Walmart is turning to its 1.4 million employees for social media help. This is exactly the wrong thing to do.
In this week’s Advertising Age, I read a fascinating article about Walmart’s efforts to turn its 1.4 million employees into social media brand evangelists.
The idea is doomed to fail on principle alone.
The problem starts with the need to incentivize employees to be company supporters and evangelists. This is a huge red flag that should give any business owner pause. If you need to incentivize your employees to care then you have a bigger problem. It’s hard to fake enthusiasm and social media is a sensitive bullshit detector and it will ignore half-hearted attempts by Walmart employees to satisfy their corporate masters.
The Advertising Age article goes on to highlight a few ways Walmart plans to motivate employees, one being a product adoption plan called the Volume Producing Item program (sexy huh?). This program pioneered by Sam Walton encouraged employees to champion a specific product.
This is a brilliant idea but it only works in an organization that is driven by a clear-cut core purpose that everyone can rally around. Sam Walton was building a fabulous company. His employees could see his vision. Promoting a product was a welcome and small way they could show their support.
But in 2011, this is a bit too much for many Walmart employees who are struggling to make ends meet with mediocre wages.
“It’s really hard when you’re a person making poverty-level wages and can only get part-time hours to be a good ambassador for a brand” – Jennifer Stapleton | Making Change at Walmart”
What concerns me is that other businesses may take Walmart’s lead. They’ll look at their employees and see them as twitter drones that can magically reverse their social media fortunes.
The danger here is that these shortsighted companies will demonstrate that they don’t understand the pre-requisite requirement for any effective social media program – Passion.
To this day it amazes me that Apple doesn’t have a blog, twitter and Facebook accounts. I would kill to hear what it’s like to work at Apple. I would love to get to know the people who make the extraordinary machines I use every day. Frankly, I would Like these pages and follow these people in a superstitious mission to have some of their passion “rub off” on me.
Apple has passion and it’s social media success would be guaranteed from the first micro-second.
Where’s the passion at Walmart? If they have to incentivize it then it just ain’t there.
A while back I challenged you to ask “Why” you blog. But, there is a larger question here, Why are you in business?
Now tell me something, why do your employees get up every morning, sacrifice time with family and friends, and put up with you everyday to come to work?
If the realistic angel on your shoulder is whispering “for a paycheck” then you have a deeper problem to solve. Poking your people to tweet on your behalf will only make the problem worse.
Remember passion makes social work – not gimmicks.
I want to hear you on this one. What say you?
About Stanford
I think we have an anti-Walmart rant guised as social media advice.
Nope.
First I want to clarify, I am not a Walmart employee and never have been. However I read this post, and decided to read the Advertising Age article soon after. I’m not sure everybody is understanding what the article is talking about. They aren’t talking about Twitter or Facebook in that article. They are talking about the company’s internal social network, MyWalmart.com (“Among the retail behemoth’s recent and upcoming moves: revamping its internal employee social network”). They are revamping it in hopes (I’m assuming) that employees will come together like strangers do on the public social networks like Twitter and Facebook currently.
As far as the “Volume Producing Item” program goes, I’m not too optimistic about it except that they are giving local managers more control over what they feature in their stores. When you give someone more freedom and responsibility like that, they are more likely to care about what is going on, rather than if you treated them like robots.
I think that is what Walmart is going for here. They are trying to personalize Walmart for their employees by giving them opportunities to connect with each other, and have more control over their own stores, while giving them rewards when they make good choices in those stores. It’s a great concept that is by no means a new one. Will it work for Walmart? Maybe, maybe not. I tend to lean toward “maybe not”, but they are trying, and I do think it is a very very small step in the right direction.
