A profound lack of understanding of social media is being used to support the reluctance of agencies and marketing companies to fully embrace it.

I was passed along a link to a post on the brandgym blog titled “Social media yet to show me the money”  and I felt the need to comment.

The argument calls social media a fad which is sexy but yet to deliver. The argument is based around the following 5 points.

1. Engagement is not new.
2. Engagement is a means to and end not an end in itself.
3. That the thought that interruption marketing is dead is an oversimplification.
4. That it is penetration not loyalty that drives growth.
5. The point the writer regards is a killer is that people have no appetite for participation.

Without addressing each one of the points I must point out that the argument is a straw man, although probably an unwitting one. It confuses social media with using social media platforms as a media channel to carry advertising messages.

To briefly clarify then, we need to understand that all marketing is about spreading ideas.  My brand is an idea and that choosing my brand is a better choice than choosing your brand is also an idea. Brands and ideas only exist in the minds of people.

Interruption marketing is the process of interrupting people doing stuff with a message which if repeated often enough is expected to change attitudes. The people interrupted could be people driving down a road interrupted with a billboard, people catching up on the racing results on the newspaper interrupted by an ad or people watching football being interrupted by a banner or a branding message.

This works when people are prepared to be interrupted, when they trust the source of the message and when the message is unchallenged as the only real source of information on that particular idea (product, service, brand, category etc). None of these conditions hold true any longer.

The emphasis in social is connections. Its how ideas spread through massive networks of connections that needs to be understood.

When you run an ad on facebook you are doing interruption marketing, tightly targeted mind you, but interruption none the less, Google Adwords are also interruption but they make up by being incredibly relevant based on keywords. If you run a “viral” youtube ad once again you are attempting to interrupt. The Old Spice man is an example of using digital media to extend an interruption marketing campaign.

When you are operating in the social realm you are doing something completely different, you are engaging in the conversation between people who are talking about your stuff or things like your stuff. You are providing them with the tools to help them talk about it and you are facilitating that conversation.

Your objective is to engineer some kind of new discourse around the idea, not to get gather meaningless hoards of facebook fans or “loyalty,” as the point is correctly in the blog post, loyalty is more a personality characteristic than a brand one.

Interruption marketing is certainly not dead and will continue to play a role in social campaigns, the growth in social is slow to begin with and can be helped with traditional announcement awareness provided by broadcast communications.  But interruption is extremely expensive and pretty ineffective for the reasons mentioned above, we can compensate but make it even more expensive by buying bigger and bigger audiences so that the we can successfully interrupt more albeit at still a low percentage.

Contrary to the view stated by the brandgym blog, social is not a “nice to have” add on to the media plan – its the core element for the simple reason that people trust people they “trust” and act on the recommendations and the opinion of their peers and less on the self interst of brand messages. In this world the media plan now becomes the “add on” to support the launch and facilitation of that conversation. Its likely to stay a huge budget item not because of its effectiveness but the opposite.

It’s kind of obvious that the bulk of people in any social network will not generate content. People fulfill differing roles in society, some are discussion starters, some are question people, some are answer people some are bridges or connections but most are followers, but that does not minimise the impact of the people they are following, they form tribes around ideas and the conversation is between people as it moves between online to face to face and back again.

The final reposte to the claim that social media has yet to show the writer the money is to suggest that he ask ex Egyptian President Mubarak what he thinks. Time magazine names the protester its person of the year 2011. The movements it referred to, the Arab spring, the Occupy movement, the Russian unrest, slutwalk and many others beside are all social media enabled movements. None would have happened in 2011 without social media and some like the Occupy movement which spread around the world in a few weeks would never have happened at all.

Advertising agencies and marketers need to start facing the overwhelming evidence, instead of doing the ostrich thing.  To remain relevant they need to start trying to understand how ideas spread in a world where media is no longer only a source of information but a site of coordination.

Picture by Roads Less Travelled Photography

Although Vodacom has won the battle at the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), I think that it will lose the war. It’s fascinating how often the management of organisations get involved in their little skirmishes and lose total sight of the big picture.

