I worked at Heavy.com years ago. We still have Heavy reunions. They had beer Fridays, a young corporate culture, sponsored events like private concerts with MiniKiss, the miniature Kiss cover band, and it was a fun place to work.
There was no such thing as social media, we did what intuitively made sense and went with our instincts. I miss that. I miss having fun with technology, stuff like:
Chat rooms and posting widgets, choosing songs for my player and custom profiles, and all the fun stuff on MySpace before they lost a handle on SPAM.
Facebook applications, most of which never did anything, but they were fun to play with for longer than the average person’s attention span.
Watching videos that made me laugh, and not thinking twice if they were created by some advertiser, because videos were fun and most brands didn’t have the guts to make content that might go “viral.”
I miss social sharing before it became SOCIAL MEDIA, before companies had to throw money around because of the sheer volume of people who are “social” online. Before there were 10 million experts writing about it. Before there were 20 million people who want YOU to promote their content because they want to be a star.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SOCIAL PART OF SOCIAL MEDIA – SOCIAL, AS IN, FUN?
I’ve worked in social media for years. Before it was a discipline. I know how to develop content strategies, to engage and build communities. I can talk the talk – engagement, metrics, Return on Investment (ROI), Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) – it’s my job, and I’m damn good at driving real results for clients. I also use social media daily – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, I read blogs and write one, etc.
But I miss the fun. I miss content that just made me laugh. I miss self-indulgent entertainment value. I miss social sharing before it had to have a purpose. When it was enough to be creative, without having to be quantifiable. Social sharing helped forge communities that fostered self-expression because the goal was to do something interesting and fun.
Best analogy might be in my friend Rodney’s recent comment on Facebook, I’ll explain below:
IT’S ABOUT BEING SOCIAL, NOT ABOUT QUANTIFYING THE END RESULT
The rise of SOCIAL MEDIA has led to a deluge of experts on the subject and billions of dollars from corporate interests, resulting in a booming industry focused on how to connect brands with consumers in meaningful but ultimately quantifiable ways. Meanwhile, the masses of people using social media have led technology developers to transform them from platforms of self-expression into conduits of information publishing.
People are quick to dismiss SOCIAL MEDIA users as narcissistic in the same way as they dismiss young kids as hipsters. Doing so misses the point that we are increasingly narrowing the range of possibilities to be creative – or simply, to have fun – and overall the focus on engagement and end results stunts the growth of things like talent or innovation.
AUTO-TUNE OR AUTO PILOT? WILL SOCIAL MEDIA KILL OUR SOCIAL SKILLS?
I was a punk rock kid growing up. I had mixed feelings when Nirvana became huge because I was worried that mass adoption would kill punk rock. I was and still am a huge electronic music fan, but the high fees of touring artists make some of them only accessible at large venues that lack intimacy and impact the overall experience of the performance.
I can live with that. What concerns me, however, is that the change in the content quality across social media is having a similar impact upon how we communicate. That we’re becoming more information obsessed, and somehow less social, and by less social I mean genuinely less interested in the fun times had when people come together.
I saw for the first time last night the remake of “We Are The World.” What struck me about the song was the use of the auto-tune device on vocals, first championed by Cher’s song Believe. There have been so many remakes of things from my childhood, such as Transformers, GI Joe, Nightmare on Elm Street, Where the Wild Things Are, but one question came to mind – are there enough celebrities who can actually sing to do vocals for a short song?
There might not be. We’ve auto-tuned our vocals to reduce talent into screaming through a machine. What might happen to our social skills through using social media?
We are the world, and we can also change it. We can make it fun again. Like the Japanese did when they recorded their own tribute:
John Hughes helped define my childhood and the generation that grew up in the 80s. The above YouTube video brought chills down my spine thinking back to my teens and before the age of mobile communications, emails, the internet, and the archipelago of technologies and platforms that we call social media.
I’m fascinated how rapidly our society has changed since the time of Hughes’ films, and as I look ahead I wonder where we’re headed if malaise has taken over our youth to the extent that they’ve already transcended beyond the online communities. I spent a decade studying youth cultures from the 1960s to the present, and understand how media perceptions of the counterculture shaped emerging lifestyle markets of music, media, clothing, and merchandise.
Those kids of the counterculture grew up to found the advertising business we see today, and their appropriation of social scientific methodology into trendsetting, forecasting and focus groups contributed to manufacturing the niche stereotypes captured in Hughes’ films. How ironic that the people who were so against the establishment in “The Sixties” would put in place the mechanisms to feed sparks of individuality back into consumer habits via advertising, marketing, and PR.
Understanding the recurring patterns of the past makes us more conscious of how naive we are to attach ourselves to the present. Nonetheless, I find myself identifying with the following clip from Conan O’Brien, and I can’t help but wondering what’s next. John Hughes sadly died at 59 years old, but the simple pleasures he brought us through film serve as poignant reminders that everything is still amazing.
Facebook has grown exponentially particularly among 35-54 y/olds, who continued to be the fastest growing demographic at an even more accelerated rate of 276% in the last 6 months. You can examine the 2009 statistics thanks to iStrategyLabs
I believe this growth pattern can be understood by what I call the gentrification of Facebook. Here’s my hypothesis:
Facebook began as a network exclusive to college kids, who had to reach a critical mass of 1,000 per school to enter the network. As Facebook opened up to the public, it then opened up its platform to third-party developers to build a variety of applications. “Cool” innovators flooded through the gates, quickly giving rise to what could be considered an online gold rush.
