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Or is it already here ?
I don’t want to do the whole snotty “I told you so” thing, but you will not want to bet me that I can find more than one post in my archives stating that the majority of companies are going to cock things up their first (or second) go-arounds with the use of social media.
As this ZDNet article by Oliver Marks points out, the general marketing mindset has not really changed, and so we’re seeing as much goofy, plain stupid, or crassly annoying types of gimmicks aimed at grabbing your attention for a moment even though this is supposedly the new age of “authentic” interconnected social “word-of-mouth”, etc.
I believe there will be cycles or waves of backlash and / or rejection, then surges of renewed interest, followed by discovery that once again the adaptations are not comprehensive. Marketing as informing “conversations” in reasonable and honest ways is fundamentally different than trying to manipulate people, however cleverly or smoothly (by which I mean even if it sounds and feels authentic) to buy things.
One major sign of that difference, for me, is taking a clear stand and being able to handle the criticism, dissent or differing opinions in ways that demonstrate real listening and signals that the differing opinions and dissent have been heard .. not necessarily agreed with, or defensively countered … JUST HEARD.
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The Groundswell of Social Media Backlash
There appears to be a fully fledged backlash against ’social media’ marketing emerging, with commentary in both areas you’d expect and in places you might not.
This is tough on the people who have solid foundations for what marketing messaging is all about, and who are doing good things with modern technologies around the age old concepts of marketing ‘conversations’ or word of mouth.
10 years ago the ClueTrain Manifesto put forward ninety five theses essentially expanding on the following proposal:
“A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.”
The ClueTrain Manifesto was written in the era of email and mailing lists, news groups, chat/instant messaging and of course Web Pages (it was conceived during the height of the dot com boom).
Ten years later Burger King launched a clever though rather cynical application on Facebook called ‘Whopper Sacrifice‘.
I wonder how hokey some of this stuff is going to look a few years from now…and to many people it’s becoming increasingly annoying now….
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The awkward ‘brought to you by‘ conversational tone of past generations of TV is increasingly being mirrored by ‘trying too hard’ social media mavens butting into conversations within social media technologies. I’m not even going to address the nonsense being peddled under the rubric ‘branding’ recently.
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OK … I , and many many many others, told you so.
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