Why Social Media Isn't Living Up to the Hype (Yet)
Why Not? Companies Aren't Social by Design
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| Chris Perry | |
Brand building is no different. As social media gains momentum, brand communicators are experimenting en masse with these new technologies and connections to get their jobs done, typically coming at it from an advertising, interactive or PR perspective.
But what if social media and its inherent benefits are so revolutionary, so potentially game-changing, that it takes time for people to figure out how to best use them? More fundamentally, what if organizational silos and constraints limit its potential to address a new brand-building equation?
A historical analogy brings this issue to life. When airplanes began flying 100 years ago, they came under the purview of the U.S. Army's Signal Corps. As guns and artillery went airborne in World War I, the Army controlled the aircraft. The military brass saw this innovation as means to help move soldiers forward by attacking enemy lines. Thus, aircraft grew in stature as a tactical tool for Army purposes.
It wasn't until the mid-1930s, when the vision to take the battle beyond enemy lines became clear, that the seed of a new idea was planted: create an independent organization to accelerate the benefits of this innovation in both strategic and tactical ways. The Air Force became a game-changing innovation for campaign purposes and a major contributor to World War II victory.
This is an apt metaphor for the current state of innovation with marketing and PR team thinking. The pace of functional change isn't keeping pace with the unprecedented social shifts disrupting media and consumer behaviors and the possibilities that come with it.
I regularly see brand teams struggling to incorporate social strategies into their specific function and worldview. They're confused over whom to turn to for help with a glut of new-media experts, or how to value the merits of ideas. They aren't necessarily structured to take advantage of programs in play and can't, for example, route customer comments through social sites to customer service or R&D. And they're struggling with how to design and execute campaigns inline with the media habits and behaviors of people they're trying to reach.
The value of social-media acumen and inline thinking will skyrocket in stature as rapidly developing capabilities grow. But to realize the value, new practices shouldn't necessarily follow the exclusive lead of advertising, interactive or PR in its mission. Teams should be organized to exploit possibilities for making new contributions in a way that lets people in and where possible, lets people do the marketing for them. This goes beyond one-off UGC campaigns and Twitter accounts. It's about committing to a new design for social business and communications.
According to USA Today, companies are starting to re-engineer marketing operations, but there's lots to be done to accelerate this trend. Given how quickly the media equation is changing, it's conceivable that brand building enabled by social technologies will need to eclipse traditional methods in the future, just as aircraft gained ascendancy during the middle of the 20th century. While I'm not suggesting that all companies give the social-media team its own organizational function, it's clear that brand leaders haven't fully examined structural changes that need to be made. When they do social by design, I believe substantive, positive and accelerated changes will occur.
Then we'll see social live up to and even surpass the hype.
| ABOUT THE AUTHOR | |
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As exec VP of digital strategy and operations at Weber Shandwick, Chris Perry leads the firm's digital practice and works closely with agency team members and clients to understand the changing media landscape and apply new methods that take advantage of these changes in measurable ways for clients including HP, Verizon, American Airlines, Standup2Cancer and CKE Restaurants. You can follow him on Twitter. |
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This is very consistent with what I am seeing. Lots of nascent efforts - many successful. The stress comes from the "re-engineering" required to make companies behave in more connected and human ways.
This is the gap that Dachis Group, Altimeter Group and others are aimed at - helping big marketers understand the change required to behave in different ways. Social Business Design (Dachis Group) is a huge cross-functional effort - and involves marketing, legal, product, R&D, customer service, etc.
We are at the very start of this sea change.
TO'B
-carly
www.scoutbrand.com
If they don't know or use even the oldest Social Media channels, how are they supposed to understand and use channels that were established recently but that draw on the same principles as other social tools?
What will be more apparent for companies soon if it's not already is immediate value - even as measured by 'traditional' metrics - for functions like customer service, R&D and sales.
Thanks for the thought provoking post.
Joseph Kingsbury, Text 100
twitter.com/jkingsbury
(Gaetan Giannini is the author of Marketing Public Relations: A Marketer's Approach to Public Relations and Social Media (Pearson-Prentice Hall) and a marketing professor at Cedar Crest College in Allentown, Pa.)
Great post, thanks. It seems that the emphasis on return on investment lessens a company's risk tolerance. Without the certainty of return, marketers may be hesitant to advocate the spend. We're looking for that mindset that says "we must experiment to partcipate in creating the future of the brand/business....trial (and failure) leads to valuable perspective."
