New Wave Marketing 101: Overpaying, Over Doing and Over Estimating the Value of Social Media

If you saw the recent article about The State Department paying over $600K to raise its likes from 60,000 to 2,000,000 you should have laughed and then paused to reflect.

Here’s the takeaway: Most companies are over doing social media, over paying for the results and over estimating the value.

Here it is… short and sweet:

1. SM is a given for the vast majority of companies, but the simple basics are all that most need… because it’s expected – like a listing in the Yellow Pages was expected by consumers, even though no one saw results commensurate with cost.
2. CEOs and internal marketing departments in B2C and B2B are enamored of SM and frightened to be left behind, so they let any pretty face come in and sell them on likes and Google+ and tweets and you name it. Like taking candy from a baby… fools chasing numbers that don’t translate into sales.
3. Results are so poor that in any other media we would all run screaming from the field. But Google has us convinced that .75% is a pretty darn good return. I was a magazine editor/publisher for 20 years. If I had to sell that number to advertisers I would have been laughed out of the room.
4. Only two types of products/companies really benefit from the all out SM campaign: small, disruptive companies/products and huge multinationals. That’s it. Why these two?
• The big, big and maybe only significant effect SM has had on marketing is that for the first time consumers are finding you (78% find companies/products, not the other way around) and when they do, they’ve already developed an idea of who you are. You need to affect these preconceptions and this has traditionally been the realm of advertising; and if you can afford it, big ads with frequency still beat SM.
  
  But if you don’t have the bucks, SM allows you to disrupt markets, attack big market leaders and build status and belief with ‘minimal’ cost. This idea works with both B2B companies and consumer products trying to break through or disrupt an established market.
  
  But once you've hit mid-sized, SM is a minor necessity. You’re not disruptive, you have some media budget, you only need a basic presence.

• Then, there are a few, just a few, huge companies that need to present a human face: Wal-Mart, General Electric, GM, etc. -- companies that most people see as cold and faceless. Intelligent SM works well for them as branding, not sales. 

But most companies are not this big and do not need to be humanized. I don't expect Big O tires to show me their human side -- I do expect or at least appreciate a bit of humanity from Blue Cross Blue Shield or Shell Oil, etc.

If you’re not in one of these two categories, then SM is a small part of your marketing efforts these days. The blush is off the rose. For you to expect big results (and for you to pay big bucks to the plethora of SM pundits and overblown, egotistical coders and SEO ‘liars’) from minuscule return rates is just silly.

Look, say hello and thanks to your customers, explain what you do, offer a sale, improve your customer service, attract good people to hire, then get the hell out of SM.

The rest is plain nuts!

NewWave Marketing 101: Nothing can change the shape of things to come

Wow… hadn’t thought of that song since the 60s. And honestly, neither the song nor the movie (Wild in the Streets) was any good. But like it or not, the sentiments of a generation and 1968 American culture were plainly, if not naively, expressed.

In many ways it’s 1968 all over again for marketing and advertising: things are changing in ways no one can control and few can imagine. What we’re left with at the current moment is a very poor mix of old and new… the old is obvious nonsense to everyone, except for the agencies who continue to peddle it because they’ve nothing else… and, of course, direct response which is so silly that it’s camp. (Do you LOVE the ear wax commercial where the guy sticks the Q-tip in his ear up to his eye socket and then jumps? Jerry Lewis would be proud.)

The so-called ‘new’ hasn’t arrived… instead we get an almost dada-like attempt at trying to be cutting edge and cool. Just another form of nonsense -- but at least these people are trying to find ‘the new’ and aren’t peddling old ideas with the bromide that, “things haven’t changed very much… marketing is coming back to the basics.” No, it isn’t.

Where it’s going, who knows? Have you noticed how much humor is being used these days in TV adverts? As if to say, “we know you don’t believe any of this, so let’s all pretend we’re in on the joke.”

Of course, fact-based ads are almost the sole province of drug companies. They’ve all developed this concept of nice, happy images rolling by, while they’re talking about side effects such as nausea, heart attack, sudden death, hives, swollen throat and tongue, blurred vision, etc.

Since I have a musician’s gallows humor, I actually find these drug commercials more comical and absurd than the ads that are meant to be funny.

Speaking of which, here’s an apocryphal story related to music… but I think it demonstrates what level of change lies ahead for advertising and marketing.

A very good friend and first rate guitarist (whom I’ve known since those on-the-road years in the late 70s) told me about a collaboration he had completed. If you stop to think about how revolutionary this is, you’ll see the implications.

