One of the ‘big two’ Australian supermarket chains operates an ancilliary petrol station in Balwyn in Melbourne where they provide regular grocery shoppers with 4c per litre off their petrol for purchases over $30. At this particular outlet, for at least the past three years, an eccentric young Irish man has worked there who has a unique customer service style, yet one that is appreciated by most of the petrol station’s customers.

Recently this man was enshrined through Facebook with a group page that featured people’s favourite quotes of his, images of him working in the petrol station and even his shift times so that if people so desired, they could get their petrol when he was working.

After having a couple of friends tell me about it, I was one of 536 people to join the group. Yet probably less than a week after joining, I got this message from the group’s creator:

at the request of [the supermarket chain], we have been asked to remove all photos and make the group private, or altug could lose his job. if he does lose his job, i think a good old public riot is in order.
we will have some new pictures up soon enough, but any of altug in his [supermarket chain] gear or in the store have to be removed.

stay in school and give my kind regards to the ghetto

The supermarket chain’s reaction seems quite inexplicable to me, as someone who has been studying the impact of social media for two years now.  Large companies generally have media and communication departments that adjudge publicity to be either brand enhancing or brand detracting. This was a free and wholly customer instigated publicity movement, surely the best kind.

The makeup of the group was mainly of people who were already regular or semi-regular customers of this particular petrol station, simply reflecting on the weird and wonderful experiences they had had of being served by this young Irish man. Sharing memories was likely to keep them coming back to the petrol station to see the individual, who by virtue of working there, was heavily associated with the supermarket chain.

Now this move has created some backlash against the supermarket chain, such as:

• [The supermarket chain] is good at spoiling some fun, it’s not fun spoiling goods

• Bloody [Supermarket chain], dont they realise that Balwyn [petrol station] & [the young Irish man] are institutions of the local area??

  Peace out…

• I dont know about [the supermarket chain]. This is the best free advertising the can get and is also wonderful customer feedback on staff. If he loses his job i’ll give hime one.

The last Facebook user makes an excellent point, it could have been great free advertising. And considering there are other petrol stations in the Balwyn area, including one run by the other major Australian supermarket chain, a viral campaign on Facebook (as the group looked like it was turning into) might have increased business for the petrol station.

This might have occurred if friends of the people joining the group had been curious about it, looked at the group, appreciated the humour and decided to visit that particular petrol station rather than one of the others in the area. Now the group has been deidentified and although people in the know (which obviously most members of the group are) will still know exactly what store the young Irish man works at, there is no opportunity to introduce new audiences to the individual or to his place of work.

There are a few reasons I can see why the supermarket chain might have made the decision that they did:

• Not being able to control their own branding and image. This is the reason why most organisations are shy about social media. Yet in this case the hijacking of the supermarket chain’s image by users on Facebook was a positive and almost entirely brand enhancing move. As I have identified earlier, their subsequent moves at stopping it have created a negative sentiment and have been brand detracting.
• The other reason I can see comes from an intimate knowledge of this supermarket chain, having worked for them on and off over nearly five years. They strongly emphasize a team environment (as most organizations in this sector do) and as such, they may not have wanted one individual to become bigger than the team or store itself.

My response to the second point above is that the young Irish man has been well known in the Balwyn area for several years, and the Facebook group was simply extending his fame into the online world.

Anyway, I am going to seek to have the supermarket chain read this blog post, and perhaps try and get some insight from them as to why they have taken their particular actions. So watch this space…

In a sign of the changing times, Swimming Australia has taken the step of warning its athletes that images they post to their Facebook pages are effectively in the public domain and they should be careful with the types of images they upload. The need for this warning has risen after swimmer Stephanie Rice, and her fiancee, fellow swimmer Eamon Sullivan were depicted as a ‘hot cop’ and a sumo wrestler while attending a dress-up party. These photos were uploaded to Rice’s Facebook page and have now found their way into the mainstream media. If you haven’t seen them already, check them out here, courtesy of The Daily Telegraph.

While it is understandable that Swimming Australia does not want their swimmers presented in a negative light, and wants a clean cut image for its swimming team, nobody was doing anything wrong here. While the photos of Stephanie might take on certain sexual connotations, she is simply a girl who is having fun at a party. And if people see these photos and find her sexy, is that really such a bad thing?

It seems that Swimming Australia has failed to understand the opportunities that are on offer here. Every sport needs personalities – people who transcend the sport, and boost ticket sales because punters turn up to see these people perform. Swimming has had a history of ‘pinups’ – Keiran Perkins, Ian Thorpe, Grant Hackett, Susie O’Neill and Gian Rooney to name a few. But with the exception of Hackett, these people have all retired and swimming needs to unearth some new personalities to ensure that the sport remains popular.

The other point is that most of these swimmers have carefully manufactured media profiles, with carefully selected exposure to mainstream media texts. But consumers are no longer buying this the way they were five years ago – these days they want to see real people with real personalities.

Stephanie Rice is a real person with an appealing personality, and the photos that have found their way into the mainstream media demonstrate that. Swimming Australia should not be afraid to let swimmers with personalities such as this emerge on the new media landscape of Facebook and other user-generated content sites. In this era of viral marketing, it is possible for athletes like Stephanie to attain a media profile without spending a cent.

This type of marketing appeals to the voyeuristic element that is creeping into media – spawning reality TV shows such as the latest big hit, So You Think You Can Dance. Swimming Australia could give their swimmers the freedom to use social media sites in whatever way they consider appropriate, and see new stars emerge within this medium to keep swimming as one of Australia’s premier sports.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a huge Facebook addict – I generally check it several times per day, using both my computer and my mobile phone to do so but sometimes it gets me wondering. It gets me wondering about how radically the software is changing the way I communicate with my family and friends, and just how beholden I am becoming to this program.

For example, I don’t really need to ask my friends how their days have been anymore, instead their Facebook status will let me know. If it tells me that ‘Clare has had a crap day’ then I know that something has happened to my girlfriend today and she probably needs cheering up. Likewise I’m less inclined to ask my friends how their weekends were – if I wasn’t already doing something with them, then chances are someone took along a digital camera and has already uploaded photos so I can see exactly what went on. Even relationships don’t warrant as much discussion as they used to – if my friends happen to break up with their partners then Facebook will tell me so and likewise if they find someone new in their life, Facebook will tell me that too.

There’s a satirical graphic doing the rounds on the Internet at the moment, entitled ‘Pensionbook’ that is meant to be Facebook when Generation Y grows old, with recent deaths instead of birthdays and colostomy bag applications and as ridiculous as this is, it gets me wondering about how communication practices are evolving for my generation. First of all mobile phones came along and we’ve become integrated with them, to the point that most people cannot leave the house without one. Now Facebook has come along and is available on any device that can establish an Internet connection and launch a web browser. It seems as though along the way, communication has been grossly simplified.

Perhaps this is a good thing in this fast paced world we live in, and perhaps Facebook allows us to pay more attention to the people we care about in our minute amounts of spare time by concentrating the happenings of our lives into a news feed. Then again, Matrix style, we could be becoming increasingly dependent on the application until one day we won’t be able to do anything unless Facebook says so.