There's a video on YouTube called "Social Media Revolution" that in the past three weeks a lot of people have linked to on Twitter, Facebook and in emails. The video asks whether social media is a fad, or the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution.Using stats like "social media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web" and how it took less than nine months for Facebook to get up to 100 million users, but 38 years for radio to reach only 50 million listeners, the video goes to show how this thing called "Social Media" is a real revolution.
But wait. It's not new and revolutionary that we share and talk, is it? It's not new that we are social beings. The kind of social things - sharing, joining and connecting - that we, hundreds of millions of us, are now exercising so vigorously online are part of who we have always been.
"There's nothing new about 'social media' except scale, reach, and speed."
-Scott McFadyen
We, people, need to belong to groups, whether through shared interests, family bonds, religion, nationality, or sports teams. It feeds our sense of who we are - it defines us as human. And then through sharing, connecting, listening and talking, stories evolve around the groups.
The technology we have now opens up wider groups of people who share our interests, and so the groups become bigger, and better informed, and the stories more complex. That is the real revolution we're experiencing now. Through this technology, the social things we have always been doing now have an immediate, global reach like never before. The Internet didn't make us social, but it opened up huge new possibilities for being social.
What this means to marketers is that the one-way model of mass media that was enough to shoot the message to the masses in the industrial age, when media and distribution were scarce and expensive, is no longer effective (if it ever really was). Brands are not the same kind of substitute for a recommendation as they were when we didn't have instant access to peers for recommendations, reviews, and opinions online, nor the kind of set of imagery and design they later became. Brands are now the sum of constantly changing, ever evolving two-way communications between the company, the service, the product, and the consumers. Markets are conversations. To be part of the game, marketers need to jump into those conversations to interact with the people who are already interacting.
Karri Ojanen
with thanks to Scott McFadyen, Tomas Roldan and Craig Ritchie
Strategists & Planners
Comments (4)
Yes marketers need to jump into the conversations. All I see them do (with exceptions) is monitoring Which means staying outside of the 'social marketlace'.
I question the 'so what' of monitoring, especially when they try to understand 'how they're talking about my brands' from every voices.
Marketers should rather target, find relevant communities (virtual) where they fit and participate, blend, share and ultimately build their network of relationships. It's really not a technological challenge anymore as all the tools are out there, more of a cultural one because over the past 2 decades since the rise of mass marketing, marketers have forgotten to listen and like people talk to their ecosystems.
Laurent
Posted on August 24, 2009 15:24
This is one of the most well-considered articles I have read on the subject of social media. I agree that the social aspects of media are not new, and are part of human nature.
As further fuel for discussion, I would also add that as permission based marketing and two-way communication expands, it will become harder and harder for marketers to market products they do not personally care about.
Posted on August 24, 2009 22:16
Superb article, Karri. I am, though, not sure I entirely share your view of the brand as a two-way conversation - particularly when dealing with non-consumer items or concepts such as "Denmark" or "Steven Hawking".
For me, brand value is represented by several categories, wherein two-way conversation is certainly an element - just not the only element. Here's my quick breakdown:
- Intrinsic value – value of the materials and workmanship
- Functional value – value in relation to solving a task
- Emotional value – value of sensory response to design/configuration
- Cultural value – value as a cultural or historical object
- Broadcast value – value as a signal of network or community
But brand aside, I think you've really hit on something here. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Posted on September 1, 2009 22:55
Thanks for your comments, Laurent, Tim and Eric.
Eric, I agree that conversation is not the only thing that affects brand value. What I mean to say is that there is and has always been a conversation out there, and now it's just bigger and faster than before. People are talking about companies, services, and brands - be those consumer brands like Apple or even countries, like Denmark; anything that people talk about about.
Mass marketing is done by pushing out the brand in as many places as possible in hopes of getting maximum exposure. When technology makes it possible for people to spread conversations, two-way media, to much wider audiences at much faster pace than ever before, it makes more sense to use conversation instead of just pushing: listen to what people are saying about e.g. Denmark - what do they think of the brand of the country - and jump into the conversation with your message in appropriate ways.
Posted on September 4, 2009 12:41