If you’ve read my prior posts you might get a sense that I’m a contrarian traditionalist, desperately holding on to the old models and views and maybe even a little afraid of what the new media and especially this thing called Social Media represents to my world and profession. Not true. My prior posts are simply challenging us all to think through exactly what the social media medium can (and cannot) do for our clients and ourselves.
My mildly studied view over the last year or so has me believing that Social Media does represent a major shift in how we marketers think about marketing, with marketing being the operative word. Social Media represents an amazingly cost effective opportunity to manage and optimize all four P’s of the marketing mix. It provides an incredibly intimate view of customer perceptions and experience vis a vis product/service quality, price/value, channel performance, and the efficacy of promotions and specific messaging. First and foremost though I believe it is an amazing market research device. A device that demands not just constant monitoring but the capacity to respond nimbly and effectively to what a focus group of thousands is saying and at times demanding. But like with any research we need to be careful translating qualitative commentary into quantitative absolutes, e.g. what exactly is the threshold where a few complaints become too many and we decide to reverse a $50 million packaging decision (OJ?).
Its role as an effective demand creation device is I believe predicated on whether your brand has content that will motivate people to engage. As my pal Mike Troiano notes in his blog post (http://scalableintimacy.com) content (alongside context) is everything. So if you want Social Media to create new customers, your choices are to create such amazing customer experiences that consumers clamor to have one, or create such amazing promotional campaigns that consumers can’t wait to participate. The third content angle is fraught with risk: create a firestorm of controversy about something and see if it might attract the fringe. They say no pr is bad pr. The content point is clear. If you don’t have something that consumers really, really want, Social Media won’t work (to create lots of new customers).
One of the most interesting Marketing outcomes of the emergence of Social Media is its impact on “P weighting.” Thirty years ago the emphasis was on the product and on having a unique selling proposition. Price, channels, and promotion were pretty straightforward (think Procter & Gamble). Then technology began to commoditize a lot of categories, channels became more complex and important, and the promotional mix got a lot crazier. The margin on having a slightly better or worse product or service than the next guy was irrelevant. Now, that slight margin matters. Social Media does in fact put the consumer back in the saddle of being able to demand higher levels of product and service quality, supported by fair pricing, access options (that are integrated) and communications that are true to the entire brand experience.
So what does this mean for marketing organizations and the agencies that support them? I think it’s good news for the former and great news for the agencies that are a little more enlightened about all this stuff. For marketing organizations there is now a constant third party voice (called the customer) that they can call on to drive improvements across all 4 P’s. The downside of course is real time, raw and transparent accountability (OJ?). Marketing organizations have to figure out not just how to cost efficiently respond to but to channel the Social Media insights back into their companies to drive improvements across the board. The downside I suppose is that they will have more work to do….For agencies the opportunity is even more profound. Social Media represents our opportunity to be marketers again; to re-gain the seat we once had in the CEO’s office, to deliver on our promise of delivering incremental bottom line value by delivering a “value-able” experience to the consumer and to move our industry away from the perception that we are simply hawksters of whatever we’re being asked to hawk. The downside (or upside) is that we must hire, train and develop our strategists and lead account people as marketers not just communications professionals.
As noted in prior posts, the capacity to convince anyone to do anything (buy, refer, act differently) is largely predicated on the value proposition they perceive. And value is typically a function of all four P’s. Social Media elevates that fact. Marketing, welcome back.
Interesting insights, Mr. Colbert. Perhaps you can expound upon how to create, teach, or cultivate account people who have the intellectual rigor and/or capacity to rise to the occasion. Has the time come for agencies to approach DOMs and try to convince them to migrate to the account side, in hopes of creating a different kind of agency experience?
like the dotcom era, it will be interesting to see what “social networking” sites are able to rise above and keep a very fickle society engaged. ! and for how long?
Great post. When I read, “If you don’t have something that consumers really, really want, Social Media won’t work (to create lots of new customers),” I immediately thought of the Kogi Korean BBQ story and how well Social Media CAN work if you DO have something that consumers really, really want. If you haven’t heard it yet, check it out. Essentially, a guy started a Taco truck that sold tacos people loved, but they were always moving around so people didn’t know where they’d be and they’d often get kicked out of locations they were parked. So, they use Twitter to let people know where they’re going to be parked and now have over 33,000 followers and serve between 300 and 800 people every time they park. And their followers help them find another location to park if they’re kicked out of a location.
http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-kogi11-2009feb11,0,159741.story