Great article - keep it up!
jsd
Steve
http://BrutusReport.com
to express/communicate about a brand is to dimensionalize it through creativity -- to operationalize a brand is to use it to drive the business and develop an organizational system for delivering brand value. new technologies can impact the business at a whole different level.
I really like the article, and I agree that organizational integration is one of the key challenges faced by our industry. One note on your analogy, however - the Air Force was not a separate branch of the military until 1947, two years after the conclusion of the war. It was still the US Army Air Force from 1941-1947, but your comparison still makes sense. Thanks,
-Sam Huxley
1. an organization has to understand the importance of social media and transparency for the future of your company/organization
2. an organization needs tools to make it easy for customers and prospects to participate (product reviews, service reviews, ideas, enhancement requests, online catalogs and other tools need to embed social media)
3. an organization needs the ability take action by routing and assigning the feedback to be acted on by R&D, Marketing, Product Management, Support
1. Agencies shy away because they were unsuccessful with their one off attempts at UGC.
2. As you mentioned with organization, there is an lack of ownership of the content. Does the media team take ownership? Does the PR team write the content? Should the creatives be in charge of what is going out the door? Or is it the account managers?
The real answer is all of them. I think instead of having a social media team that is in charge of content, you need a social media point person who is able to provide that structure and dole out who does what across an agency while giving support/guidance.
Nice article, though.
Adam Dyer
www.blackboxstrategy.net
Organizations need to understand SM and develop a specific strategy to fit their organization exactly where it is in its understanding. Trying to move the earth by re-engineering will result in failure. A good strategy will understand that prove out a step-wise, scalable solution that will allow for progression.
Can you really energize your customers if you're not listening to them first?
www.theinteractivemarketer.com
Most people, when ordered to work towards making their position (and career) redundant, will do a remarkably poor job of it. Perhaps that is why the "re-engineering" is going so slowly?
"We will brute-force the problem-space of capitalism in the twenty first century. Our business plan is simple: we will hire the smartest people we can find and put them in small teams. They will go into the field with funding and communications infrastructure—all that stuff we have left over from the era of batteries and film—behind them, capitalized to find a place to live and work, and a job to do. A business to start. Our company isn't a project that we pull together on, it's a network of like-minded, cooperating autonomous teams, all of which are empowered to do whatever they want, provided that it returns something to our coffers. We will explore and exhaust the realm of commercial opportunities, and seek constantly to refine our tactics to mine those opportunities, and the krill will strain through our mighty maw and fill our hungry belly. This company isn't a company anymore: this company is a network, an approach, a sensibility."
— excerpted from Cory Doctorow's Makers
What I think is interesting is that:
1. there are companies that have deployed social media and gotten amazing results (ie. reduce operating costs and increases in revenue... but the media keeps saying that there isn't that much success yet... I talked to 25 companies who've being doing social media for between 1-5 years -- and they say it isn't so.
2. perhaps the nay sayers keep focusing on where social media got its starts- Marketing and PR... both of which are harder to measure than say... Customer Service... and perhaps that the down play in the results is related to Marketers not being used to measuring their success so concretely - and also because alot of the people who write about social media are not Customer Service Professionals... they are either in the professionals of IT or Marketing or Adverting-- so they apply what they know.
3. In speaking to most CMO's, CEO's and other executives who have seen the results that can be produced in customer service social media initiatives, they have told me that, "While social media is important to Marketing, PR and Advertising, the real transformation of business comes from deploying a customer service social media initiative. That's because that's where customers complain... and where customer's product and service issues get handled... and when companies take that voice of the customer information back into the organization... the organization becomes lean, changes that needed to happen ages ago occur without the normal politics or resistance..."
So I am not sure that its true that the results aren't here "YET" or perhaps because we have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
If you've heard me speak, I often say... Customer Service suffers from the "Rodney Dangerfield Affect" -- it just doesn't get enough respect... but I predict that will change very quickly and by 2010 - Customer Service Professionals that "get" this conversation & deploy social media will have a seat at the CxO level... if they don't already have one...
