You Can’t be Anti-Social
Do you feel like you are a people person? Do you have a social media strategy? Chances are you do. Brands in 2017, if you aren’t on social in some form, you will realize your customers and potential customers are and change that mighty quickly no matter if you are B2B or B2C.
What if I told you a brand today is causing a major cardinal sin and not only shunning a social media strategy but the sheer lack of them on social is mind boggling.
The home furnishing store, Restoration Hardware, is not on any social platform.
Yes you heard that right, the ever popular idea book, interior decor ideal, wedding registry dumping ground that is RH is not on any social platform.
Don’t believe me? Let’s do a nice roll call on the sites they should be on…
The last two are completely baffling. The best is on Pinterest you can tell they considered putting up a profile with the last entry (details within the profile seem legitimate) and there are zero pins and no attempt to build a presence.
Getting into RH’s thought process, they spend a lot of money on their ‘source book.’ They are broken out now based on rooms, however it use to be a 17 pound behemoth that didn’t look kindly on their carbon footprint. The fact that Sears in 2007 was once a part of this company is very telling on their focus on print media versus digital.
Flash forward to 2017, you have a company that is the first on the tip of people’s tongues when they are thinking of interior decorating, getting married and setting up that registry, or just an idea for a theme for a new place. Right now RH is like Kleenex, a brand that is now just a common phrase within that realm. However, you look at their competition, Crate and Barrel and Pottery Barn. Both have a huge digital presence both on social and paid media buying. Crate and Barrel is even moving into getting that elusive millennial to upgrade their aesthetic from Home Goods to their new brand CB2. RH from the outside either has strong hubris on their brand or are completely out of touch. Both aren’t good when it comes to your consumer.
The crazy thing about all of this is the determination of RH customers to post on IG and Pinterest. Some have even gone to scanning the catalog to upload pictures to their digital idea boards.
Want to hear something else crazy, with the lack of any digital presence, this critique of RH will fall on deaf ears. They don’t have any algorithm pulling in consumer sentiment on the digital space, they have no public relations involved in a conversation with the consumer and they have no outlet in which to make sure their story is being told.
Restoration Hardware might be one of the few out there refusing to live in the 21st century, however it shows how glaring it can be if you don’t have that strategy as a brand.
