Media Badger, Social Media Research & Consultants

iPhone in Canada: Social & Traditional Media – The Stats

Using our Alpha version of MediaBadger, we’ve uncovered over 200,000 negative comments ( with 43 semi-supportive comments) surrounding the consumer issue of iPhone pricing in Canada. We’ve tracked responses in the online presence of Traditional Media sites (over 150 articles have been written in newspapers), over 15 video sharing sites and 30+ blogs devoting significant time and effort over this issue. All within the past 7 days. This is a significant traffic load surrounding a single issue. It is showing the power of Social Media to drive Traditional Media agenda’s. The story even hit over 40 U.S. news feeds including CNN and Washington Post and of course Infinite Loop. Our U.S. media coverage tracking shows almost similar numbers but little feedback from U.S. consumers, which is anticipated since they aren’t affected. U.S. consumer sentiment that was given is supportive of Canadian consumers gripes with similar feelings towards AT&T in the U.S.

From our findings, we believe the initial Transmission Point for the “viral” spread of this issue was ruinediphone.com, an online petition site started by OilChange.com a Toronto based Web design and marketing agency (no doubt a case study in itself on a viral marketing tactic.) One other petition site was started, but ruinediphone.com became the central point. Our tracking shows this petition site was posted on numerous blogs and moved through IM services, Facebook and email. Traditional media coverage of this site and the story ramped up by 40% within 4 days of the petition site going live.

Rogers response was the issuance of a few press releases stating they would hold with their pricing. Then on July 8th issuing a release stating a price drop, but limiting the “promotion” to a few weeks. While this was positively received it was a mixed bag in sentiment terms and did little to curtail the issue and we noticed a spike in petition signing and the notice by ruinediphone.com of a webcast protest for July 11th, the day the iPhone goes on sale in Canada. We will certainly be monitoring and measuring Social and Traditional Media response and coverage and anticipate a significant spike.

Like the issue with JetBlue last year, we may see that the hotness of the issue in the public mind cools for a week or even three weeks or more, but will likely re-surge. We anticipate this resurgence happening as Social and Traditional Media report on the uptake of the iPhone in weeks to come and consumers provide feedback in the coming weeks via blogs and traditional media websites that encourage feedback in real-time. We will be monitoring the online protest rally on Friday July 11th being hosted by the ruinediphone.com group as well.

Our initial summary on this very topical issue is the increasing convergence between Social and Traditional Media on high-interest issues. Traditional Media picked up this story very quickly and while Social Media garnered significant interest, the responses on Social Media channels increased 48% within 24 hours of coverage by Traditional Media – are we seeing a trend towards equalization or normalization of Social Media as a viable medium of news and information? Possibly. Certainly this puts more pressure on corporate PR and PR agencies to both monitor and respond differently than in the past to these issues. Rogers said very little through this issue in the Mediasphere, it was traditionally handled, but as always the threat of consumer dollars is a powerful and motivating force.