Happy to share my research... send me an email at npetouhoff@forrester.com or DM me at @drnatalie with your info
Here's a link to my most recent, comprehensive list of customer stories... and there are more case studies to come... at bottom of the post are links to the ROI of Social Media Research, Best Practices of Social Media and Case Studies...
http://blogs.forrester.com/business_process/2009/08/case-study-3-infusionsoft-uses-social-media-to-reduce-customer-service-costs.html
This is my deck on the ROI of Social Media...
http://www.slideshare.net/drnatalie/dr-natalie-petouhoff-roi-of-social-media-social-media-club-presentation-forrester-research
Join me and Lois from HP and hear how customer service social media is transforming organizations and delivering ROI.
http://bit.ly/1HJM7S
Love to hear your thoughts!
natalie
The fuzzy management of social right now reminds me of when brand-building was relegated to a "marketing-only" function. But over time, companies realized that brand-building was a company-wide function, requiring understanding, engagement and alignment of all employees. So too will this be required for social media.
Eric Brody
http://www.twitter.com/ericbrody
When social media can start delivering a responsible marketing ROI, it will become mainstream.
Until that day comes, it will always be on the fringe.
In all candor, I doubt that any of the previous people responding previously control any of the "purse strings"...
And what if they are not?
PS @Natalie comenter #17 - while you've got "Lois from HP" touting its use of social media, perhaps you can ask her about the "broken hinge" story. You know, where HP had a known laptop defect but didnt notify its customers and refuses to reimburse hundreds of them for repairs costing nearly the price of a new laptop. Google "HP broken hinge" for more.
Those consumers are "mature" - Baby Boom and Silent Generation members.
For a series of blog posts on Social Media and marketing to Baby Boomers and beyond, Creating Results went looking for success stories that demonstrate ROI/the relevance of online social engagement with 40+ers. We didn't find many.
If any commenters have examples to share, I'd welcome the input! You'll find the first part of the series at www.MatureMarketingMatters.com, or you can email me at erin@creatingresults.com.
Erin Read Ruddick
I think Eric Brody's point above added an even more poignant, succinct exclamation to the article's main thrust.
Between the article, Eric's comment, and the other comments above, I can't add any additional perspective, except to say that social media is obviously a manifestation of the (r)evolution of business/marketing/work, and it's also a manifestation of the Chinese proverb, "May you live in interesting times!"
Social media tools are designed for two-way or community communication, not single channel broadcast communication. When they aren't used for what they're designed to do, they don't work. That's why the people who don't use social media daily, and with more in mind that pimping products, don't 'get it' and think it's a waste of time.
When you have serving your audience, or collaboration, in mind you'll benefit greatly by utilizing the power of social media platforms to reach interested and targeted audiences through real time search and other tools.
Social media tools are designed for two-way or community communication, not single channel broadcast communication. When they aren't used for what they're designed to do, they don't work. That's why the people who don't use social media daily, and with more in mind that pimping products, don't 'get it' and think it's a waste of time.
When you have serving your audience, or collaboration, in mind you'll benefit greatly by utilizing the power of social media platforms to reach interested and targeted audiences through real time search and other tools. http://BlindInfluence.com
It didn't become the US Air Force (USAF) until after WWII (1947).
In other countires, however, air forces were independent arms of the military much earlier, i.e. the Royal Flying Corps becoming the Royal Air Force in 1918; the RCAF in 1924; the Luftwaffe in 1933 and so forth.
However, your example -- in an albeit unintended way -- still makes the point.
Tha is, don't look at new technology from a narrow perpective (in the air force example, an American one.)
In the case of social media or any other new technology, marketers always tend to look with a POV that says "How can I turn this into money?"
They are marketers; that is how they think.
But maybe the first thing they need to ask is "Should I?"
Chris Perry
I do have one critique of this piece: Much of it reads like a marketing brochure. When you say "The value of social-media acumen and inline thinking will skyrocket in stature as rapidly developing capabilities grow," that statement, frankly, has little value to brands, consumers and the overall growth & adoption of social media. It has no practical, real-world meaning or value, and basically reads like marketing double-speak.
We have to move beyond the traditional nature and thought lines of the past that said we needed to overpower clients and consumers with high-level information. That's not social media in any way, shape or form. We need to learn to speak like regular consumers, the people that we have been trying to reach all along, and actually learn to engage with them, rather than at them. Less focus on silos, organizational structure, etc., and more focus on actually conducting ourselves like normal consumers, will drastically help speed up the efforts for widespread social media adoption.
If we ever want to achieve full adoption of social media, I would suggest we stop using words like "silos" and "brand-building equation," and instead use words our consumers use, such as "personal relationships," "advocates" and "us," "we," "community." Terms that we use when we're not in an office.
Keith Trivitt
@KeithTrivitt