Church of the Customer Blog
« If the world is a target... | Main | The Last Temptation of Twitter »
December 15, 2008
If the world is a target...
"Advertisers face hurdles on social networks," the New York Times headline read on a widely Twittered story this weekend.
If you haven't read the story, I'll summarize it in six words: Advertising doesn't work on social networks.
Advertising in the traditional sense will never really work on social networks -- the traditional sense being display ads or perhaps text ads, the innovation that fuels the Google money machine. So when Ted McConnell (no relation) of P&G is quoted in the Times as saying, "I don't really want to buy any more display ads on Facebook," his peers in the traditional world of brand management will surely take notice.
Here's where the Times article unintentionally captures the head-on collision between traditional advertising and social media:
“All brands want consumers to be their ‘friends.’ Oh, boy, do they!” But speaking for himself, (Ted McConnell) said he had reservations about the very premise. “I don’t want to be best friends with a brand,” he said. “It’s just stuff.”
Is a brand just stuff, or is a brand made up of people?
It's both.
Advertising is the proxy of the brand manager, but social networks ignore proxies. Social networks remove the degrees of separation between people.
What a whole lot of people on social networks want is a direct connection with the people behind the brands. That's been the biggest trend in marketing the past three years, and will continue well into the new year.
Update, the next day: A survey of 500 Americans found that 62% of them prefer direct and personal communication with a company’s online brand representative than ads or promotional materials.
Other blogs that reference If the world is a target...:
Hey Ben,
I've always maintained that advertising on social networks reminds me of a Pyramid Scheme, where you add "friends" as contacts to sell them stuff.
http://tinyurl.com/5f25u6
However, I find Twitter is an interesting model that could actually solve the advertising conundrum on social networks.
http://tinyurl.com/636flc
Thoughts?
http://twitter.com/mariosundar
I don't know that social media advertising won't work. The catch is that these companies need to deliver a quality product for a good price. That's going to get people's attention and get them talking--online or otherwise. Social media users are very aware of spin, and oftetimes annoyed by it. I think that if the price is right, people will talk. Social marketing.
Thanks for this one,
Al
A bit long and stream of thought but thought you may find it interesting.
Advertising is too broad of a term. There are many different types of advertisements. Social networks should focus on one type of advertising we call endorsements.
Traditionally, endorsements have been offered by high-profile figures of popular culture. They were often perceived of as intelligent, honest, cool, etc.
Most of us have become immune to "celebrity" endorsement-style advertisments. However, there is still a latent and pervasive, and highly effective, endorsement mechanism which influences us all the time. It's the "tastes" of our peer group.
We get "endorsement" signals from our friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances, etc. either explicitly, through word of mouth, or implicitly, through symbols (brands, logos, etc.).
Social networks, like Facebook (and The New York Times which could become the social networks for highly educated people by the way) are actually IDEALLY suited to foster this sub-genre of endorsement advertising.
Looking for a book to take with you on your next trip? Go to Facebook and look at your friends' libraries. How about a stroller for your new-born. Remember that hip young couple you met at a friend's cook-out last weekend? Check-out their choice of stroller on their Facebook page. and on and on.....
People are social by nature and feel an innate need to create a public persona. In our modern times, most of us do that in a combination of ways. Our taste in music, where we went to school, the way we dress, where we like to travel, what we pay "attention" to, etc. Many of these "social signals" evolve products, services, brands, and companies. People will share their tastes gladly.
What's missing is a platform on which people can create a public social persona through an affiliation with products, services, ideas, etc. The social networks are ideally suited to be this platform. Your peer-group is already their.
Jason Calacanis is tapping into some of this new endorsement model by creating a service called Mahalo Answers. People can ask questions and "experts" offer answers. Tipping is encouraged. Jason's serivce is the "tell" side to advertising. But there also a "show" side. That what peer group endorsements are for.
When you choose to display consumer brands (hood ornament, logo, etc) you are showing others your choices, not telling them. Each affiliate relationship with a brand, company, product, or service will be customizable (like your Twitter page or your blog). Companies will provide you with images and templates for each relationship.
The endorsement model of advertising will be something which will grow organically. Companies can't mandate that people display their products on people endorsement walls.
People will have the ability through this new app/platform/utility to manage their relationship with the hundreds of products and services in their lives. Your social network homepage will be the central database of all your public affiliations. Each affiliation will replace your user account on the server of the affiliate. You will own your data and it will live on your Facebook page.
Companies will pay Facebook to access their own customers. Customers will be given many variations on what they what to opt-in to with respect to information, specials, discounts, parties, etc.
And finally, the technical format of each affiliate relationship will take the form of a web widget. Facebook basically provides a hosting platform and you grab the code specific to your affiliate relationship from the affiliate themselves. You copy/paste the code into your Facebook page.
Ultimately, you should be able to host all your data (web widgets) on your own servers perhaps through a Wordpress plug-in.
Both are right:
• John is right – social networks marketing can work
• Ted is right – in most cases 13 out of 16 it fails (see Forrester research from July 2008 – “Social Network Marketing Efforts Failing Short”
http://www.researchrecap.com/index.php/2008/07/22/social-network-marketing-efforts-falling-short/
From my experience, most businesses just don’t have the know-how and experience required in doing social networks marketing. Many try to setup a profile and run a contest but then they start to run out of ideas and resources to make it happen.
Here is what it takes to make it happen:
1. Target the most relevant. Targeting by demographics isn’t enough. You should target also by interests and in many times use even more advanced technologies (most users doesn’t specify their interests, surely don’t update them once the profile is up)
2. Make friends with the relevant ones, get to know them and pay them PERSONAL attention
3. Show interest in what they have to say! It’s not about you or your brand, it’s about them!
4. Develop trustworthy and credible relationship via ongoing dialog
It’s not a simple job but it surely feasible!
To make it really worth while the trouble I advice you to target no that the relevant ones but the top influential ones relevant to your brand and discussion topics!
If you are interested in word-of-mouth marketing over social networks but don’t have the time, the resources or the know-how to do it, Bees and Pollen can provide you with a fully managed service on monthly-basis.
I’d be glad to share with you more of my company’s experience in social networking marketing, so feel free to contact me for advice, questions or just an interesting conversation.
We have come full circle. I don't believe social marketing can be profitable using traditional marketing and advertising models. 'Social' presupposes community, and in order to have a community we need to know who is in that community. This is why twitter works so well. you choose your followers and your followers choose you. It's a personal choice. A Human must press the 'Follow' button. If it's not a human, you probably are not going to follow. Then the personal relationship is build off-line through DM.
What facebook does is provide the platform to enable social traffic, but facebook on it's own does not provide the social traffic. It is nothing more than a technology enabler. As long as people believe that Google Adsense works and pay to have their ad shown, then facebook and the down stream platform enablers will continue to be funded by naive businesses. And this allows us, the bloggers, tweeters and social media hounds to continue to enjoy the free for all.
To really make this work, the marketeers need to be motivated by a personal need to by authentic and passionate about what they do. This is almost impossible to do if you are 'working for someone else', because you are dictated the Business Values by your boss. If your own personal values are misaligned with the business values (usually are), then it is doomed.
The only way to make this work, is to give business units self autonomy, and allow them to work independently, but share the common business process, and not the business values. I can't see this happening without a large shift in global thinking..
Here is hoping.
Navdeep
i'd lik to comment--enjoy the topic!!--after i have read a litlle more
...day or two...
"grabbing" discussion!