It seems to me that Cell C has in the past pushed its advertising and claims too far and has, by doing so, lost credibility, the reality in this case is that the Cell C offering is the superior experience. I have been using a Cell C stick given to me by Lars Reichelt for some months and although I have been vocal where it fails in less than perfect coverage, where it is properly set up it flies and performs just as Cell C claims.

Although Lars Reichelt maintains that his campaign is not cheeky I disagree. I think it’s opportunistic and takes advantage of the massive and, in my mind, extremely extravagant spend of the Vodacom rebrand with humour and is certainly cheeky. I am sure that you remember the Nando’s campaign doing exactly the same to Cell C.

To its credit the Cell C marketing team took it in exactly the right spirit, and sent each of the key Nando’s players a speed stick.

I am not going to spend much effort on the ASA but they certainly seem to have “boobed” on this one by not properly considering the technical evidence.. But having said that isn’t the ASA a remnant of a soon to disappear, legacy marketing environment — an environment dominated by consumers fed information over broadcast media and not empowered as they are now by the power of connections in the always-on world? Cell C learned, to its detriment, the power of this world to voice its opinion when it astroturfed the Trevor Noah thing.

Is it possible that Cell C has struck a nerve in the Vodacom command complex? Is it just possible that Vodacom know that Cell C has a superior offering and Vodacom are in the process of trying to muddy the waters hoping that it can stall the move of the data customer to a product it can’t match? Why else run to the ASA?

My advice to the new marketer is to understand that the war is not won in the cobwebbed council chambers of the ASA. It’s won by the customer’s experience.

The way to win this war is with delivery — simply give the customer a superior experience and they will tell their friends. People trust their friends more than they do advertising and PR spin and in this real time world where thoughts travel around the globe in a wink, the word will spread.

Vodacom are busy turning Cell C into the underdog, and themselves into the playground bully a little too big for his boots. Steve Jobs managed to build Apple into the colossal success it is by casting Microsoft as the enemy. Perhaps this is exactly what Lars Reichelt has managed to do to Vodacom and it’s possible that, like Jobs turned Microsoft into a challenger and Apple the champion, that a similar thing is happening here.

My advice to Vodacom – get your act together – the consumer doesn’t care what the ASA says. They care about what you do.

Walter Pike

Posted via email from Organic Marketing…

What is the point of Foursquare? This is exactly the question that was being asked a year or two back about Twitter. Who wants to know that I am buying petrol at the service station, or that I have just ordered an amazing Doppio Zero pizza. So, I am going to tell you why marketers should take notice of it.

But firstly what is Foursquare?

It is a location-based game in which people check into venues, are awarded points, scramble to earn badges, share tips, complete tasks and become recognised as the mayor for being the most frequent visitor.

It works best on location-sensitive phones, and especially on smartphones such as iPhones, “Droids” and Blackberry. However, users of less-sophisticated devices can always check-in using the mobile site.

1. The first reason that it will kick ass is that it’s fun. The competitive element, the earning of awards, and the leader board all make it a “jol”.
2. The big win is the location element. People know which of their mates are around, and venue owners can send out promotions and messages that relate to people on the premises or close by. So when someone checks into the coffee shop down the road, and up pops a tip to say Foursquarers who visit Doppio get free wifi, that may just swing a meal. But with like all social media, remember, no SPAM.
3. Foursquare works with brick and mortar businesses. Businesses that have a physical presence such as stores, events, clubs and restaurants.
4. Being able to identify and communicate with your real loyalists is of a huge benefit as they are your brand advocates, and Foursquare has made it very easy with Foursquare for Business. Also, remember that these are real fans, not just people who have joined a fan page.
5. Many developers are using the API in their apps. For example, those who have discoveredStickybits, may already be checking-in videos, photos and brands into the venue.
6. Foursquare is a real space to do customer research.
7. It is a really practical example of how social media can integrate with the real world.

