Social Media for In Store Marketing

by Willy Lim
(Founder, NetProfitQuest)

I was invited to speak at the "In Store Marketing 2009" conference organised by Marcus Evans at Marina Mandarin Singapore.

It was a privilege to be speaking amongst all Marketing Directors and Chief Marketing Officers from P&G, Unilever, Kraft Foods, Toys R Us, to name a few.

My topic was on "Using Social Media for In Store Marketing". I shared about how retail stores can supplement their traditional marketing channels with social media marketing to engage their target market, create buzz and bring more visitors to their stores.

After my 1.5 hour session, we went into a Q&A, and I requested for questions. I would expect that given the enthusiastic response during my presentation, it would be a lively Q&A...but there wasn't any questions!

The host did a brief wrap up of my session and announced for the participants to go for lunch break. The moment the host finished his announcements, many participants started to come onto the stage and asked me questions. They asked a whole host of questions from how to measure social media ROI to handling negative comments.

Companies know the importance of social media, but they are also afraid of opening up themselves and be subjected to negative publicity. They needed help with social media, but the marketing and PR guys are too shy to ask questions.

This interesting experience got me to realise that when it comes to the topic of social media, it's a lot like the topic of sex in school...students are all curious about it but are too shy to ask questions in public :)

What are your thoughts?
Are these companies' fear of negative publicity overblown?