(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...For some time now, those in social media have talked of authenticity. We’ve talked of transparency. We’ve said that organizations must engage their stakeholders and listen. They can’t just send out forced marketing messages. If they do, it will fail. They can’t be unauthentic or they’ll lose valuable trust.
We’ll say all of this in online discussions. On blog posts. In online magazines. In podcasts. On Twitter. At conferences. At TweetUps. Podcamps. Everywhere.
And you know what? I completely agree.
But we may be in the minority and it may be - at this point - impossible to do much about it.
I go back to two studies. One is in advertising/marketing and the other is related to PR/marketing.
The advertising study was conducted by Forrester. They found that 15 of 16 social media networking marketing efforts didn’t make the grade. The primary reason? Most of the efforts involved very little listening and instead involved shoving marketing messages down peoples’ throats.
The ad agencies and their client companies aren’t listening to us. The bastards. They ignore what we say. Could it be that most of them don’t read our blogs? Our online magazines? They don’t listen to our podcasts? Follow us on Twitter? Go to our conferences? Attend our TweetUps or Podcamps?
You bet.
But what they do have is the attention of our potential clients. So the agencies pitch that they know social media, they get clients, and then they run lousy campaigns. And they get paid to do this. Often big bucks.
But the point to remember is that they don’t give a hoot what we say.
The other study was done by Millward Brown for Manning Selvage & Lee and PRWeek and pointed out that about 1 out of 5 top marketers admit to having bought advertising in publications in return for favorable coverage.
Then is showed that 10% of senior marketers have developed implicit agreements with editors or reporters to get favorable coverage.
And finally, 8% have admitted to having their company give a gift to an editor or a producer to get a favorable story placed in a publication or program.
Those are bribes. Considered to be highly unethical by pretty much any governing body that touches the issue. PRSA, news associations, publishing associations. But it’s done. Why? It gets results. And results matter. Results get the bills paid.
Now, I’m sure most of you would agree that most ad agencies, large and small and most PR firms, large and small, don’t “get” social media. Hence the 15 out of 16 poor showing. These companies resist the new methods. They may say on their websites that they know what they’re doing, but it’s a bit of a fraud.
I look here in the DC area and we’ve got two events coming up that point to this problem.
One is the week long celebration of DC Adweek. A little more than half of the speakers work for publications. Three from the National Geographic. They’ve got Chris Matthews and David Gregory of NBC speaking. Steve Forbes. People from Business Week and the New Yorker. We’ve got sales reps from MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn to talk about social media.
I’ll rant about this on another post, but the point is where are the strategists?? They aren’t to be found here. Why? That’s because the organizers don’t really get it. They’re missing out on the best minds here in the DC area. The key companies too.
The other event is InterAct 2008. Top thinkers and doers in the digital arena. And it has, among their speakers, the DC people who are kicking ass when it comes to digital marketing. The type of people the local ad club overlooks.
But this is typical. And it’s happening all over the place. Those ad agencies and PR firms that don’t get it often are the lead agencies when it comes to business relationships that do incompetent work (as we see in the Forrester study) or have dubious practices (as we see with the Millward Brown study). Most clients are new to social media or haven’t taken a deep look at it quite yet. And quite, often the first one’s they’ll turn to are their traditional ad agencies or PR firms.
Yet these firms, the ones that many digital strategist have little interaction with, will never admit that they don’t “get” social media. They’ll forge ahead and position themselves as “experts”.
So, I’ll explain what I see the upcoming problem in How Social Media Will Get Screwed, Part Three.
Filed under: Abraham Harrison LLC
Loading ...
Leave a Reply