The sentence states the obvious but you have to wonder sometimes if the obvious isn’t the hardest thing to see. It’s from the Randall Stross article in the New York Times, Advertisers Face Hurdles on Social Networking Sites. It brings up a lot of questions about the idea of brands being on sites like Facebook, probably the biggest of which is, what’s the point?
As Seth says in his post, “… big companies are asking precisely the wrong question. They are asking, ‘how can we use these new tools to leverage our existing businesses?’”
Exactly. This isn’t about the online world, it’s about people. Unless someone is specifically looking to buy something, they rarely want to get a sales pitch. This is why so many ads in the various media are about entertaining rather than an overt pitch.
The phrase “social network” is made up of two key words: social and network. Social means people; network means connected.* A brand is not a person. A company is not a person. A company is made up of people but the entity itself is not human, so a personal relationship won’t be created, which is what social networks are about – people and relationships.
So what’s a company to do? I think, before ever beginning to develop ideas and strategies and so on, a change of mindset has to take place. At the AAAA’s 14th Annual Media Conference & Tradeshow (a year or more ago?), the P&G Marketing Chief Jim Stengel spoke. If you watch the video, it certainly sounds as if marketers are getting it.
But pay attention to the language. He refers several times to “consumers.” He says, at one point, “We’re all consumers.” He’s bang on there. But consumers are people. When you refer to people as consumers, you’re essentially saying, “What’s in it for me?” It suggests you only value people to the extent that they can provide you with something. Moreover, it’s the language of depersonalization. It sounds more like a statistical category than flesh and blood. People don’t define themselves as consumers, only marketers do. So if you go into a social network with the mindset that stats indicate consumers fitting the desired demographic can be found there, odds are you won’t connect.
Stross, in his article, quotes Ted McConnell, manager of interactive marketing and innovation at P.& G. (speaking for himself):
“I don’t want to be best friends with a brand,” he said. “It’s just stuff.”
And that’s the point. People want stuff, maybe even the stuff you’re selling, but they don’t want to have a personal relationship with it. For people, as the quote says, brands are “just stuff.” They want to have relationships with people: family, friends, interesting people who could become friends by engaging them in conversations through an interesting topic discussed by an appealing personality.
Online personality will build a brand far better than contests, “fan of” groups or any of the other attempts marketers have tried on social networks. And it’s very, very hard to do because a company inevitably has a struggle between finding that personality (human, an actual person’s name) and protecting the brand. There is a constant tension between the human voice, and what it is saying, and the non-human corporate entity that sees people as “consumers,” a demographic group to be mined. There is a fear of saying the wrong thing – or saying the right thing but the wrong way. So the corporate entity feels a need to control what is being said, and that’s where the personality starts getting removed from the online presence. Even with a name and face to it, the language becomes safe but bland.
It’s almost as if there is an inherent contradiction for marketers where online marketing is concerned: the only way to market is not to market. It does make sense but not intuitively, a least not for marketers.
So I guess the question becomes: How do you market when you are not marketing?
* Social doesn’t necessarily refer to people – animals are social as well. But in the social network context, it means people.
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