Will social media save the marketing star? (p 1)

Ads ain’t working – Britain is better off with Google

A few casual searches of well know business consultancies and business magazines websites and something becomes apparent. Companies really are clamouring for any credible information and analysis. They want to know what to make of the so-called “social media” phenomena.

Hang on.

What does businesses want from social media anyway?

Social, socialist, social club…

When I used to work at Lycos Europe circa 2001 – who had some of Europe’s largest online communities like Love@Lycos and Lycos (Jubii) Chat – the marketing department ran some focus groups with our young users.

The company was looking to rebrand and wanted to move away from being perceived as just a provider of Internet Search.

Lycos was obviously a community website, and was toying with using the word ‘community‘ as part of a strap line. We therefore wanted to know what its users think of the word ‘community’.
And word came form these focus groups that the term ‘community’ sounded just way to… communal. To our surprise community was actually a word with many negative associations.

And the words ‘community’ and ‘communal’ not only sounded like the word ‘communist’ (heaven forbid) it made people think of hairy bleeding heart hippies (unfashionable). In short it did not sit next to cool anymore.

In that context I wonder what our focus group would have said if we had put to them the word ‘social’?

Until not so very long ago social and community was not terms you’d imagine large corporate companies try and understand in respect of digital business.

Not anymore. Business is now full of socialists. Or rather people interested in social media. In the space of a few years the words ’social’ or ‘community’ seems to have been rehabilitated.

Today big companies’ interest in social media ranges from the casual dipping of toes into social seas to more ambitious missions: The hope that they might just serendipitously discover & conquer a bright new world.

To be more specific. Companies are looking at social media because:

• They have an urge to monitor ‘the conversation’ about their brand;
• They are trying to shape that conversation;
• While a few of the more ambitious companies are seeking to leverage social media to compliment their business.

So who are the socialists?

Mostly – yes even in the third case above – social media is seen as the preserve of companies’ marketing or public relations departments.

This is because to most companies social media is either a threat to a brand image, a research tool or it’s a massive – if unpredictable – low cost marketing opportunity.

And actually, if you are a marketeer, the preeminence of social media could not have come a moment to soon. Because marketing was not working.

Part 2 (When the web turned marketing on its head)