Venture-backed companies, agency and marketing folks, and developers built a seemingly limitless number of applications that were quickly added and shared, and “social media” entered the marketing vernacular as the new umbrella term for these types of innovative technologies. This accelerated adoption beyond the college kids and eventually snowballed to make the 35+ demographic the fastest growing on Facebook.
The ironic thing is that nobody uses applications anymore, perhaps because the concept was canibalized by so many bad applications. Few are very useful or relevant, and they are on the way to becoming a novelty item used only by marketers who are six months behind the curve, particularly with the newly revamped fan pages. As this happened Facebook also put in place minimum advertising buys at $100k/month, the rich folks had indeed started to take over the neighborhood.
The pattern I see within Facebook strikes me to be similar to the gentrification process I’ve witnessed in my neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The trendsetters of innovative artists were replaced by trend followers of rich NYU kids, and ultimately prices in rent rose, new restaurants opened, and the wealthy people opened profitable businesses and developed condominiums.
I think gentrification is really a name to describe the canibalization and consumption of cool, and it can be traced through discrete sites created to facilitate exchanges. In my neighborhood this would be between the new businesses and the “hipster” – a pejorative trope for the jaded kid that was too cool to do anything productive – whereas within Facebook it would be the profile holder and the application developer.
In the wake of the application gold rush status updates became the most significant feature for many users, fueling a frenzy of friend adding to establish a social network defined by short conversations, comments, link sharing – the types of menial distractions professionals love during a work day. It will be interesting to see how Facebook continues to evolve in the future, but what I really want to know is, what are all the cool kids up to now that applications are no longer cool?
Pic below a piece of social commentary on gentrification from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, taken last weekend on my iPhone.
Social media can accelerate the spread of branded messages by making it convenient for people to share with friends and family. The right mix of content and execution can drive astronomical results, while paradoxically barging into a conversation like an elephant can adversely damage a brand’s online reputation.
Particularly in today’s economy when budgets are being slashed a lot of brands and agencies want to move into social media. My experience has taught me seasoned marketers often approach social media like they do any other media buy. This is fundamentally problematic because online influencers don’t like most marketing.
Napoleon became one of the most celebrated generals in history because he learned in the field how to divide armies with precise artillery. He subsequently built strategies for tactical military strikes that his enemies simply could not account for or adapt, and won many victories against sizably larger foes. Social media experts must push back against recommendations from above that they know will not be effective. Napoleon complexes are good things in social media, and here’s what brands should do to find their tactical generals and win the battle to connect with consumers in meaningful ways:
Seek out experts from the field and listen to their recommendations. When they seem wrong, push back for clarification, what you perceive to be intuitively right might in fact be a bad fit for social media.
Just because someone spends a few hours on Facebook, Twitter, and watches YouTube videos does not qualify him or her to execute on behalf of a brand. In fact, they may be lazy potheads who do not follow directions well (if so, this should not necessarily preclude you from hiring them).
Stop thinking about metrics, seriously. Most people likely tuned out your media buys, so the truth is, most of your existing metrics based on eyeballs probably lead you to make erroneous assumptions about your ROI. Think creatively about how to create new Key Performance Indicators and less about how to adapt old media buying models.
It’s not about you. If you don’t add value to a conversation, then be quiet and stay out of it. And conversely, if your legal department has problems, then hire other attorneys. You can defend against a misrepresentation on Twitter easier than you can a rumor turning into 100,000 people participating in negative word of mouth.
Publish or perish. People are talking about you, and soon every site will have social media functionality. Remember 10 years ago when reporters used to say “live via satellite?” They don’t any more because it’s just what every network does now when reporting. It was once amazing that a steam engine beat a horse in a race. Don’t be the horse.
It’s what people do – it’s not media. People go online to connect with one another, learn and exchange opinions, make informed purchase decisions, etc. They don’t think “hey, I’m going to use social media!” It’s just what they do. Don’t get caught up in industry vocabulary that makes you sound smart or transforms social media into something experimental.
The biggest social media partner is not necessarily the best. This is the heart of the Napoleon complex. Look at case studies of potential partners and think if they can scale based on your needs. If they can, move forward.
Always On, Not Always Planned. Social media engagement is a process of dynamic discovery – engaging in conversations, learning what people are saying, then acting based on the needs of online consumers. Campaign-focused approaches do not work because the goal of social media is to build relationships, not to serve media. If you spend too much time trying to plan, you’ll miss your opportunity.
Trust Your Team. You may not understand social media, but your team will. Hire experts and trust them to execute. This corresponds with the need to stop planning, let them report and push messages but not be beholden to multiple agendas. The same core audience online might be the target for multiple campaigns in a given year. Social media does not always line up with other media channels.
It’s not rocket science. Things change, people change, technologies change, life and communities change. There are best practices to tip the scales in your advantage but social media engagement is not science.
Be bold, be loud, and be funny. Don’t’ water down your message. Most creative goes through a series of edits and revisions, and often the best ideas get dumbed down and somehow become, well, dumb. Trust your gut and go with it, if it doesn’t work, at least you have your integrity.
I hope this helps. This post is intended for those who control marketing budgets considering entering social media. It is based on extensive experience working with global agencies and brands when I was at Heavy, Spongecell, Visible Technologies, and M80, and is not written specifically for any of my clients, past or present.
