Mumsnet’s ‘biscuitgate’ hides Gordon’s real mistake

Oh, Gordon. Brown’s attempts last Friday to charm the members of Mumsnet went down as well as a mouldy custard cream.

The PM’s repeated refusal to name his favourite biscuit was only one reflection of his generally awkward tone. But the press obsession with what is now being dubbed ‘biscuitgate’on the boards suggests that the issue was the Brown’s failure pander to the lighthearted, chatty approach of the online community.

Instead, the real problem was his avoidance of the gritty issues – the fact that he underestimated his audience.  This from member hatwoman:

blimey – I spend ages the night before composing my question about the Human Rights Act (something I actually care about). it got completely ignored (confirming my suspicion that, in fact, no-one cares about it), and then I make a short quip about something I don;t actually care that much about (childcare vouchers – I don’t care about them in their form of a tax relief for those people I’m not allowed to call “middle income” -I’d rather see the money spent on the more needy, as someone else has said), and said quip is flawed anyway (because of the tax credits thing someone pointed out to me) and…I make the Times! funny old world.

People who aren’t familiar with social media often make the mistake of patronising those who do. Brands are a great example. They want to believe that the only folk out there expressing opinions about them are bored teens, or obsessive geeks, or ranting nimbies. It makes them feel safe. It allows them to pretend that social media doesn’t in fact represent the diverse and authentic voice of the consumer, from academics to switched-on OAPs to young professionals.  Because if they admitted it does, they’d have to face the truth that these are the people determining their reputation and revenue, and they’d have to treat them as educated equals.

Brown’s webchat also highlights the fact that you simply won’t understand how these online communities interact, what motivates them and inspires them and the language they use, until you immerse yourself in them. Again, I frequently hear executives complain that they just don’t have the time for all this stuff, that they don’t even know where to start.

The answer is to start by listening to and participating in social media (just as yourself, not as your brand) for half an hour or so each day. I can consult for you until I’m blue in the face, but until you actually invest some time and effort getting to know this space and finding how you yourself can become inspired by it, you’ll never ‘get’ why it is so important and influential to your customers.

In this respect, Brown is owed some respect for actually taking the risk and starting to engage – in some ways it’s more appealing that he wasn’t thoroughly coached into slick perfection. And at least someone in the PM’s office has a sense of how to be social – yesterday Mumsnet founder Justine reported that she’d “just taken delivery of six tubes of choc chip butter biscuits from Downing St with a note from the PM saying he enjoys these ones”. But how much more impressive would it have been if Brown had sent over some longer answers to the policy questions he didn’t have time for?

Anyway. I’m off to NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown.com for a bit of pink wafer porn.

Brought into the world on Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 and filed under Uncategorized.