Sorry Stanford (and others) but I totally disagree with you. (Isn’t that what makes a good discussion – ha ha ha ). @MaritaR actually referred me to this post.Now – If you look into Corporate America you see everything from legal documents called “Social Media Policy” to blocked IP addresses that disables people to use social media sites. Now here is a forward thinking company, highly successful too, that makes a mark and encourages it’s team to engage. And voila – this is bad too. Come on – what do you want?Here is why I really like the approach:1) Encourage your team to engage – that is a good concept no matter what2) Limit the rules and hope they promote – authenticity will come in automatically when the first customers writes “Hey Tom, what are you saying here you promote your own product…” Tom will quickly learn. In fact Tom will learn what most companies trusting their “social media consultants” still today didn’t learn.3) Wallmart’s success is in part due to their massive social media engagement since several years. This program is basically “opening the flood gate” what approximately 2,000 people did in the past is now done by 1.4 Million. If I’d be their competitor I have a hell of time in the next few months to figure out what is actually happening here.4) Incentives to engage is a key strategy, assuming the incentives are right. And it isn’t always money – but recognition and attention. And both: Recognition and Attention may not only come from the company but from the market. Walmart employees may experience a level of attention they never had before. That drives value, drives more attention, may provide new job opportunities or an increase in salary. Of course only for the best or those who improve.
The only downside: It will make Wallmart even more successful, wiping out their competitors and make their industry segment as monolithic as Microsoft, ATT and other monopolies. But that’s what a capitalistic system is all about. And we can’t blame a company to lead by order of magnitude by simply being much better than the rest all together.
Axel
http://XeeMe.com/AxelS
Great points. However I think the assumption that 1.4 million employees will act like a team of social media enthusiasts. I’m all for buttoning up social media policies and letting people know that they are appreciated. My core beef is that success here will not come from the sheer number of people but from passionate people who are excited about the mission of the program and the company. I’m highly skeptical this will happen here. I don’t fault Walmart for trying – I fault them for not understanding the true reason why social business works.
@axelschultze@maritar I swear I replied to your comment – but LiveFyre must have chomped it.
Hopefully this sticks….
You make some great points. However I think the assumption that 1.4 million employees will act like a team of social media enthusiasts. I’m all for buttoning up social media policies and letting people know that they are appreciated. My core beef is that success here will not come from the sheer number of people but from passionate people who are excited about the mission of the program and the company. I’m highly skeptical this will happen here. I don’t fault Walmart for trying – I fault them for not understanding the true reason why social business works.
I disagree with @Wittlake that many will see this as Walmart being authentic. It won’t take anyone very long to realize that these are employees shilling for Walmart. Sure, employees are free to talk about and encourage people to use their company’s products and services. But with that comes a very high level of transparency, one which I’m not sure many employees are aware of. When it comes to saying negative things about where they work, the products/services sold and how they feel about being a pawn in the system to gain more revenue without really sharing it down to to the rank and file, anonymity is often key.
In addition, being authentic requires honesty. If you’re being given incentives to speak positively to drive sales that does not encourage true honesty or authentic conversation.
Having read the original article, it’s easy to see that what Walmart is doing is trying to create a way for brands to further invest in the Walmart machine. Payola, so to speak. We’ll get our employees to say nice things about you if you advertise in our employee magazine (or vice versa).
I’m not so concerned that employees will undertake a negative campaign, because they all need jobs. However, how authentic and transparent is an endorsement from someone getting paid to say nice things? But brands are afraid of Walmart and the power the retail giant wields over their success so I doubt they’ll say anything about how the VPI program is wrong for their business and wrong for Walmart.
@saving4someday@Wittlake Amen!
You’re right, Stanford, this isn’t the right company to use this strategy. I’d like to see what happens when/if Walmart employees start sharing what they really think and feel. This could really backfire on Walmart if some employees do and then get in trouble, and all of that gets out. It will be an interesting experiment for Walmart.
@Neicolec In this case, they have 1.4 million ways to screw it up. They should definitely Shoot Bullets before Firing this Cannon Ball (I’ve got Jim Collins on the brain)
Unfortunately, many will see this as Walmart being authentic. They are asking their employees not to be and Walmart’s reputation is a company that doesn’t care about others.
Some will see this move as further proof of Walmart’s reputation, when it could have been a small step towards improving their reputation.
@Wittlake I agree. One problem is that “authentic” is used much too frequently and must too loosely these days.
Totally agree Stanford! Some companies just don’t get it and probably never will. I think this plan is ridiculous and very naive. It’s great to have employees who are active on social media platforms especially when the employer encourages it but it’s got to be on their own terms. I understand if you’re in a CS position at a company… then that’s your job to be on Twitter and FB. Otherwise, it’s got to be natural.
@James_Kiss Specifically, I believe that they are taking a huge step without getting emperical proof that there strategy has a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding. Too bad…