Lush’s decision to quit social media is an interesting one. And gives me the opportunity to write about the topic without having to use budget-boozy, Brexity Wetherspoons (who made the same move last year) as an example.
(Although, it’s hardly comparable. Wetherspoons had a Twitter following of 44,000 people at the time. When any marketing is an attempt to project your brand beyond its immediate vicinity, this is probably fewer than the combined number of customers sitting in Wetherspoons pubs at any given time of day..)
Anyway, back to Lush, who said this week they were closing several UK social media accounts, with the reasoning that:
“Increasingly, social media is making it harder and harder for us to talk to each other directly. We are tired of fighting with algorithms, and we do not want to pay to appear in your newsfeed. So we’ve decided it’s time to bid farewell to some of our social channels and open up the conversation between you and us instead.”
There’s something refreshingly subversive about, of all things, a cosmetics brand coming off a medium as visual as social but I’m not sure I buy their reasoning. Harder to talk to customers directly? Closing social to open up conversations better? Eh?
Lush have a tradition of going against the grain, and they’re certainly not shy of taking a stand when they feel it’s the right thing to do.
But for a brand with well over 1 million combined social followers and which, other than some heat over a campaign last year, doesn’t attract much in the way of social storms, this move has the feel of a solution looking for a problem. A brave campaigning crusade against an injustice that doesn’t exist.
And when your business is, ultimately, cosmetics and not campaigning this might turn out to be an issue.
One thing they have done is remind us, even in an Instagram-hungry industry like theirs, that social media is a choice.
From some of the reactions to their announcement you’d think it was an obligation or duty to maintain a social media presence. But, as long as they are comfortable with the consequences of their absence from these platforms, no brand has to use it.
Whether or not this ends up being the right commercial decision for Lush, we’ll see.
Richard Ellis Communications 