But this video from Nivea (the Nivea Deo Stresstest) proves the old adage of ‘surprise and delight’ still rings true. They’ve given an old fashioned hidden camera prank  a few rather modern twists – all to highlight product capabilities.

Like it, or does the stunt just leave you feeling rather sweaty?

Our survey, conducted by Watermelon Research, covered 100 UK-based communications, marketing and social media professionals at organisations from SMEs to major multinationals. While more than two thirds of those polled recognised there was a gap in their social media planning, many admitted they had not done anything about it yet.

The top findings were:

• 69% were worried their social media activities could go wrong
• 41% said their existing crisis plans had no significant social media element
• 30% admitted they were not sure how they would use social media in a crisis situation

Good Relations has developed a social media crisis simulation tool that allows brands to prepare for issues and test their plans in a realistic roleplay scenario. For more information contact me (Robert Anderson, Digital, Social Media and Innovation Director, Good Relations) at randerson [at] goodrelations.co.uk

You can watch a recording of the livestream below. Emma Boya from Airbus and Lesley Saville from O2 venue owner AEG were our panelists. The session was introduced by Kevin Murray, Chairman, Good Relations Group. It was moderated by writer and media consultant Raymond Snoddy.

It’s important to think about all social media activities from a business perspective; without a clear objective there is usually no point investing time and energy. But social media is, by its nature, social — so trying to use social purely as a transaction driver risks being antisocial.

A few thoughts on this:

• Social media activities should, where possible, be better integrated with tracking to help trace transaction origins and customer purchase journeys
• Not all social media activities are designed to drive transactions — e.g. brand advocacy, awareness raising, community building, crisis response, customer service, reviews drivers etc
• If we accept that purchase journeys are less linear these days then maybe we need to provide more transaction options e.g. F-commerce, so consumers can buy within shared rather than owned environments

Clearly search and email marketing are incredibly important sales drivers but I don’t think it’s right to apply the same expectations to social media just yet.

The report serves as a good reminder also of why it’s so important to deliver outcomes rather than just noise through social — we need to stay focused on delivering business results, whatever those might be.