Foursquare is growing at an amazing rate and is being touted as the next Twitter. It has also been the subject of massive price acquisition speculation.

But unlike Twitter, it has real monetatisation opportunities, real marketing application, and most of all, it is a huge amount of fun!

This article first appeared on Memeburn on 20 May 2010

The traditional marketing industry is based on two key assumptions. Consumers are ignorant and believe what they are told. Without this advertising can’t work nearly, not nearly, as well. Yet we have seen internationally that both those assumptions have proven to be false. 2010 could well be the year the penny drops, but probably not completely.

The assumption was once true: consumers were ignorant – they got their information from the company, from salesmen from advertising. Customers also used to believe what they were told; they trusted advertising – business controlled the brand message.

Not only does research around the world show that trust in advertising has declined but we also know that through the Internet and by their own connections, customers have access to an unbelievable mountain of information, opinions and comments. Just these facts have changed marketing forever. It’s with this backdrop that I make my predictions for 2010.

1. Someone will notice that, in spite of conventional wisdom, South Africans are connected. I mean, more than 30% of us access social sites on our cellphones alone on a daily basis. Everyone has a phone, even at the lower levels of society, with the majority capable of connecting to the Internet. But they won’t know how to use this information.

2. Marketers will be the first to cotton on. They will be influenced by their international contacts and will finally realise that the excuses of “but the majority of South Africans don’t use the Internet” and that we just don’t have the bandwidth are exactly that: excuses. With the new undersea cables coming into South Africa and Africa, bandwidth as a problem will soon be a thing of the past.

3. Local advertising agencies will be leaning back, secure in their misunderstandings but becoming slowly unsettled, as they listen to their international colleagues talking about the international media bloodbath and the need to rush to digital. They will see their international associates buy digital agencies – or even start a division of their own. BUT they won’t be the core of the business.

4. Agencies will still see digital and online as a media channel and start integrating into them more and more, not realising that the key characteristic of the Internet is that it’s a social creation. It’s about people connecting, not about the technology, or even the sites themselves.

5. Internationally, the lead will be taken by thought leaders – who realise that social media is not separate from the individual’s total life experience – making sure that digital eventually becomes the centre of the brand connection, not an adjunct.

6. From a technology point of view, manufacturers will be accelerating their efforts to make sure that connection to the Internet is ubiquitous and cheap. At the high end, Apple’s iPhone is already carrying more web data than any other mobile device; but there are netbooks, tablets, the Android phone and the soon-to-be announced Apple iSlate all making sure that, more and more, the web experience is accessible and separate from the technology.

7. The way people are finding stuff on the Internet is changing; this may start having an effect on traditional digital marketing. The filter that most users will place on getting the data they want will be their friends. SEO optimisation techniques will be under huge pressure from new search algorithms and as “friend” filters and real-time search guide web users.

8. There will be a lot of flapping in media circles as traditional media morphs. The resistance movement led by the News Corp relics will continue to resist and will become increasingly irrelevant. Media entrepreneurs led by the former journalist will reinvent the way the news is spread and the financial models related to that.

9. With every major change in society, new players will emerge, new approaches will take form and the cards in the pack will be reshuffled. I believe that we will see the first major signs of that in South Africa in 2010.

Marketing will change because consumers have changed. Consumers are no longer ignorant, whether they are 25 or 52 and living in Diepsloot or Dainfern; they have unprecedented access to information, they are buying online and are part of massive electronic networks.

Maybe the penny will drop, maybe it won’t. Then next year’s predictions will be to guess how big the splash will be as the dinosaurs fall into the marketing tar pit and their new competitors, more nimble, like mammals, create a new marketing ecosystem.

This post first appeared in Bizcommunity trends report.

Picture by The invizible on flickr

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• IOL Technology – SA Internet users increasing – study (ioltechnology.co.za)

Its a question worth asking and the subject of my chat on the Internet economy on Friday, January 15, 2010.

