Social media by any other name is just people power...

In the aftermath of the Alan Jones debacle, there is a lot of chatter about the "threat" of social media. Or as Mr Jones himself put it, cyber-bulling. There are questions being asked about how social media should be "monitored" or "controlled". There are warnings to businesses to set up social media steering committees and to be aware of the risks social media represents. Some bright spark even suggests insuring (seriously?) against social media risk.

Here is the problem - all of these descriptions and calls for action forget one, essential thing. Social media is not about "media", it is about consumers finally having, and more importantly, exercising their power; power to influence others, power to change purchase behaviour and ultimately, therefore, power to impact brands where it hurts most - on the bottom line. Power, which for the longest time has sat almost entirely in the laps of brands and businesses.

For all that it is called "media", "media" it is not. Media is what businesses have traditionally bought to sell their message to consumers. Media is a controlled environment through which brands have communicated and connected with their target market and built their personalities and profiles (and if we are being cynical, their facades).

Traditionally, media has been an entirely one way enterprise, with brands telling consumers how to feel, think and act. Social media, it seems to me anyway, is quite the opposite. Social media is about consumers telling brands what they think. And some brands (perhaps like the Alan Jones brand) are still finding that a little difficult to deal with. In fact, the very fact that we call this phenomenon "social media" may well contribute to the problem marketers have with getting their heads around how to engage with it.

The upside of social media is that it can be about a two-way conversation, with both parties listening to each other. Brands can participate in the discussion, and get their view across. Social media can provide instant feedback to brands on what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong. Social media, in fact, presents the first real opportunity to establish a "relationship" between your consumers and your brand. This is something brands have been claiming to be doing for years, but it's always been on their own terms. The difference is, this is an equal relationship, where both parties have power, and it requires businesses to seriously rethink how the marketing game works. And that is proving difficult for some to do.

The easiest way to mitigate the risk of a social media backlash is to start listening to your consumers, deliver them good value products and customer service and start treating them with the respect that they deserve. Do that, and you might just find social media is your best friend.

In search of authenticity

On a recent trip to Fiji, my seven year old daughter asked if she could get her hair braided. Upon completion of the rather arduous task, she remarked, "Now I am just like a real Fijian." Except of course, the only people I saw with braids were Australian kids (and the odd adult who perhaps should have known better). Another day, I overheard tour guides offering trips to a "real" Fijian village, where we could partake in a Kava Ceremony and see how life "really" unfolds in Fiji. Of course, this is "real life" on show, which is hardly "real life" at all - but still, it highlights the desire we consumers have for authenticity. And that got me thinking.

Authenticity is a much touted about word in marketing circles and there is a definite trend towards providing a sense of it to consumers. Which is kind of ironic, if you think about it, since it is probably the rampant commercialisation of everything and anything that had led to the demand for authenticity in the first place.

Authenticity, or at least a sense of it, abounds in many forms, mostly related to heritage and origins and source. But for me, authenticity is about transparency. Or better put, my desire for authenticity is due to my lack of trust in brands. I want to know the claims the brand/service is making are real, but I am increasingly suspicious of them all. Is this face cream really going to make me look younger? Is this fruit snack really healthy, or is the fruit bit just a ploy to try and make me think it is healthy? If my hairdresser says I need to use Moroccan Oil on my hair, is it because she believes that there is an authentic reason for this, or is she just getting a percentage of the up-sell.

My husband says I am unnecessarily cynical, but I wonder whether this is where all consumers will eventually end up. If everything is about profit first, then how can you trust anything marketeers say anymore? Can there ever be “real” authenticity when maximising short term profit is the over-riding driver? We always hear that consumers are getting more savvy. What does that statement mean? Does it mean that we think consumers are on to our tricks? And if so, what does that say about our business?

Idealistically, I'd like to believe there is more to our business than squeezing as much profit out of the consumer as possible. I'd like to believe that meeting a consumer need is the desire, rather than the means to the end for businesses. However, I'd settle for being able to make my choices based on real information, not spin. I'd settle for a little transparency and a lot more authenticity from my brands (and my politicians), and I'd bet most consumers would too.

