The Social Medium That Roared

For those who haven’t yet noticed, this past week was the week that social media in Australia truly came of age.

It started with Gerry Harvey and his poor, impoverished, billionaire mates pitting up an ad in the newspapers, complaining that they won’t be able to afford to buy that extra Rolls Royce this year, because the public has woken up to the fact that they can buy a greater selection of more products, with more and better service and delivery options, for significantly less dollars than what Gerry and his mates want to charge us.

Gerry and his cronies couched their carefully worded statements in terms that suggested that the 3% of trading that was going to online traders would be likely to cause massive job losses, and that the imposition of the 10% GST wold be sure to arrest the slippage of sales from their stores.

But the public didn’t buy into these arguments: not a bit of it. They failed to accept that the 10% GST was the reason they were buying from online sources, citing – in tweet after tweet after tweet – that poor service, high prices, a poor range of products, and lousy product knowledge were more likely to be the reason they were buying from online sellers.

In tweet after tweet after tweet, the public tore the retailers apart, pointing out that the GST was irrelevant when their bricks and mortar pricing was often two or three times more than than the online pricing one could obtain.

Many tweeters even cited local examples of pricing disparities, pointing out that local traders with an online presence were doing quite well, thus proving that Harvey’s “level playing field” argument was a total fabrication.

Some tweeters even recalled Harvey’s statements from just a couple of years ago, whereby he said words to the effect that online trading was a waste of time. If online trading is a waste of time, then why in the hell is Harvey so concerned about it now?

Towards the end of the week, Harvey expressed genuine surprise at the reaction his campaign had received: he was upset at the vitriol, and at the total absence of support for the retail channel that was being expressed through social media.

But most of all, it was evident that social media – and in particular Twitter – had taken control of the issue: Gerry Harvey was amongst the top trending topics for the world through the week, such was the venting that was occurring following the ad campaign.

While Harvey Norman has a social media presence, it was largely unused through this week, and it was certainly ineffective in defending their boss against his ill-fated campaign.

This week, the public let their collective voice be heard through the medium of Twitter, and while I remain unconvinced that Gerry Harvey fully understands the underlying issues that are affecting his business, I suspect that he perhaps has a slight understanding of the power of social media.