Brand stewardship/ custodianship has traditionally been a space that has been claimed by the advertising agency, althjough we are seldom in a conversation in digital circles that we don’t hear the view that the “agencies just don’t get it”  so if they dont who does. Are the digital agencies ready to lead the brand?

My fellow “The Beancast” panel member Ana Adejelic wrote about this in Advertising Age and was ridiculed by both agency and digital groups. In her view digital are in exploratory mode and ad agencies focused on exploiting a tried and tested approach, in essence this means digital will shoot the lights out but generally cant be trusted with the whole brand, whereas the ad agency are so locked replicating a “safe” formula that they have forgotten whats good for the brand.

Traditional agencies and marketers are stuck in a marketing model which is hopelessly out of date, it is based on the idea that homogeneous groups of consumers exist which are called target markets, and that loyalty can be built in these groups by repeatedly interrupting them with brand messages until they listen and when they do they will believe what they see and read.

Digital agencies are often built around the concept of search engine marketing and the techniques of SEO. They drive the “direct marketing” concepts of measurability and conversions, turning interaction into sales.

Is either of them right?

The Internet has been alive for years with the view that Advertising is dead, and more and more we are hearing the view that SEO is dead. In the words of Mark Twain in both cases “The report of my death has been grossly exaggerated” although in both these cases there is a whole lot of truth tied up in those reports.

Lets propose a different set of views:

• The Internet is essentially a social creation.
• The Internet is not another marketing medium as little as a discussion around the braai (BBQ) is a marketing medium.
• The internet is not only about analytics and conversions – about OBSERVATION, it needs also to about a UNDERSTANDING of how people behave.
• The real strength of the Internet is that it connects people.
• Brands are created by the experience that customers have.
• Because of the network of connections ideas (good and bad) can spread faster than ever was possible before.
• There is too much information around and customers have too little time.
• People don’t believe advertising, they are starting to not even search in the way they did. They ask their friends. (Real time search)
• If it’s important,information will find me.
• The power in the transaction has shifted, brands are no longer the only source of information.

These thoughts fundamentally change the way we think about brands, branding and marketing.

New marketing is essentially understanding that the game has changed, that the connection created by the internet, however it is accessed, by computer or mobile phone has fundamentally changed the way that society operates in a way that will never be rolled back. Because brands no longer have control of the information that customers can access. Brands will be built in new and different ways. They will use all the traditional tools but in a totally different way. Brands will be built by experiences and interactions.

Modern marketing was only invented in the 60s to understand the use of the most important communications tools of the era. The character of the new tools are fundamentally different. Although paradoxically when we read the early ad men it seems they got it.

Marketing has always been about making stuff and creating experiences that people want, making it available to them and getting them to talk about it. Branding in the final analysis is what people believe about stuff, what they talk about.

Ad agencies don’t get it and will never get it because the agency model and the way they work does not fit the social interaction model; agencies were invented to solve a different problem and to use one way communications channels. The new boys, digital agencies will battle as the Internet becomes more and more a way to connect ideas and people and less like a catalogue, a searchable database and so the role of the search engine changes dramatically.

Brands are built around storytelling, there is a legend that surrounds every brand, that story was being told by brands about themselves, now the story is being told by customers, about their experiences. Customers who have the ability to connect to anyone, anywhere, now have the capacity to share and collaborate on a scale never before thought possible, to share and spread ideas and stories around the world almost instantaneously.

Although the fundamentals of marketing have not changed, because customers have the approach also needs to. Brands are still important and marketing now becomes more than just a box on the organogram, it becomes the entire business as seen from the point of view of the customer who don’t care where they interact with the brand as its all part of the same experience, an experience they tell their friends about.

The story that becomes the brand.

I see a totally new type of agency, one that understands the new customer that will guide its clients through the process of building the customers total experience and of engagement. An agency that has a fundamental understanding of how people buy, of all the communications channels and how to use them not to attempt to overpower customers into brand loyalty but assist them to spread the idea. The idea that is the brand.

