Digital Marketing Commentary (Now With 15% More Snark!)

Best Buy is buying national advertising for a new “HEY LOOK WE’RE ON TWITTER WE’RE SO COOL” campaign, which now directs users to Best Buy’s “Twelpforce” page. Best Buy clearly decided that they wanted to:

(a) use Twitter for customer service (like @comcastcares)
(b)direct their national advertising call attention to that strategy.

To do this, Best Buy attempted to direct users to twitter.com/twelpforce. Hey, AdAge, make a note here: add this to your total free advertising estimates for Twitter. That’s basically what advertising a non-branded Twitter URL in a national spot is, after all – especially when you haven’t paid “Twitter” to put your logo or info on their landing page so that the majority of people, who don’t know Twitter and won’t type in the /twelpforce part, have no way to find or remember where they’re supposed to go.

Besides, while @twelpforce is the landing page (thankfully, they didn’t promote the @username format), the “Twelpforce” is actually an automated aggregate of posts that have the hashtag #twelpforce. This allows Best Buy to utilize the Twitter infrastructure to generate a running stream of customer service questions and answers. And instead of being reliant on one employee, as Comcast has, Best Buy has multiple employees who are voluntarily getting involved to answer questions – resulting in a round the clock hive mind of answers.

Twelpforce in itself is a great idea, but the national advertising is not. The Twelpforce concept isn’t even listed on the home page of Best Buy, and there’s no way to get from the Twitter page or even bestbuy.com/twelpforce (the aggregate page containing all tweets with #twelpforce hashtags) to the Best Buy offers and sales. If you’re going to blow money on national advertising media buying, at least put in some sort of connection to your actual business model, and encourage conversions to purchase – or in store visits.

Finally, Twelpforce isn’t going to solve the problem Best Buy is providing a solution for, in the minds of its customers and audience. The problem is that Best Buy is seen as being a big box store with crappy customer knowledge and poorly trained staff. They earned that reputation, which isn’t as bad as Circuit City’s was, but is still a negative impression. Twelpforce is a step to presenting not only a solution to Best Buy customers, but it’s inaccessible to the majority of Americans, who don’t use or understand Twitter. If everyone WAS familiar with Twitter, and could use this tool effectively, it would go a long way towards making customers feel more secure in their purchases, and definitely create a relationship that would result in repeat business and higher lifetime value for each customer – provided you can get them to buy at the store in the first place. It may help get people in the doors if they know they will get long-term support through Twelpforce or similar, but it doesn’t replace the basic sales training Best Buy fails to provide their staff in the first place. I never set foot in a Best Buy unless it is an emergency where I don’t have time to buy whatever it is I need online. If I’m going to buy my electronics in a place where I get zero tech support at time of purchase, I may as well do it online where the pricing is better.

Of course, I used to work for the Canadian version of Best Buy, Future Shop – which is now OWNED by Best Buy. Twelve years ago, when I worked there, while in college, the staff were trained more on sales than on tech. I’m a bit biased here, and my information on how well Best Buy staff are trained on tech may be out of date.

I think Twelpforce is a small piece of a bigger solution to Best Buy’s lack-of-support image. But it needs to be called out as part of that solution, and more needs to be added to make it a working solution. Twitter is hard to navigate because it’s a linear stream of text – forums, organized by topic, would be easier. A Facebook page might also be a good fit for the Twelpforce, where the issues raised on Twitter could be presented in an organized, open discussion format. Or a customer support wiki, which is also easily navigated. But I think Best Buy also needs to layer in more expectation for positive in-store experience, in addition to promising post-purchase support through volunteer employees. Come on, Best Buy! Pioneer some social media I can be proud of!