Playing to the Audience

For completely unrelated reasons, I have been learning a little about book publishing, and more particularly, about how to get your book published. It should come as no surprise to any of you marketing savvy folk out there that it’s all about, well, marketing. The first step to getting a book published is pitching your idea to the publisher with a clear and concise description about the book and why the proposed audience would be interested in it. Ultimately, it is about convincing the publisher that you understand your audience well enough to create something that will interest them. And to a publisher, this means a good shot at sales, and more importantly, profit. Marketing 101, right?

Right.

Yet sometimes I think this simple truth - that the foundation of marketing success lies with knowing your audience well enough to create something that will appeal to them – gets lost amidst the flurry of branding templates, marketing processes and our seemingly pathological desire to make things more complicated than they need be.

Yes, of course execution matters. A lousy writer with a good idea for a particular audience is not going places, most certainly not on display at your nearest Dymocks. Execution matters a great deal. But if execution is the building, then audience is the foundation. And if the execution is not flowing directly from a deep understanding of the audience, we’re going to get into trouble.

Imagine starting with your audience. Spending time up front understanding them and their needs before you do product development, and most certainly before you do advertising development. Imagine the advantage of designing your product with their specific needs in mind. Imagine the clarity such single-minded focus might bring to the creative development process?

The problem is, we tend to work back to front. We start with our brand or product and say, “Right, who will this appeal to?” And that’s understandable. After all, there are factories to fill, assets to use and brand growth targets to hit. Hopefully, though, we then seek an “insight” about that audience on which we can hang our marketing efforts. However, quite often, that insight development phase (or, consumer understanding phase) is short-lived, or worse, skipped over, as timelines tighten and the focus turns to execution. Heaven forbid, we may even find ourselves re-engineering the consumer need to fit the product or brand (or advertising idea), so that we can just get on with the creative development. Not a recipe for a smooth creative process or success, by any account.

Maybe we don’t always have the luxury of starting with our audience, but if we don’t have a very clear understanding of who our audience is and how our product meets a real and meaningful need, before we embark on our marketing development, its bound to end in confusion about what works and what doesn’t. And we end up in this creative development quagmire where we are not sure if consumers are rejecting the very basis of our offering (the insight or strategy) or the execution of that strategy.

Can you sum up your product idea in a 30 second elevator pitch that captures who its for, and why they want it, in a simple, clear and compelling sentence? If not, its probably time to learn more about your audience.

Golden Expectations

I've been thinking a lot about expectations recently. Must have been brought on by the dearth of gold for Australia and the subsequent sense of crushing disappointment that pervaded our nation. Well, our media outlets, anyway. Granted, we were beaten by Korea (13) and Italy and Hungary (8 each), which you hardly can imagine had the same budgets as Australia. But still, it is not the position (10th) on the Gold Medal Podium that is the problem, it is that we expected to have done better. It suddenly occurred to me that "expectation" pervades every part of our lives. How many relationships stumble because expectations are not being met? And of course, brands really are just a sum of "expectations". We set up those expectations in our communication activities and we work hard to make sure the brand can deliver on those expectations. Well, I hope we do, anyway. And we should, because a brand is not just the communication we thrust at people. Every time we interact with that brand, our expectations are either met or not, and our opinion of that brand adjusts accordingly. Brands are not, no matter how much we may wish they were, entities in their own right, created and maintained in the sterile environment of an advertising agency. They are living, breathing relationships. And like all relationships, when expectations aren't met, they begin to founder. The very concept of "value" is also entirely dependent on expectation. In the modern marketing environment, the economical model of setting price based purely on supply and demand has long been superseded by the idea that the ideal price is set based on what people would expect to pay. Value for money is determined by the difference between what people expect and what they get. When their experience with the brand is better than they expected, you get perceptions of excellent value. Conversely, when the brand experience is worse than they expected it is considered poor value. And in both these cases, this is regardless of the price people pay in the first place. Managing brands, then, must surely be a matter of managing expectations? When we take time to understand the gap between our consumer's expectation (which of course can be vastly different from our own) and their experience with our product, we may well be able to better deliver brands that people love to keep on using.