By John McGory
“The Picture of Dorian Gray” is a classic Victorian novel by Oscar Wilde. The book tells a tale of a young beautiful man, Dorian Gray, who has a portrait of himself painted.
Realizing his beauty will fade, Dorian (whimsically) expresses a desire to sell his soul to ensure the portrait would age rather than him. Dorian's wish is fulfilled, plunging him into debauched acts that visually age and disfigure his portrait, while he remains beautiful.
The novel’s prevalent themes are the vanity of aestheticism and the temptation of a double life. Those same alluring qualities are manifesting themselves in today’s world of social media. Businesses are selling their souls on Facebook and Twitter to remain beautiful while secretly leading a double life that can be corrupting, if not disfiguring.
The young developed and made Facebook and Twitter. The teens and twenty something’s got social media rolling and businesses quickly realized that Facebook was not only wildly popular, but commercially enticing.
Companies are now using Facebook and Twitter to paint a portrait of a young and hip persona. Hot music, cool products and trendy catch phrases are the rage.
But this is where the double life becomes an issue. Companies generally aren’t run by hip, trendy people. Bosses are often bean counting, curmudgeons, with budget and computer limitations.
Trouble for a company and its social media comes when policy collides with trendy posts. The young are quickly disillusioned with companies that talk a good game but fail to live up to today’s new social media-driven business standards.
A recent example is Target. The Minneapolis-based retailer built a strong following on Facebook but had a disaster when an on-line sale of Missoni products produced a run that overwhelmed its web site and caused a PR disaster involving customer service.
Now, nasty comments seem to be the rage, literally, on Target’s Facebook page. The company posted a comment two days ago, weeks after the Missoni debacle, asking customers how fast they could get to Target. Here is one response:
“That depends. How fast can you fix your suck-tastic baby registry so the thousands of women who are relying on it can get the customer service that they apparently wrongly expected from your company? How about you focus on that instead of pithy Facebook and Twitter posts?”
The young beautiful company on Facebook becomes the disfigured picture of Dorian Gray.
Facebook is not going away. Customers are going to look for companies on social media sites and they need to be there. Just don’t get lost in the youthful vanity of your Facebook posts. To quote the past generation, keep it real baby.
John McGory is a partner at Web Face, a social media and communications firm. Web Face (http://www.web-face-solutions.com/) consults with companies and organizations on Facebook postings, video and other social media and Internet needs.
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