra_7

Also by way of credit where credit is due: The ‘forum thread on Mumsnet that linked to pre-written tweets targeted at individual brands,’ was a page created by @thegreatgonzo — Which isn’t clear from the screen capture linked to.
dhopesmith

totally in agreement with A Cynic and Matt(s) on this matter. Yes social media was a flurry of speculation, breaking news, comment and retweets, however the Guardian broke the story and the Beeb kept a close eye and some of the UK’s best journalists on the case.

Some brands with defined ethical principles acted quickly to distance themselves from NOtW, purely from a reputational point of view. I don’t believe this last point led to the closure of the newspaper, as many people have speculated. This was down to a cynical decision by Murdoch to keep his hat in the ring for BSkyB.

On a broader point about social media; the use of mass mailings ala 38 Degrees and Twitter @’s set up to lobby co’s to ditch their advertising in NotW, this makes great headlines and can beat apathy, however many recipients of this form of lobbying don’t regard it as valid and ignore it.

We need to keep a perspective on these things guys…
http://twitter.com/chrissssmith Chris Smith

Frankly, I don’t think Twitter, or social media actually had that much of an impact. Take it out the equation and nothing changes in terms of the pressures that would have mounted against NOTW. What social media brings (and what it always brings) to these issues is speed and pace – and it took NOTW down in a under a week. But I think i would have happened without social media anyway, but over many weeks as NOTW sales fell week-on-week, advertisers dropped out in dribs and drabs e.t.c.
http://flavors.me/40deuce 40deuce

Hey Robin,

This is really interesting stuff. While I’ve heard news of what’s been happening I’m not super familiar with the whole story (being that I’m over in Canada). However, that said, experiences like this one are becoming the norm thanks to the connectivity we all have via social channels. A grass roots movement can be started by anyone these days, and as long as they can gain enough attention to part of their campaign people all over the world who understand the plight and agree with one side or the other can join in.
Brands are going to have to be prepared for these kinds of things now. All it takes is one little tweet to start an entire revolution.

Cheers,
Sheldon, community manager for Sysomos
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http://twitter.com/joeadamfry Joe Fry

Perhaps this is more symptomatic of an increasing comprehension of the processes involved in the media industry, including advertising, by society as a whole.

This is exemplified in the collective realisation that brands should pull their advertising. Obviously people from within those companies targeted thought the same thing. Its just interesting that so did a lot of other people.

Maybe its because they are more media-critical but perhaps also because now more than ever the brand-consumer relationship is as transparent and direct as we have ever had. And for this, perhaps, social media can be held accountable.
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http://wearesocial.net Robin Grant

Hey Matt

Fair point. We did try and see if there was a correlation between the brands that were under the most fire in social media and those that pulled out, but there wasn’t anything obvious.

However, the point remains – advertisers saw the public reacting, and reacted in different ways. Some of them pulled out of advertising with the News of the World, and that seems likely to have had a impact on the Murdochs’ decision to close the paper…
http://wearesocial.net Robin Grant

Hey Fransesco – that may be, but how did the volumes and their reactions to both compare?
http://wearesocial.net Robin Grant

Hey Matt

You are absolutely right – hence the second hyperlink in the post above linking to the Guardian’s timeline of events…
http://wearesocial.net Robin Grant

Hey Luke – you’re absolutely right. I’m not suggesting there is a direct correlation, and brands were dammed if they did or they didn’t (as most people wouldn’t have known if they’d pulled their advertising or not). But surely it had an impact none the less?
http://wearesocial.net Robin Grant

Hey Cassandra – thanks for clarifying!
http://wearesocial.net Robin Grant

Hey Mr Cynic – I appreciate your honesty, and would tend to agree with the thrust of your argument. A small point in my defence – surely the pertinent question is not whether the discussions of this story on Twitter were in any way relevant to the business decisions made by the Murdochs, but whether advertisers pulling their advertising were in any way relevant to the business decisions made by the Murdochs. To which, of course, you could still plausibly argue the negative…
http://wearesocial.net Robin Grant

Just to pick up on the “many recipients of this form of lobbying don’t regard it as valid and ignore it” bit of your argument – I really don’t think this is true. The sheer volume of protest directed at the target brands both on Facebook and Twitter I think will have made it very hard to ignore.
http://wearesocial.net Robin Grant

Very true…
http://wearesocial.net Robin Grant

Thanks Joe – I think you may have a point there…