The Public Sphere in Marketing

Before even attempting to put this concept into the field of marketing, i must first get my head around it's meaning. The public sphere, as far as I understand is where the discussion of public affairs takes place and is conducted by supposedly "elite people". The lecture outlined that the media acts as a public sphere for common society and the likes of Rupert Murdoch could, to a certain degree, control this sphere.


With digital divides decreasing, and the potentially anonymous freedom of Facebook, Twitter and Blogs, spaces of discourse provide an arena for a more representative public sphere than the elitist form. The underlying theme I received from the lecture is that the ideas from online forums are judged more on merit than the standings of the speaker. People utilise online services such as rating eBay sellers or their recent stay in a Premier Inn to help those around them. Complaining about poor service (click the link to read a very comical one), is not done for the sheer fun of it, but because the facility is so easy to use and they are informing the general public of their experiences. This availability of course means that increasingly more attention to detail is needed to prevent customers starting a slippery slope of bad word-of-mouth but Coca Cola have handled this problem in the wrong way.


I listened to a very intriguing podcast from The Economist on how to counter act bad word-of-mouth,which is easy to announce on the global stage thanks to new media availability. Coca-Cola have a web page dedicated to address rumours about themselves and try to refute them. The economist, and more specifically Derek Rucker and David Dubois of the Kellogg School of Management, believe that by restarting the rumours coke are propagating them. Coke then, instead of trying to deny these rumours should counter by ensuring the positive steps they are taking, such as reducing carbon emissions, are circulating also. The anonymity of blogs and web 2.0 can be utilised by companies for self promotion, of course steering clear of Astroturfing.


It was also very interesting, yet perhaps not too unexpected, to learn in the lecture that the BNP had the largest forum during the last election, as it is an opportunity for people to express there racist and extreme views anonymously, or as i like to call it cowardly. 


Erickson and Lilleker (2010) believe that "the internet, and in particular the architecture of participation central to web 2.0 media technologies, has exacerbated the chaotic nature of the communication environment" (pp1). This led to them implementing a more diverse communications programme for Ed Balls in the last election that utilised new social media. This is a method that i suspect we will see increasing in the near future, companies utilising these sites for communication. I have already spoken in previous blogs about companies Facebook pages and Twitter feeds, but the ability to self promote via these sites can be utilised further. IBM have a blogging system, whereby their employees post their views on the companies in  blog form, which are easy for all to view. This not only promotes the flat hierarchical structure of IBM but gives them an opportunity to gain feedback from employees and questions from the public. 


These strategies I feel will be incorporated more and more by corporations to stay in touch with the public sphere, and perhaps exploit crowdsourcing for discussion and progression with product concepts.


References:
Erikson, K., Lilleker, D., 2010. Campaign Websites and Hypermedia Campaigning: Lessons from the Ed Balls Labour Leadership Campaign, Parliamentary Affairs.  Available from: https://sites.google.com/site/dlilleker/files/Campaignwebsitesandhypermediacampaigning.doc?attredirects=0&d=1 [Accessed on 24th March 2011]