Marketers have few Facebook friends
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Last week’s column on the seven sins of social media generated perhaps the most polarised correspondence from readers I have ever received.
Opinion was split between those who passionately agreed with my column and those who hated every sentence and clearly resented me writing it. To some marketers, the article was the “voice of sanity” but to others it was the hypocritical mumblings of a “curmudgeon”.
Personally, I think it was one of the most important columns I have ever written. It was certainly exaggerated and rhetorical. But it needed to be because the biased and over-positive view of social media expounded across our profession embarrasses me.
Imagine sitting down to watch Match of the Day only to discover that the pre-game build-up is covered in great detail but the coverage ends seconds after kick-off. That is how it has felt to witness the social media revolution gripping British marketing over the past few years. We get a big build up from brands, their PR agencies and the media covering them, but absolutely no critical coverage of what the actual strategy ends up achieving or not achieving.
For the past three years, the marketing world has fallen under the spell of social media. It is presented, almost without exception, as the new frontier of brand communications. Marketers are bombarded on a weekly basis with countless examples of the growing use and popularity of social media. At the same time, traditional media channels are given less coverage than they deserve even though the opportunities and outcomes across radio, outdoor, sponsorship and the rest are proportionately far more important.
Yes, there are some astonishing success stories from consumer goods, B2B and services marketing. When social media works it is an impressive and impactful brand building tool.
But for every amazing social media campaign, nine or ten fail to justify their existence and the time and resources would have been better spent on other forms of communication.
A recent report from Deloitte noted that only 20% of the apps produced by major consumer and healthcare brands were downloaded enough to actually be measured meaningfully in its analytical survey. While Deloitte did record some remarkably effective apps, it observed that such successful case studies were “fleetingly rare” and likely to decrease in the future as the number of apps continues to grow.
This kind of more accurate and representative perspective on social media is hidden behind the biased and superficial coverage it usually enjoys. Time and again we are told about brave new social media initiatives being launched. What we aren’t updated on is how piss-poor most of these campaigns turn out to be in terms of their impact.
Best Buy’s then managing director of online DeVere Forster said back in January 2010 that Facebook and Twitter would be used to launch the new retailer in the UK. Eighteen months later what we aren’t told is that Best Buy UK has managed a paltry 15,000 Facebook likes and 5,000 Twitter followers.
Last year, automotive brand Seat was also bullish about taking its latest ad campaign into social media. National communications manager Rob Taylor even told Marketing Week he believed it was logical to “marry the obvious appeal of our character to the phenomenon of Facebook”. But nobody later records the fact that - despite sales of 30,000 cars a year in the UK - barely 5,000 people like Seat UK on Facebook.
And when Ben & Jerry’s announced it would drop email in favour of social media last summer, senior brand manager Vicky Willis justified the decision by pointing out that “developing friendship and a relationship” with consumers is key for Ben & Jerry’s and “social media is the best place for that”. But despite selling more than 1 million tubs of ice cream every month, only 5,500 consumers now follow Ben & Jerry’s UK on Twitter.
I could go on. But to do so would be both tedious and redundant. Let me instead make a simple point - where can you read about failed social media strategies? Where can we learn which brands did not make Twitter or Facebook work for them? Who else is suggesting that the money spent on social media might have been better invested in TV or radio or other traditional options?
And yet these are the critical questions that good marketers should be asking. Not because it’s cool or PR-worthy to question social media, but because the numbers rarely stack up. And even when they do, the correct approach of any decent brand manager is to review all the communication options dispassionately, critically and even-handedly.
How can a young brand manager possibly remain “media neutral” when the industry itself is inherently biased towards social media and against the more traditional options?
I admit my column last week was both biased and inflammatory. But it needed to be.
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Readers' comments (29)
Charlotte Clark | Wed, 3 Aug 2011 10:24 am
Hi Mark,
Can't say I enjoyed last week's column but I think you make some considered and valid points in this one. Good marketers should look more closely at negative campaigns.
Though it tends to be biased reporting in the mainstream media that makes us think that all social programmes have happy fairytale ending. I think bloggers tend to be a little more honest.
I think there's a big issue in what marketers have been giving back to their customers (essentially zilch). We expect our valued customers to review our products and take part in our zany, colourful campaigns without getting much in the way of long-term reward.
What we should focus on, in my opinion, is providing fantasic, relevant, engaging content that adds value to our customers lives. People forget that competitions just don't cut it in the long term.
Keep stirring it up! :)
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Nigel Sarbutts | Wed, 3 Aug 2011 11:00 am
Mark, I applaud your desire to raise doubts and my comment on your last article was neither passionate agreement nor a message of hate, I said that some good points were getting lost in a false argument of trying to assert that social media is inferior to traditional marketing communications. You can be neither wrong nor right on this because it's confusing two things that don't bear comparison.
