Jan 12

Communities and markets

Advertising, PR Add comments

A posting on Ryan Anderson’s New PR blog got me thinking last night. The push is on for marketers, PR professionals and advertisers to make the most of the growing communities built through and around social media. The blogosphere is chock full of pundits and practitioners prescribing the “right” way to do it (becoming part of the community) and slamming the many corporations who venture in too quickly, with old assumptions, and get it “wrong” (simply pushing their promotional messages).

 Here’s a thought: what if corporations didn’t go in there at all? Really.

Imagine a social media site that isn’t also the site for transaction or interaction (there may be a difference) between “consumers” and vendors of products and services. What seems to be lost in the flurry of activity to understand and tap into the emerging power of the Facebooks and MySpaces of the world is the idea that maybe the people who use these could stop, however briefly, being consumers for a moment. Maybe they could connect with other people (community is good) and not have to simultaneously read banner ads, click through, buy, vote and otherwise play the role they play for pretty much all of their waking life. It’s even possible that refreshed and appreciative people might then pay a little more attention to the persuasive messages they encounter the rest of the day.

What I find interesting is that I’ve come across far more complaints from bloggers, for example, that corporations aren’t approaching them the “right” way (their status now rising to that of journalists we are told) than I have complaints from bloggers that they are being approached at all by corporations.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m a big fan of the free market, I have proudly practiced PR for 20+ years, and I welcome smart, targeted information from corporations almost all of the time. I also, though, think that boundaries are good things when they help us set aside parts of our day to play different roles than producer and consumer. It seems these boundaries continue to vanish from modern public life, however — something scholars like Dallas Smythe and Herbert Schillerbegan lamenting long before bloggers were besieged by publicists, ads were beamed to your cell phone, or communities could be constructed on websites. Their concerns about private broadcasting and ownership of street space seem almost quaint today, though no less relevant.

As if to underscore this point, the good people at Adage.com enthusiastically report that the era of advertising-supported public washrooms on New York streets is upon us. Kinda gives new meaning to idea of what can be accomplished in a New York minute.

Viewing 2 Comments

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    It may not be necessary right now, but as the Facebook generation grows up and becomes the new business leaders and decision makers who don't read the newspaper or consume media the way our generation does, it's going to become increasingly important.

    That said, getting onto Facebook or Myspace does not give you the keys to the social media kingdom. It all comes down to strategy - go where your customers are, listen and engage them honestly... don't just use it as another venue for shouting.

    Isabelle - there are plenty of case studies to show that engaging in social media does, in fact, work. The examples you point to are cases of doing it badly. Saying social media doesn't work based on that is the equivalent of sending a badly written press release out to 100 unqualified reporters and then professing that media relations doesn't work. It's not a marketing tactic, so much as something that needs to be built into the business itself.
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    Regardless of whether or not corporations can use social marketing for advertising, I don't even think it works. In an earlier post, you poked fun at spam mail and wondered why people were still using it as a means for marketing. I think this falls under the same umbrella: people read blogs for their content, not their ads; people network on sites like Facebook, but don't pay attention the banners. These things get lost in the scenery (thankfully) and I seriously doubt their effectiveness. Government departments, much like corporations, are now looking towards social marketing as a tool to reach their audiences/consumers. If you ask me, there are more effective tools.
 

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