Danny has produced a few home videos where he plays along with basic jam tracks… just for fun and to keep his chops up. He posts them on youtube and a cool sight called Fandalism.com. Well, he gets an email from someone in Italy (Danny is in Atlanta) who has written a song, put down most of the tracks but needs a guitarist. He sends the files to Danny… who adds his tracks and voila… an international collaboration that’s online to the world.

Here’s the part to consider. Even 10 years ago, if I had a band in, say, Cleveland and we were all in our 20s, we would have never considered auditioning a player in his late 50s. Never... much less a 55 year old guy from Mexico City or Bordeaux.

Ten years later, age doesn’t matter nor does distance… what matters is talent and creativity. That’s it.

I have no idea the age of the Italian guy -- he could be 16 or 60… who cares?

This idea of long distance joint musical ventures between countries and cultures and ages is amazing… and beyond anyone’s comprehension even a decade ago.

Marketing and advertising are in the midst of similar radical change to the very essence of the industry… change that no one anticipated… change that agencies are dismissing as foolish (like now defunct record companies did).

I for one -- even at my late age -- can’t wait to see the new burst of creativity we’re soon to experience… and I will be vindictive enough to laugh out loud as so-called marketing experts and agency consultants are left clinging to a couple of clients and biding their time until the good old days of blowhard marketing return.

Like maybe… never… if there’s a God.

Twitter, NBC and Corporate Hubris

It's the age of empowered consumers. Enlightened companies get this, but most don't, particularly those who are used to being in total control... you know, the NBC's of the world, the Bank of America types and most of the classic corporate giants from the last century.

Consumers are armed with instant information, the entire history of a company, every good and bad word ever said. We no longer take anyone's word for anything without stopping by Wikipedia for a quick glance.

As obvious as this new consumer strength may be, experience tells me that most companies don’t get it. And that indictment applies to large and small alike. You’d think larger, multi-billion dollar corporations with hundreds of marketing experts and social scientists on staff would see the pattern, but they don’t.

Why? The Greeks had a word for it… hubris.

It’s really the same principle you see in play with some politicians. They choose high-risk behavior – nights with prostitutes, illicit sex in men’s rooms, etc. – because they feel they are powerful enough to be above the law. Of course, they never are, particularly when that ‘law’ is in the court of public opinion.

Companies are the same – and the bigger they are, the more ignorant and arrogant are their actions. 

But you would think that a huge media conglomerate like NBC and the social media darling Twitter would be one of the few that understands.

They don't and they didn't when it came to closing the blog of a reporter critical of NBC's (pretty bad) Olympic coverage.

NBC, the media giant and defender of first amendment rights, couldn't take the criticism from one, just one reporter's Twitter account. That tells me that all this crap about NBC being online and in-touch and part of the new media revolution is all... well... crap. They haven't a clue about how the billion or so of us who use the Net regularly feel about any type of censorship.

Even worse, the folks at Twitter -- who should be savvy about social media and its users -- responded just like a 19th century robber baron wanting to crush the unions. Twitter acting like US Steel? Sickening but oh so funny. So much for Twitter being cool. Yeah, they're cool, just like the Stasi.

Recall how in the past 12 months or so big companies have given in to consumer demands. Remember when Bank of America announced that it would charge a monthly fee for users of debit cards. Consumers hit the roof, then the Internet. One month before implementation (after swearing they would not go back on the policy) BofA scrapped the plan.

Netflix decided to raise its monthly charge several dollars and people were outraged. OK, says the CEO, then we’ll change the service plan from a combination of online and DVDs by mail to online only. Another public outcry. Netflix loses 250,000 customers overnight. They relent but too late. The damage has been done to the brand and its bottom line.

Verizon announced that it would begin charging customers $2 to pay their bills online (and not through direct debit). Less than a day later, the outrage was so great the idea was dropped. 

Seeing a pattern yet?

Never in my lifetime have such large companies been forced to give in to consumers. Up until now it’s been all their way and consumers could like it or lump it.

No more. Yet companies continue to act as if they are in control... just like NBC and Twitter. And no matter how many times the newly empowered consumer wins, you can’t get 50-something executives to see it. Instead they keep alienating consumers and scratching their balding heads as to why ‘nothing in marketing works anymore.’

Hubris… the downfall of Icarus and Oedipus and Agamemnon and even Arthur.  The Greeks might not know how to run their economy, but when it comes to human nature, they’ve been spot on for centuries.

Twitter? An embarrassment... and frankly while I still tweet I don't feel nearly as happy with it. The brand has lost me and like a cold love affair, I don't think I can ever get back to any level of trust. 

NBC -- big network still acting like big shots. So thin skinned it can't take even a hint of criticism... like politicians, like the old Soviet Union, like all bullies everywhere.