The Power of Evil: The Damage of Negative Social Media Strongly Outweigh Positive Contributions

Media activities generated by consumers or communities that are neither paid for nor induced by brand-owners are claimed to have a potentially game changing impact on communication and brand building. In this paper we propose a rigorous methodology to assess the impact of this type of social media activities on the actual performance of brands in the market. The authors start by developing a four step process to condense the complex reality of micro social media events for a brand into a manageable set of social media indicators (SMI). These SMI are subsequently used as a subset of the drivers, together with more traditional marketing mix elements, in a general market response model, to estimate their relative impact on brand performance in the market. This methodology is illustrated with a 2 real world examples, one in the market for Flat Screen TVs and the other in the market of internet broadband service providers.