Upmarket Supermarket Social Market
February 26, 2009I noted in the news that Waitrose are leveraging their customer database, trying to promote their social network, myWaitrose.
I don’t know where to begin with how wrong this feels. Perhaps I’m missing something. A social network for people who shop at an upmarket supermarket chain? Having to drive people to the network? Since when did supermarket brand qualify as a common interest? More importantly, what is it trying to achieve? Supermarket users are, on the whole, very loyal already; Waitrose customers particularly so.
I’m a Waitrose customer. Are enough of my social circle customers to ply me away from Facebook/Twitter? And will my friends move? Or am I likely to want to reach out and converse with other Waitrose customers simply because they shop at the same store as me? Or perhaps they feel that they’ll succeed where Facebook and Twitter have failed, persuading the remaining offline socialites to move their activities online?
Sometimes it feels marketers see a social phenomenon and, rather than look at how they can embrace it, they allow jealousy and vanity to seduce them into believing they can recreate the phenomenon in a way that they can control and own. They want to play God.
Waitrose could manage a Facebook group, or have a Twitter presence, and use these as channels to share offers, information and love with their online customers. They could have their communities and save their budgets. Instead of adapting to their customers, they are asking their customers to adapt to them. Is it any wonder they’re having to work hard to get anyone at all interested? It isn’t going to happen, and budget and goodwill will be expended in the process of finding out the obvious.
