The Role of Social Media in Marketing Communications

Ford recently hired a social media czar and a five-person social media team. This follows on the heels of like efforts by Intel, Dell and Pepsi. They are not alone, according to AdWeek's Brian Morrissey. "Social-media experts are in high demand as companies attempt to figure out how to adapt how they talk to customers and even among themselves," Morrissey writes.

Social media are moving beyond an interesting niche, evolving into a "catalyst for changing how companies operate." "The biggest challenge is moving away from thinking about it as marketing and PR," said Peter Kim, a Forrester Research analyst. "It's about product development, it's about IT. It's got to cut across all functions of the company."

It's also about moving away from the top-down, "Stalin" approach to marketing, as marketer Scott Goodson calls it. Goodson calls authentic dialogues "cultural movements," which are "about curating culture and creating communities and platforms for people to circle their wagons around an idea that is relevant and important to them. A Cultural Movement is about being passionate, militant almost. It's about joining a movement that you care about."

To Goodson brands will suffer if they are not authentic: "Fakes and phonies will be found out. The consumer is now the truth junkie who never forgets, who puts two and two together."

The lesson here, even for those companies that have hired social media czars, is to be authentic and to allow organizations to evolve. Simply shoehorning social media experts into traditional marketing roles is not the answer. An ad is an ad even if it's on MySpace.

Regulating Before Regulation, Ctd.

Maybe the writing is on the wall after all:

A week after Charter Communications backpedaled on plans to implement NebuAds' controversial behavioral tracking and ad serving platform, another of the vendor's ISP partners has put on the brakes.

CenturyTel, which was among the first ISPs to test the NebuAd platform, will no longer put it into action across its whole network, as had been its plan. A spokesperson, Annmarie Sartor, said the company had not determined a definite date to flip the switch, but "we were looking at some time this summer," she said.

Now the deal is off until further notice.

Unlike Charter's statement, which cited subscribers' concerns, CenturyTel said it was motivated by the urgings of Congressmen Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, who said the technology "raises several red flags."

Regulating Before Regulation

The Interactive Advertising Bureau is working to self regulate the online marketing community before federal regulators step in. With increased scrutiny from regulators and proposed state and federal legislation regarding consumer data privacy, spyware, ISP ad targeting and other issues, the IAB is working to simultaneous self regulate and resist government mandates.

"We saw these bills coming down the pike in the states and what the FTC was doing and it just didn't look good," IAB President Randall Rothenberg told ClickZ News.

The stakes are high. Interactive advertising revenues for the first quarter of 2008 were estimated at $5.8 billion, up 18.2 percent from the first quarter of 2007. Revenues from 2007 totaled more than $21 billion.

“Millions of people are making their livings creating and operating Web venues that house well-targeted advertisements, but these entrepreneurs are being threatened by the specter of unnecessary government regulation that would destroy or severely limit their ability to advertise their wares and services online,” Rothenberg dramatically told a Congressional committee recently.

The IAB would be wise to institute strong self regulation or face the consequences. Recently, 15 privacy and consumer organizations called for a congressional investigation into television and Internet provider Charter Communications' proposed "major threat to privacy" through ISP ad targeting. (Charter has since cooled to its plan.) More such calls are sure to follow as other companies implement ISP targeting.

I wonder, though, if any self regulation would be strong enough to lessen criticism from privacy advocates in and out of Congress and the state capitols. I doubt it. Therefore, I think the IAB should pick and choose its battles. Some practices, like handling of freely given consumer data, may require a code of conduct, while others, like ISP targeting, should just go away.

South Asian Canadians

Blogger Fazal Siddiqi posted interesting findings on his blog that relate to cultural marketing and new media. Siddiqi used email, Facebook, LinkedIn and his blog to pose questions regarding the habits and preferences of South Asians. He received about 100 responses from "Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis living in Canada, the USA, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the UAE and Saudi Arabia" as well as non-Asians.

Siddiqi cites two main findings:

1. Family is a major consideration for those of South Asian origin
2. Non-Asians don't understand South Asian culture

Based upon his findings he surmises that marketing communications directed toward South Asians should utilize themes of family and family relationships and that, consequently, word-of-mouth marketing efforts should be utilized among this community. He also notes that "(p)ersonal development, professional growth, hard work, movies, cricket and spicy food were other common interests revealed by the respondents," leading him to suggest that (m)ovie theatres, cricket matches and restaurants serving spicy foods could be good touch-points with South Asians" and that "organizations offering professional and personal development services could target South Asians market segments as well to grow their sales."

He also notes that while non-Asians mentioned "rice, spices and Bollywood movies" among South Asian likes, this group did not mention the significance of family or personal relationships to South Asians. Therefore, he suggests that non-Asian marketer should utilize South Asian marketing specialists.

I find this posting interesting for a number of reasons. First, Siddiqi's use of new media tools (email, social networking sites and a blog) to gather market data is relevant. This effort strikes at the heart of the utility of digital tools to marketing: they create easy and effective methods for learning about customers. Second is the information. While more qualitative (or even anecdotal) than quantitative, it does providing an interesting snapshot into the South Asian community. In a follow-on post, Siddiqi offers hard data relating to South Asians in Canada (e.g., "South Asian Canadians spend 23% more on groceries than other households in Canada."). The combination of the hard data and the survey information could provide important insights for marketers targeting the South Asian community in Canada.

Small Business Blogging?

Ben McConnell from the well-read Church of the Customer marketing blog lists seven reasons a small business should blog. To summarize McConnell, blogs are beneficial because they:

1. Allow bloggers to "humanize" an organization
2. Function as an instant-feedback mechanism
3. Enable information sharing
4. Facilitate the spread of buzz
5. Enable simultaneous conversations
6. Offer any attractive online presence if existing web sites are lacking
7. Position the blogger/company as industry experts

These points all seem true, in general, but businesses must deal in specifics, and not all small businesses (and their markets) are built the same. First, because blogging requires time and writing skills, not all small businesses are well suited to the task. Plus, bloggers need a reason to blog. According to author Aliza Sherman Risdahl, "it can be challenging to find a legitimate reason for blogging unless the sector served has a steep learning curve (like wine), a lifestyle associated with certain products or service (like camping gear or pet products) or a social mission (like improving the environment or donating a portion of revenues to charity)."

Because of that, entrepreneur and blogger Guy Kawasaki says that not all small businesses need blogs: "If you’re a clothing manufacturer or a restaurant, blogging is probably not as high on your list as making good food or good clothes."

According to Risdahl, consultants are good candidates for blogs: “They are experts in their fields and are in the business of telling people what to do...As a consultant, blogging clearly helps you get hired. If you are selling a product, you have to be much more creative because people don’t want to read a commercial."