21st Century Panoptical

“To participate in online social networking is also about the act of sharing yourself- or your constructed identity- with others” (Albrechtslund, 2008)

                       

Most of the big brands now days use social media as a tool to build their customer profiling and for dataveillance. The main crisis for brands when using social tools is that brands should know their identity first to communicate what they really stand for in a far more consistent, strategic and global way. The brands have to be transparent of what they are representing online. This is where trust is created between a brand and a consumer, but what responsibilities should a brand have to protect consumers’ privacy?

Well, if privacy does not exist any more, where Facebook for example is known as a platform of self-expression or a means of identification, where anyone has an access to it; individuals are not taking a great concern of their personal information by creating Facebook profiles on the first place. It would not be an ethical issue for a brand such as Starbucks to become “friends” with their consumers, as it is consumers’ choice to accept the request.

Facebook creates a unique community for Starbucks, where consumers engage with the brand.

Starbucks based the latest online campaign around community service projects in London run on April the 5th. Volunteers had to be involved in literacy, refurbishing schools, neighborhood renovations, as well as technology, gardening and painting projects. After words the experience were allowed to be shared on the Facebook profile by uploading photos and videos.

Starbucks does not only use Facebook to engage with their consumers, but to elaborate Corporate Social Responsobility into the online activist society. What company does is transparent and whether consumers support the brand’s identity depends on the active followers.

Facebook is a panoptical, however there is a choice from both parties (from an individual consumer side and from a brand’s side) to be a part of it. In this case, both would have an impact on a companies/ brand’s PR structure. When brands become a part of that panoptical, they become observed by the bigger media, where crisis are identified faster and exposed much efficient. This time everyone is being “watched”.