The Big Debate: Introducing the panellists

The run-up to the Big Debate: Is social media a waste of time for business? is underway, and with the 30th of April coming round so soon we would like to give you a quick taste of what the evening will entail.

The Debate

The purpose of this debate is to investigate how businesses in Brighton and Hove perceive the use of social media as a form of marketing and communicating. Whilst the most popular of social media platforms are free and easy to use, it doesn’t necessarily make them the most effective for certain businesses, nor does that mean that they are effective at all. It will be an opportunity for businesses to have an interesting discussion on whether they perceive quirky selfies at work, or tweeting with the birds, to be a waste of time for their business practices.

The debate will kick off with each of panellist giving their point of view on the motion at hand, and after the motion will be open to the floor for discussion. We plan for the discussion to be really productive, with the panellist’s speeches providing a little food for thought.

... And thus we would like to introduce you to our panellists who will be voicing their opinions on whether they have found social media to be a waste of time for their business.

Our panellists are:

Nick Barlow, Small Batch Coffee Company

Small Batch began as a tiny wholesale roastery and has since grown to encompass five shop and two coffee carts in Brighton & Hove.

Nick said that Small Batch never really budgets for marketing. Social media has been effective for them because it has been the only means of communication, and on another note it is free! – ‘Social media has been an integral part of the growth of Small Batch both in terms of customer base and brand identity and I deal with it every day’.

As well as that, Nick has found Twitter to be a great tool for research, in terms of finding out about new coffee shops, roasters, coffee bloggers, and an easy means of communicating with them.

Adrian Swinscoe, RARE Business

RARE Business is a Marketing and Business Development Consultancy service that has a particular focus on helping client improve their customers’ experience. Adrian has been running RARE in Brighton for nearly 7 years.

Social media has been a central part of RARE for the last five years, in particular blogging. It has provided Adrian a platform for sharing his thoughts with clients and has allowed him to build credibility and trust with new clients.

Through blogging and Twitter it has given RARE Business, to quote Adrian: ‘an opportunity to show clients what is inside my head’.

Daren Howarth, CLevel

CLevel has been aligning businesses with natural systems for over 10 years by focusing on carbon management to achieve a ‘carbon balanced’ status for businesses.

However, Daren Howarth feels that ‘too many businesses are sold on the idea of social media as the latest marketing tool’ when in fact they operate for a different purpose. Instead of marketing, social media is about ‘communicating what you are about and [what you value]’

But for Daren, he finds the most effective marketing tools for his business to be Short Films

Denise Buchan, Classic Consulting

Classic Consulting were founded in early 2012 and are now a multi award winning, specialist recruitment agency that has rapidly made a genuine and significant impact in Sussex.  They are a paperless office and encourage all of their candidates to register online.

Denise Buchan tells us that ‘all of our vacancies are posted on both of our main Social Networks which are Facebook and Twitter. However, the way we have achieved success is by being in the heart of the community. All of us here have huge amounts of local knowledge and experience and a real drive to help local candidates.’

We thought we'd share with you an Example of Social Media Done Badly...

In February this year The Shed, a cafe run in Bath, went on a ‘brand implosion’ by using social media, particularly Twitter and Facebook, to response to tweets and statuses in a not-so friendly way.

The responses to the feedback were generally belligerent, however, their responses were done were done in self-defence of the brand. For example one customer (most likely a customer no more) commented saying the cakes were being unprotected from being “breathed on (or worse) by customers”. The Shed responded by calling the customer a “stupid woman”.

The Telegraph likened the predicament to the brand implosion incident in 1991 by Gerald Ratner, where his speech caused a near collapse of the Ratners Group (now the Signet Group).

...And an Example of Social Media Done Perfectly

Volvo in 2013 hit the nail on the head with the ‘Vovo Trucks – The Epic Split Feat. Van Damme’. It featured the famous ‘Muscles from Brussels’ balancing himself between two Volvo trucks and performing the splits whilst the trucks were reversing.

The stunt, which went viral, was done to promote Volvo’s new dynamic steering system. As result Volvo’s very intelligent marketing the video has reached over 70 million views on Youtube, and this was all done through content sharing, and rapid brand promotion online through the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

You can read more about the debate and book your ticket here.

If you want to contribute to the Chamber blog, contact us on hannah@brightonchamber.co.uk