This is part of the vision behind PiKE | The New Marketing Agency

Listen to what we spoke about Podcast Link Here

Numbers by stewf on flickr

Why are marketing people so obsessed by numbers and measurability? Especially with large numbers which are often assumed to be better than small ones. This obsession clouds judgment and so we seldom stop to think much about those numbers, what they stand for and even to understand what a good number looks like, and we often measure what we can measure rather than what is meaningful to measure.

In broadcast media planning we look at Gross Rating Points (GRP) and opportunities to see and audience numbers, in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) we want to drive  people to our website, and we are looking for unique visitors and conversion rates, on twitter we are looking for followers – the more the merrier.

But do these particular numbers have any real relevance? I understand the need for a large audience if you are flighting a TV ad, if say only 20% of people notice the ad its better that its 20% of the largest possible number. The same goes for SEM driving as many unique visitors as possible to the site, really for the same reason.

But this assumes that the purchase process is a linear one (steo by step from awareness to sale) which increasingly its not (The new customer Journey : The OPEN Brand), it also assumes that the objective, the end of the purchase journey is THIS sale instead of this and all possible future and related sales.

Furthermore If the major task of marketing is idea diffusion then do the numbers matter?

I don’t think they do, I would rather have 100 of the right people engaging with me, on my site or wherever, my customers about whom I am passionate about or people who could be passionate about my product and influential enough to spread the word, than 100 000 randoms. In this case 100 is a far better number than 100 000.

The numbers that would make sense would measure the quality of our engagement and the quality of the interaction.

I do a night class on Digital Strategy and we did a discussion last evening on Social Media. It struck me how many of the solutions proposed were so traditional, ok granted I have only just introduced the topic of Social Media and many have been working in the agency world. I told the story to the class of a major FMCG company whose marketing director has said that they think social media is dangerous because people can talk about you. I find that such an “interesting” comment

I also picked up Jason Falls‘ post on social media explorer Advertising Agencies And Social Media: A Culture Clash last night and I think that he is right. There is such ingrained thinking in marketing and advertising circles that its really hard to change.

There is a tactical problem because social media fits into the agency business model with difficulty. There is also a significant philosophical issue and to quote Jason Falls “Social media is, in many ways, the antithesis of advertising. Advertising is one-way communications aimed at large groups of consumers. Social media is two-way communications that requires listening as well as speaking. It can also be said that social media is a multiple-way communications method as brands can speak and listen, but also watch other consumers talk to each other.”

After my talk at the TEDx event last Friday a young strat planner intern from a  major agency came up to me and asked me how we were going to change peoples thinking. Wow its going to take time and maybe many just wont change because its just so different.

Maybe the change in thinking will come from people like those in my Digital Strategy class but also when brands and agencies realise that their customers are already participating in social media, even if they aren’t.

Photo Source: Flickr Author: Darwin Bell: License:

PiKE Thinking at altconference Jhb thanks ZA5 for photo

At the alt conference in Joburg I spoke about the way we think about social media and marketing and the disconnect.

The key impact of the Internet is a social one. We really cant look at the changes brought about and see it in either technology, SEM or traditional marketing terms.

Branding works because we believe can build brands by strategically adding performance, image and emotional associations to a product or service offering, and if we do it often enough and convincingly enough through our advertising our brand will gather a loyal following.

Advertising thinks about how to effectively interrupt people by producing advertising that is RELEVANT (or else it has no purpose) ORIGINAL (or else it wont be noticed) and IMPACTFUL (or else it will make no lasting impression)

Search engine marketing (SEM) especially SEO (search engine optimisation) is concerned about building a road map so people can find your site, and driving as many people as possible to that site.

Brands only exist in the minds of consumers, and branding as a strategy can only work if brand owners can manipulate perceptions. In an environment where the power which comes from the control of information has evaporated as consumers have almost unlimited access to brand and product information the brand building process is in the hands of the consumer, its now their experiences and the experiences of their “friends” that build the brand legend.

