Here is a sample from our recent CIC watch September 1-15 showing a darker side of consumers’ passion.

Summary

Recently, 20 Nanjing Mazda owners from an auto forum surrounded a Hummer on a highway at 30 km/hour speed, forcing the Hummer to drive the same speed as a bicycle. After doing this, these owners shared the video online with pride. To play a joke with netizens, they even used extremely crude, defiant language and showed their photos on BBS. Their activity triggered strong condemnation for bringing shame to not only their group, but also their family, their hometown, Mazda brand, and even Nanjing government. Finally, the incident leader of the Mazda 6 community in Nanjing apologized online.

CIC View

This incident demonstrates that fans’ passion not only can do brands great favor but also could hurt the brand within the easy-to-share online space. (i.e. hot “Accord Girl” case actually made Honda Accord an integral association with this notorious “net star”).

Such a situation indicates an emerging need that brands should consider having a social media/IWOM manager to track and manage the relationship between brand and fans to make the communication smoother and thus prevent possible passion back-fire.

Below is a screen shot of the index for the full IWOM watch report

Other CIC watch related posts that may be of interest:
CIC Watch Half-Year Review released (download the full report)
CIC watch: “You” – Time’s Person of the Year – also lives in China (download the full report)
IWOM Watch August 1-15: Baidu Post Bar Crushing Machines