image credit: jdcow [Flickr]
It’s been about eight months since I wrote the piece, Are Facebook Apps The New Brand Wasteland?, detailing the disappointingly large amount of failed brand applications on Facebook. Flash forward to last week and I find this article on AdWeek, Apps: The Newest Brand Graveyard. What this tells me, besides the fact that Brian Morrissey and I share a similar fascination with advertiser’s mass exodus from Second Life… is that we STILL haven’t got this figured out yet.
But unlike what Proctor & Gamble and Peter Schwartz from the Huffington Post would like you to believe, the fault does not lie in the medium. The fault lies in us… in all of us, consumers and advertisers alike. We’ve grown up, things have changed, and what might have worked in 2006 will surely not work in 2009.
So, What Really Is Dead?
#1. Building an app to “experiment” in the space. Social media is a grown up game now. Marketers can no longer get away with finding extra room in the budget to play in adventurous spaces. Brands are expecting a lot out of every dollar they spend. And consumers suffering from fatigue are not interested in something that won’t better their experience.

“A social medium cannot be co-opted for branding purposes unless the attributes of the brand/product are congruent to the properties of the medium, common interests of the targeted social group, and the intents of the group members’ interactions. Too often marketers are drawn by social media’s potential and neglect to devise sensible usage that can benefit both the consumers and themselves. No wonder the results are often disappointing and unsustainable.” Fang Yu Lin

#2. Launching an app with no engagement strategy. The social space is a crowded space, and it will take effort not only to navigate the right people to the right places, but to convince them there is a reason to stay there.

“I agree that Apps have become a brand graveyard because of the ham handed approach most advertisers take to developing them. Spend a little money on media to get it off the ground. Especially with an app with such a focused purpose, a small amount of highly targeted media would go a long way.” Russ Hopkinson

What Isn’t Dead
Social networking isn’t dead. Web 2.0 isn’t dead. Blogging isn’t dead.
The inconvenient truth is… this social media stuff is HARD WORK. Or as David Armano put it in a recent post, comparing social media to a Ferarri with flat tires:

“I guess we could walk away from a Ferarri with flat tires, because there’s not much you can do with it. Or you can roll up your sleeves and do what it takes to get it fixed. It’ll probably be messy — you might even get a little grease on your shirt. But think about the places you could go.”

Marta Strickland