The power of social media are aptly demonstrated by the role of twitter in the Iran elections, the shootings in Mumbai and the earthquake in China. These demonstrate that the links between people are more important than the channels, one way in the case of traditional media or even two way in the Web 2.0 sense.

To be successful, I suggest, we need to think of the internet as the most efficient disseminator of stories, of word of mouth (to give it a label) ever invented and to engage with the market in the way we would build relationships in the local pub. Until a century or so ago we all lived in villages, tightly knit communities and we had those skills. Industrialisation robbed us of them and now the technology has allowed us to revert to our natural state.

The world is once again a village, we all talk to each other and we all know each other as people.

To understand how to market in this “New” world we need understand how we marketed in the “Old” world. That this is nothing to do with technology that has recreated the village nor branding nor marketing its about society and social dynamics.

To market in the new world we have to give the market the tools to build our brands for us.

Thanks Paul for setting up #altconf

Its an interesting anaylsis, but really it sees social media really very much through an advertisisng lens. Social media is really about conversations not promotion. This quote kind of sums it up:

Businesses who jump into the conversation and broadcast a message but fail to interact are failing miserably at the art of marketing within social media. It is important to realize the potential of what David Armano calls micro-interactions where you the brand are responding only after you have listened to what your customers are communicating.Kyle Lacy, Social Media – Indianapolis, May 2009

Understanding shifts in power may be fundamental in understanding the new marketing.  In Powershift Alvin Tofler describes the generic sources of power as violence, wealth and knowledge. He sees power moving along a continuum Starting with violence which can only being able to be used negatively, wealth which is potentially both positive and negative and knowledge which is empowering and therefore positive.

During the Industrial Revolution, power shifted from the nobility which relied on violence to industrialists and financiers who acted through wealth although often used negatively. Power derived from wealth is now being overtaken by power derived from knowledge.

20 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. In this video he talks about linking data and making a more powerful and more equal sharing of knowledge.

Our business education teaches us about power and control, we learn about planning, implementing and controlling. We manage all our business processes by measuring and adjusting them in order to keep them in control. When we study the top marketing texts we learn from prominent authors such as Kotler and Keller who talk about the process of marketing and the process of branding and the management of brands, in which marketers exercise control.

It’s a discussion about power.

The underlying assumption is that organisations have branding power because largely they have control over the information that the consumer gets. Certainly the information available in store and in the media.

But more and more research is showing that there is a gap between the way organisations value brands and the way consumers value brands, this thought is explored by John Gerzema in The Brand Bubble. He regards it as potentially catastrophic.

So what is this all telling us?

The power shift process that Tofler was telling us about is a fact and it is  the most fundamental societal change that we will experience during our lifetime. This change has been accelerated by the process that Sir Tim describes in his talk at TED. It will be future accelerated by the windows that all of mankind will soon have to the machine that is the World Wide Web, access through computers, notebooks but ALSO through cheap $100 cloudbook or netbook computers, but maybe even more importantly through the window to the www provided by the ubiquitous cell or mobile phone.

The marketing and business challenge.

We must learn that we have to give up the illusion of control that we have over our brands. I say illusion because the force that I describe is irresistible, its take up in the rural areas of Kwa Zulu Natal may be still a way off, but not that long a while.

We have to understand how this new world citizen lives, how he interacts, and how he uses this knowledge. We need to understand very quickly how he or she transforms and shares the knowledge and the communications instruments he or she cheap editing software through blogs, vlogs, twitter and online sharing sites such as YouTube, and how quickly this information spreads around the world.

We need to understand that brand will no longer be in our control, because we don’t control the information. The brand is in the control of our customers because they have the knowledge, the access to data and the ability to share that data through the Internet.

What business, Ad Agencies and everyone in marketing needs to understand is how to let go, how to let consumers co-create our brands.

We have to give our customers, our fans, the tools to allow them to use those tools to build our brands with us.

This is not as scary as you think.

Photo from tattoodjj’s stream on Flickr

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