Today the question is similar but it is rephrased around Social Networking and Twitter. e.g. “We know we need to be on Facebook but don’t know what we should do”.
This question is echoed in the rhetoric of the Social Media Marketing gurus when they are out and about doing the talk shows and conferences. You know the kind of thing I’m talking about. “The market leaders seek out my advice because they want to become part of the online conversation are unsure of how they can achieve this. Should they interrupt or wait for an invitation?”
All of which suggests neither the guru nor the client have the foggiest idea of what advertising is really all about. After all who needs an invite when you’re the one throwing the party?
The real question is how do I advertise to these people when they are using this medium? And the simple answer to that question is you find out what people are doing with the medium and then you do it a lot better.
For example with Magazines and Newspapers you know that people are attracted by the pictures and the headlines to read the articles so what you have to do is write the best headlines and provide the best pictures so people read your articles rather than those in the magazine.
For radio you had to provide a better jive talk and jingle than those provided by the DJ and the Top 40. With TV you had to provide a better programming experience than the Soaps, MTV or the Cartoons.
With old style mass media the task was simple. You just had to provide a richer and more memorable than the content providers. That’s why advertising, be it print, radio or TV, was the most significant art form and cultural artefact of the 20th Century.
Forget Andy Warhol and Star Wars. When we are long gone it will be the 30 Second spot and the Fashion Magazine spread that will be in the virtual museums showing our great grand kids what life was like in the 20th Century.
OK let’s now look at how you go about advertising on the internet. Well you just put ads on the menu don’t you? Wrong! To understand how advertising works on the internet we need to take a step back and look at the personal computer.
When the PC first arrived on the scene it was memorable for one feature. Yes you could save files but the best bit was it provided you with one unique function that set it apart from other media. The undo button. Don’t like it just undo it. Make a mistake just undo it.
Obviously there was more to it than that. There was open a file, copy, cut, paste, undo and save (aka Ctrl OCXVZS).
Ctrl OCXVZS was the Personal computers users experience. That’s what they did with the medium. They may read magazines, listen to the radio and watch TV but with the PC they Ctrl OCXVZS.
The reason I know this is because I was putting ads on PCs well before the internet arrived.
When the internet arrived nothing really changed. The only difference was millions of these Open, Copy, Cut, Paste, Undo and Save machines were now connected together.
The challenge advertisers faced was very simple. All they had to do was to provide the PC users with a richer Ctrl OCVZXS experience.
Now let’s take a look at how the advertising agencies responded to the challenge of advertising internet. There’s Banner Ads, Search Ads, Video Ads. Basically a whole bunch of rehased solutions from Print, Radio and TV and TV repurposed for the internet. Guess what. They didn’t work and they still don’t work. Why? Because the audience is much too busy Ctrl OCVZXSing the free content to worry about the ads that have been placed on the menu.
This is what has made the whole dot com experience so far so amusing. The media moguls all rushed online without taking the time to understand the medium. They couldn’t see that all the audience was ever going to do was Ctrl OCVZXS the content. Even Google has only got a small part of the offering worked out (i.e. Open [Search for] the file)
So the message to anyone trying to succeed with online advertising today is very simple. You have to provide the audience with a richer CtrlOCVZXS experience than they are currently getting from Ctrl OCVZXSing the free content.
So just as Journalists have to learn to create signposts rather than content. Advertising gurus have to learn to create a richer Ctrl OCVZXS experience.
In both cases I suspect the professional and cultural barriers are just too high and it will take a new breed of internet savvy youngsters to redefine what content and advertising mean online.
With the advent of Mobile advertising the challenge can be defined in exactly the same way. If Games are the favourite pastime on the iPhone you provide them with a better gaming experience than they can download from anybody else in the Apps store. It really is that simple.
Now most mobile phone owners don’t have a smart phone but that doesn’t mean you can’t advertise to these people you just need to ask yourself what do they do with their mobile phones and how can I improve on that experience?
If you had read my earlier post “Media Platform or Fashion Statement?” then you would know the answer to that question is you need to provide these mobile phone users with better quality Bling for their phone.
Now back to social network marketing. What can we learn from the medium to discover how to advertise on the medium?
I undertook a more detailed analysis of Social Network Advertising in an earlier post AdBook, AdSpace and AdLinked. In that post I pointed out that
- Users want to communicate with each other, not necessarily with brands, and
- You need to ask yourself do you really feel comfortable exposing your brand in a place and at a time where you don’t control the message flow.
Having said that owning the referral process is the future of business communications and Social Networking is definitely a key part of influencing that process.
So let’s revisit the question of “What do people do when they use Social Networking sites?”
Obviously they are seeking friendship and recognition. The challenge you face is how do your provide them with a richer and more fulfilling friendship experience and provide them with the recognition they are seeking?
So next time your customers are online asking the question “can anybody find me somebody to love?” You’ll be there with all the right answers.
The fact is even before the internet arrived customers involved Brands in their social networking activities. Customers sought advice from friends on what were the best brands. Customers also bought T-Shirts with Coca Cola, Southern Comfort and Rock Bands printed on them. So social advertising is not a new thing. Nor is the desire by marketeers to measure and influence it. What is new is the idea that Brands can now be your friend.
This I think is a fundamental flaw in modern marketing. Brands are something you aspire to own and show off. Brands as friends? How Faux is that?
Offering your Brand as a faux friend isn’t the answer to the challenge of providing them with a richer and more fulfilling friendship experience and provides them with the recognition they are seeking.
The answer is simply this. Your customers are not looking to be friends with your Brand but they would like to be friends with their Heroes and that’s why the future social media marketing is about how Brands work with society’s Heroes and Social Influencers to provide customers with the online friendships and recognition they are seeking.
See also:
- Forget Freemium. Tomorrow we’ll be talking Me-mium
- We’re on the Road to Nowhere
- Let’s talk about me
- The Wisdom of Crowds
- Message in a Bottle
- Life at the speed of 140 characters
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Posted on January 23, 2010
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