It's like your previous confusion about brand and reputation (between an output and an outcome). Social media isn't media in any traditional sense, not least because there is the glaring difference that like brand v reputation, social media content is not under the control of the brand owner.
As long brand owners continue to think it is, the flow of ham-fisted uses of social media will continue.
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Mike Williams | Wed, 3 Aug 2011 11:59 am
As most dietary miracles only work "as part of a calorie controlled diet" - so Social Media should be viewed as additional tools in our marketing toolbox. They can augment the ways we touch, inspire or inform our customers - but they do not and should not replace other means. Use sparingly and use them sensibly.
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Neil Hopkins | Wed, 3 Aug 2011 12:03 pm
Mark
There's a simple answer to all of this.
The brands who try social media and "fail" (or, at least, don't achieve the stardom they hope for) aren't either:
1) Providing value to the customers who choose to friend/like/follow/subscribe
2) Telling the right consumers about it.
In my opinion, social media is a TOOL in the same way that a TV spot, radio Campaign, Press Release, POS, XM etc is.
Let's not forget the humble email list either. People subscribe to eshots to get something back. If they don't get it, they unsubscribe.
I genuinely don't understand why social media is seen as any different. Sure, it's more two-way than a TV spot.
But the core responsibility is the same, isn't it? I.e. Value and relevance?
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Tom | Wed, 3 Aug 2011 4:09 pm
I agree that social media should be considered as an additional channel to reach consumers. However the dynamics of social media are completely different, data transfer can be instantaneous and connect with consumers like never before. The attention it receives is fair as information transfer happens in real time and therefore needs continual attention. The question though, is does it fit with the brand and the customer?
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Sandy Avvari | Wed, 3 Aug 2011 4:38 pm
In your post, you mentioned a few UK social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter which have low follower counts. As a marketer in Canada, I wanted to point out that this issue is a common one for us too. For example, many consumers type in "Best Buy" when searching for a social media account, which directs them first to the U.S. corporate Twitter or Facebook page. Due to this, a lot of the fan/follower counts go to the U.S. accounts! I have seen a number of U.S. corporate Twitter/Facebook accounts suggesting that fans from Canada link to the Canadian social media accounts for special offers. This requires a good relationship between the divisions of the company and it could assist in helping the situation.
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Jennah | Wed, 3 Aug 2011 6:18 pm
I was going to say the same thing as sandy. Ben and Jerry's main account has millions of followers, because people search for the brand name and not the brand name's branch in a specific country. If people became fans of the company as a whole because of the campaign, it was still probably a success. While maybe they aren't getting totally region-specific info, they're still allowing themselves to be marketed to by the parent company. (To me, the problem is really these separate regional factions, which I question the necessity of.)
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Dirk Singer | Wed, 3 Aug 2011 6:24 pm
A few points in response:
1 - Yes a lot of social media campaigns have been failures. Just like traditional marketing campaigns. In both cases it would be fair to ask what the core idea was, and (crucially) what the expected outcomes were.
2 - Again, no one who is credible in this space believes in treating social media in isolation, which is how you seem to see it. Rather, it should be embedded into every area of a brand communications programme
3 - You mention examples of this or that brand which "only" had 5000 followers or likes. So what? What I want to know is - who are those 5,000 people and what did they end up doing?
4 - You leave the reverse question unanswered, what happens if you *don't* have a social media strategy. Maybe something for the next column?
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Michael Brenner | Wed, 3 Aug 2011 7:04 pm
Ha! OK, so by failure you say that 8 or 9 out of ten social media campaigns do not work. Compare that roughly 10% to Emails which are opened by less than 1% of the people they are sent to. Online banners have the effectiveness of lottery tickets and don't even get me started on TV ads and Direct Mail that waste more money than you can even imagine.
At the rate you suggest, social media campaigns are 10X more effective than any other options.
You see, the question is not about what is effective based on some arbitrary number. The question is: where do consumers spend their time and what can marketers do to reach them in a meaningful way that drives awareness and affinity for the brand.
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howie at Sky Pulse Media | Wed, 3 Aug 2011 8:20 pm
well since you obviously are smart and observant and I blog incessantly about the fraud that social media is presenting marketers and the fact I now have people like Ben Kunz and Geoff Livingstone beating the facebook is dying drum with me this is a great article Mark.
Fact is compared to traditional media like TV, Billboards, print, Search, and even Banner ads. Social is not selling crap. I run the numbers on major brand facebook pages all the time and come up with zeros.
BUT remember the Mashables, VCs, networks, Social media Agencies, talking heads who write books and give speeches all have their livelihoods threatened by reality. And so this bull shit gets perpetuated because they think if they lie to
themselves and clients enough times their lies will come true.
Social Media is a Revolution in Interpersonal Communications Technology. Notice Brands, Marketing and Media are not part of the definition of what Social Media is!
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