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After reading Andy Piper’s blog I found one of his delicious links very intriguing:

Ten Questions Not To Ask A Social Media Panel

It’s basically asking difficult questions around the subject of how Social Media is seen in the advertising/marketing world.  Things like “How do you plan a Social Media Campaign?” and “What’s a friend worth?”.

All really valid questions, but it does raise some interesting points. The best part of the article is the comments though.  Why? Because they bring more pertinent information out about the state of the market and how executives and corporates see the Social Media world.  Especially F100 companies in the US (and therefore FTSE100 in the UK).

I recently had the opportunity to sit in a marketing meeting with a large clothing retailer in the UK.  It was an odd meeting as they were being sold a marketing campaign around real metrics (100k+ people) with the aim of “getting more email addresses”.  In other words, sending an email out with a 50% off voucher, and “send to a friend” emails.  The aim was to increase the number of people they could spam to.  How very 1990s.

The interesting thing is that this ideas is self-perpetuating for the marketing company (not the brand).  If you get a whole load of email addresses in one campaign, you’re going to do the same campaign the next time.  What happens when email becomes less important?  What happens when all the important conversation is on Facebook, or worse, distributed over different social networks?

The conversation then turned to Facebook because the key demographic fits the Facebook profile.  Their question was “How do we use it?”.  I think there’s a fundamental flaw in that exact question.  In the end, I advised the company not to even go near thinking about engaging with Facebook (or any other Social Media) unless it was going to change it’s entire marketing approach. Why? Because people are far less easy to fool directly (on a 1 to 1 basis), rather than as a crowd.   Social Media works at the 1 to 1 level.

Social Media is not to be used, it’s to be engaged with.  It’s not to be controlled, it’s to be released.  It’s not for trying to get more “customers” it’s for trying to create brand advocates.  It’s higher risk, but with much higher reward.

Brands and Companies need to realise that Social Media is not a “strategy” that is either easy or non-disruptive to their organisation. There is no easy way to start a “campaign” - and as the blog post says, there’s no guarantee that there is such a thing as a “campaign” in Social Media.

So, how do you incorporate Social Media into your brand or company? I think I’ll leave that for the next blog.

According to everything I read at the moment, traditional marketing agencies (offline, online, digital etc) are doomed.  I don’t agree.

The business model of throwing money at an agency to get a revenue from sales will change. The talent for advertising and marketing will also not be focussed on several main companies/groups, but will in the end transfer to a bunch of smaller much more loose knit collaborations. The winning agency will become the agency that embraces community.

I read recently that there is more advertising budget from blue-chips going into starting and maintaining social networks (both internally and externally) and all that goes with it. However, I think that’s the right area, but a misguided proposition.  I suspect it’s been sold-in by agencies without a full understanding of what they’re doing.

Companies will never be able to build big social networks, because they aren’t trusted.  People will not join as they will feel “sold” to.  The ones that do join, are almost certainly not the people they want to talk to either, unless their long-term aim is to get those people to consume more of their product.  That’s fine, but unlikely to work, as people are feeling less and less affiliation with brand and are more and more seeking out their own personal communities.

Companies need to recognise that they need to participate in the network to build up credibility. Then recognising that they have credibility, they will need to push the idea of value… for the community but not necessarily for them.

Shareholders won’t (and don’t) like it, unless the business model is entirely around the advert model (I have the eyeballs, you pay to place something in front of them).  In the end, shareholder led companies care only about the money.  Social networks are difficult value propositions in that sense.  Control of the message and conversation is reduced. The internet makes web investment more of a gamble than more old-school industries and models, so it requires a different type of investor and a different type of shareholder.

So, advertising will - and is - become more about showing how companies can be more community-centric and community-valuable.  Unless agencies pick that idea up, and more importantly work out how to sell it to their clients, then they will struggle to retain clients.

There will always be companies that stick to the old models until new ones come along. I remember listening to a Unilever representative about 2 years ago saying that they were going to “wait and see” what happens with social networks and associated business models before deciding on whether to throw marketing budgets at them. Unilever and others appear to be the safe industries, that will throw large budgets at “tried and tested” approaches.  These are the companies with the safe investors.  These are the companies with an unimaginative view of the world.

If your agency has that kind of client, then you’d better watch out that they don’t drag you away from the future and drag you down with them.