Because we actually have information.
Not exactly, data, mind you. But more than pure theory or opinion or flackery.
What we know, thanks to Jonathan Salem Baskin, is that a number of prominent corporate early adopters of social media are no longer with us. Not gone, as in whodunnit. But gone, as in, no longer employed by prestigious Fortune 500 companies with budget to allocate.
The why is probably complicated, as are all such departures not tied to inappropriate relationships. But what we know is that early adoption was, ultimately, not enough to buy further consideration when things went south or even sideways for too long. And, by implication, that getting in early on the experiment did not evidently, provide enough useful insight to significantly alter strategic marketing decisions.
So what that tells us is, first, that in an era of strained resources and short attention spans, getting it right is better than getting it first. Second, that new channels, platforms and media sometimes change so dramatically in the arc of their creation that lessons learned may quickly be overtaken by subsequent events. Third, that the business of advertising is, ultimately, sales. Design is important, creativity is invaluable and memorable messaging is crucial, but if the end result is not additional sales, hasta la vista, baby.
Convergence may be the answer. Multi-channel strategies may provide the necessary mass with which speed can be combined to create energy. Whatever. It is all a means to an end. As both the dinosaurs and the Neanderthals learned the hard way. JL
Jonathan Baskin comments in BaskinBrand:
I don’t know the real reason why Barry Judge recently departed Best Buy after serving as its CMO for over a decade. Ditto for why Jeffrey Hayzlett left Kodak, or why Russ Klein and Burger King parted ways in 2009. But I know they share one common attribute: they were all early adopters of Social Media Theory.
Social Media Theory posits that consumers have abandoned “traditional” advertising — both its media, like print or broadcast, as well as its content, which admittedly and obviously tries to sell something — and embraced “new” media, like online and mobile, where content cannot be overtly commercial. Its believers have been berating big brand name marketers for years to adjust their budgets in support of their beliefs, calling those who resisted it dinosaurs and heaping praise (and pitches for additional social spending) on those who did. An ecosystem of metrics has been created to substantiate proof of social success as stand-ins for the old-fashioned numbers of sales on which Luddite marketers once relied.
Judge was a brilliant follower of this canon, having launched Best Buy’s “Twelpforce” of store associates posting product Tweets (the company has almost a quarter million followers on Twitter), creating a set of online forums called “Unboxed,” and even writing his own blog. Klein oversaw BK’s cutting-edge collaboration with agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, which gave us viral videos of peasants encountering their first hamburgers, a broiled meat-scented cologne, and endless permutations of the brand’s iconic mascot showing up in ads, on Halloween masks, and as a protagonist in video games. Hayzlett is perhaps the most visionary pioneer, having brought every conceivable social media tool into play for Kodak and then going on to write a book and start a consultancy so that other rule-busting innovators can replicate his approach.
There’s only one problem. None of it worked. Sales at all of the brands crashed.
Well, it worked in terms of all the made-up metrics used to prove efficacy in social endeavors. These early-adopters did everything they were supposed to do, and they did it expertly, so Social Media Theory accounts for the subsequent sales failure with a simple conclusion: it wasn’t their fault. Other factors were at play, for which they had no responsibility. In fact, those factors were a drag at times on what were otherwise wildly successful endeavors. To hold Social Media Theory accountable for the sales shortfalls would be not only inaccurate but unfair.
But maybe the premise that people just want to be entertained with free stuff that gives them no compelling reason to buy stuff is responsible for why the customers of Best Buy, Kodak, and Burger King were happy to do anything for free but unwilling to buy anything? Perhaps the idea that they wanted to be friends of these brands was mistaken. It’s quite possible that allowing even a portion of the marketing spend to produce those glorious social metrics was a distraction from what the brands should have been doing to truly inform, motivate, and support real transactions (i.e. selling stuff) to people?
What if those CMOs who resisted the siren call to spend on social media aren’t dinosaurs at all, but rather Homo sapiens sapiens…and the folks who embraced Social Media Theory the Neanderthals?
Neanderthals had the larger brains, invented tools, language, and lived in complex social groups (they created the first apartment complexes, as one structure in Moldova contained 25 hearths). Only they couldn’t compete with Cro-Magnons, who did all of that only better and more often. So Neanderthals didn’t do anything wrong as much as didn’t have enough right going on to resist the encroachment of Cro-Magnons. One theory suggests that those who didn’t die were assimilated into the evolutionary tree of Homo Sapiens.
Similarly, those early-adopter CMOs weren’t wholly wrong any more than they were completely right. Social Media Theory prompted them to experiment, sometimes with the blind zeal of the faithful, and perhaps their job status (and the business failures they left in their wakes) are the true results of those tests. They can’t exist outside of the larger, more inclusive and reasoned path of evolution from which they once claimed to be distinct.
So skip the reptile analogies. Maybe we have been looking at a family squabble all along?
0 comments:
Post a Comment