The big big money opportunity for social media and marketing
I’m not a marketer. Really not a marketer. I’ve just been to a supermarket and I saw hot cross buns. I had a moments panic thinking it was Easter already. No, someone just thinks they will will make 5p profit on each of those 4 packets of buns x the number of outlets. No, I just don’t get it. We will eat lots more if you make us wait for another 7 months.
Though I am not a marketer, I am into organizations. Pay me some money and I would be so pleased to play organizational detective and find out who dreams up selling hot cross buns in the middle of summer and whether anyone double checks if it is profitable or not. And if it was profitable and I was completely wrong, I would come back bubbling to tell you.
So let me regale you now with what I have just worked out about the value of brands and what I think is the big-time opportunity for social media consultancy. This is a comment I wrote on Oleg’s blog. If you want the mechanics of viral marketing/spam, go there.
I am going to cross-post my comment here and then unwrap the big opportunity at the bottom of the post.
In brief, maybe we need to stop sinking money into outdated brand ideas?
Olegs, this is a useful catalog and I will relink on to a British site. In fact I will repost this whole comment. I think the [viral marketing] methods you list miss the point of social media and head towards nuisance messages. The trick is to think through the community and conversations that people have about a product.
When a life insurance salesman asks you about your friends, your intent is not to gain a reward but to bring a friend closer to you.
When Obama asks you to ’send to a friend’, you are motivated to have your choice of candidate win. Unless I dislike them a lot, I don’t send Obama messages to known hard-core Republicans!
Social media works when we facilitate the conversations people want to have and the communities they want to build.
Let’s illustrate with Marriot who have a site for “frequent stayers”. I won’t stay with Marriott again until I have access to a site like that because my experience there was awful. But if there are old hands who will steer me on how to interact with the chain so that I get the safe haven when I travel, I might reconsider. In return, I could advise on non- Mariott hotels particularly in small town UK and some of the more far flung reaches of the world where I have hung out.
Can Marriott accept their role as giving me a safe haven? If they just want to sell me a bed, then they will not let me use their website to pass on useful tips whether they are about their own hotel or others.
It is quite interesting because if satisfaction is guaranteed, then a business does not need social media. Nor will they be scared of it. If satisfaction is NOT guaranteed, they will be scared of social media, but oh, how they need you and me to communicate directly about the work-arounds that make their offering acceptable.
Social media is a revolution! It blows away an important ‘barrier to entry’ - the hypocrisy and myth that large companies and institutions have been able to weave around their products and services. This all feels negative - can’t end here.
Let’s take another tourist example. Let’s say you are traveling to Zimbabwe. In the olden days, you asked around to see if you know anyone who knows the place. If you cannot get recommendations for a local place, you stay at a chain like Holiday Inn. In the days of social media, if you are traveling to Zimbabwe, you go to a social media site with a brand and you get the information. What has happened in a blink of an eye is that the value of brands like Holiday Inn have evaporated and being replaced with LinkedIn, for example !!!!(is that why I pay their membership fee?).
This is a total revolution in business. Marketers who continue to build brands are robbing their shareholders. They need to build alliances with brands like LinkedIn and others . . .
. . and here I stop because I am in HR not marketing and I am more concerned with supply side uses of social media.
I think I may be onto something guys.
This is marketing, as opposed to selling. And it points to the valuation of the shares of big names too.
If you want to go really big in social media and marketing, look here for a niche. Maybe I should get out of HR and come and join you. Maybe I shouldn’t just send this to friends and get in a huddle?
