A Vocal Few Don't Represent the Majority but Could Signify a Larger Issue.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- If the social-media sphere attacks your brand, do "real people" hear the screams? Not likely, according to surveys that indicate marketers shouldn't rush to quiet every micro-outrage that sweeps across the web. Last fall, Johnson & Johnson's Motrin broke creative of a mom complaining that wearing your baby "in fashion," via a sling, can cause back and neck pain. It offended some in the social-media sphere, and an army of Twittering moms got the brand to yank the ad and issue a mea culpa on its site. But, according to a Lightspeed Research survey, almost 90% of women had never seen the ad. Once they saw it, about 45% liked the video, 41% had no feelings about it, and 15% didn't like it. Even fewer, 8%, said it negatively affected their feelings of the brand, compared with the 32% who said it made them like the brand more. Was Motrin's decision to yank the ad and apologize the right one -- even if it made the problem go away?

Skittles recently redesigned its website and adopted a sort of "anti-site." Instead of building a destination, it built an overlay that sat atop several social-media communities: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia. It launched debate -- and mischief -- in the Twitterverse as users started posting sometimes-naughty comments about the candy to the social-media sites. But when private online community Communispace asked more than 300 people if they'd heard of the endeavor, only 6% of a fairly web-savvy audience had.

The internet has made it easier than ever for consumers to get their opinions heard -- and for marketers to listen. But it also creates real challenges: Do marketers know who they're listening to? And at what point does the echo chamber of social media drown out the real opinions of the people who buy your brand?

"The data is a really compelling reminder that a lot of our target consumers are not the people who are sitting on Twitter freaking out over a packaging design that they don't like," said Diane Hessan, CEO of Communispace. She added, "These are people online, having conversations, and yet they are totally out of the loop on stuff us marketing junkies love to obsess over."

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