Cosmetics company Lush has announced that it is shutting down its Twitter, Instagram and Facebook accounts in the UK. It will instead deal with customer queries on the phone, on its website or over email (how very 2002).
Across a series of tweets (they were no doubt fully aware of the irony here), the company said that social media was actually making it harder to reach and communicate with its customers. “We are tired of fighting with algorithms, and we do not want to pay to appear in your newsfeed,” it said, no doubt a jab at the way Facebook runs its business and why organic reach is basically at zero now.
Is it a PR stunt or a genuine attempt to chop back the tendrils of social media? The comments below its series of tweets are mixed, with some saying it’s a gimmick, others arguing this is a reckless move as social media is the best customer service tool brands have while others are applauding the decision. It got us thinking about what musicians and music marketers should do in response to this.
Again and again, we hear about how much time, money and effort it takes to feed these social platforms and how results are increasingly negligible; plus it is all feeding a toxic always-on culture for artists and marketing teams having to work round the clock to try and meet this never-ending demand. Yet, like a forms of social media Stockholm Syndrome, they keep grinding out the content. Will any modern act actually be brave enough to cut social media entirely?
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools: Kaiber
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