Every once in a while you read blogs from ad people (mostly planners) where they question whether agencies can ever succeed in social media. The most pessimistic ones in the discussion refer to the lack of successful examples in the past. And sure, you could say that there aren’t many, even though there are definitely more than one (Nike+ being the one most often referred to).
But you could also say that there are infinitely many – they just don’t surface in Cannes or Guldägget because successful social or viral campaigns aren’t necessarily visible.
One of these writers referred to a quote from The Big Kahuna: “As soon as you lay your hands on a conversation, to steer it, it’s not a conversation anymore. It’s a pitch.” But who said anything about steering conversations? What about being the subject of conversations instead? Or being the facilitator of conversation?
Back in the day, word of mouth used to be the main channel of communication. But then we got mass media, and suddenly we stopped listening, just because we had a loud enough speaker system. We couldn’t steer the conversation perhaps, but we could drown the conversation by speaking loudly.
Then along came social media. People got their voice back, and with an unprecedented efficiency. We are back to where we started. Word of mouth is back. Along with posts, comments, tweets and reviews. Can we steer the conversation? Hell no. But we can be interesting. We can offer incentives in the form of emotional payoffs, humor, utility, and exclusiveness. And more. If you stay tuned.
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Social media scares almost everyone and a frightened person is looking back instead of embracing the possibilities. But I don’t think planners are the people most frightened of social media: Russel Davies and a lot of the a-listers are planners and have for years embraced the evolution of social media and in Sweden I would say that Dan Landin, Jonas S at Planning Sthlm, myself and a couple more of us is rather the forerunners in the ad biz. The big fright is in the account manager departments because it is harder to put the social media in a box and get the customers to pay for it. And there’s no kickbacks.
Good point. There are planners and there are planners. But perhaps the term “planner” is just a tiny bit outdated? The progressive planners have very little in common with the conservative ones.
Anyway, your observation about account people is dead on. And it’s not that strange. Their job is to sell something that they cant completely wrap their mind around. That would scare me too.
As long as some folks still rely on ROI numbers, anything that doesn’t produce these numbers, or fits nicely in a box, will keep scaring the heck out them. It doesn’t have to be planner, anyone who is a control freak will be scared. Social Media and branding today is about letting go.
ROI is very relevant, but ROI-numbers are only as relevant as the accuracy of the how they are measured. That accuracy is usually questionable, and that’s when mistakes are made.
Brands today are built by consumers and companies in collaboration, so building them is about letting go of control and earning your place in the partnership and the discussion.