garykoelling

Image by luc legay via Flickr

Here’s how it goes. When times get tough people get a bunker mentality. Lots of de-risking behavior.  Cover up. Cut costs. Consolidate. Anything that looks like it might not work out is set aside. Any exposure to dependencies, internal or external is scrutinized and minimized. Most anything ‘new’ gets a bullet. New products, ways of doing things and new ideas in general are eschewed in favor of the familiar.  Everyone is thinking this way, you and your customers.  No new spending. No new initiatives.  New? No.  Whatever companies or brands were making or doing before the downturn looks and feels highly experimental. Anything ‘experimental’ or ‘unproven’ makes a natural target in a down market. And for a lot of companies, social media or social technology will fall into the category of new.

So this is bad news for social tech / social media. Right? Not really. Although businesses may walk away from it, customers will embrace it. When shit gets sideways what do you do? Who do you call? I’m driving along on my way to work. I hit a patch of ice and woop, woop, woop, I’m in the ditch. What’s the first thing I do after I stop swearing? Maybe I call my wife. Or a friend. Or maybe I get the number of a tow service. Or maybe I talk to the guy nice enough to stop and see if I’m okay. Each of these is a social activity.

Customers aren’t walking away from Facebook or Twitter or Google Groups because times are tough. They’re embracing them. So what do you do?

First thing: Open up
You’re competing for trust. Not attention. Not dollars. Not even share. Right now it’s trust. It is the coin of the realm in a shit economy. One of the quickest ways to earn trust is to be as transparent as possible. Start blogging. Start tweeting. Be honest, especially when you really get the urge to spin something. “I don’t know” “I can’t say” and “I was mistaken” are all better than the most finely crafted PR response.

Share everything you know. At least everything you can. The only things that should be locked are the things that are private. The personal equivalent would be your medicine chest, your file cabinet - where you keep bank statements, tax returns, etc., and your underwear drawer. You know, private stuff. A great way for a lot of companies to do this is to open their API’s.  Application Programming Interface. It basically lets others connect to you by connecting to your data.

Second thing: Try lots of small things

The time of big ideas is over. A big idea is just an idea with a big budget. Not a lot of those to go around these days. Even worse, a big idea leaves no room for any other ideas. And the fewer ideas you have the less likely it is you’ll have a good one.

The next time someone says, “What if we...” your answer should be, “Cool. What’s the cheapest, fastest way we can try that?” There’s almost nothing that can’t be modeled, mocked up or hacked together quickly and cheaply. If you do it right, the first nine attempts will fail. If the tenth fails, move on. But keep trying. A quick note here; ‘small things’ are meant to be tried in low-criticality environments. They are also best tried by small groups of people (like four) who are passionate about the idea.  Otherwise, instead of quick, cheap failures, you get big, expensive, drawn-out failures.

Third thing: Be patient

Not only will you not get the hang of social media overnight, but your customers and maybe even your employees won’t believe it at first. It takes commitment. It takes time. Besides, what else are you going to spend? Money?

Michael Gass ,  who advises ad agencies on how to land new business, wrote “Four Ways Social Media is Changing Advertising Agencies New Business.” I won’t go into all four of them, you can read them in their entirety here . Anyway, three of the four ways seem harmless enough but the fourth one is interesting. But does it square?

Let’s take a look.

   4. The growth of new media mandates agencies participation. Social media is now mainstream, your agency’s credibility is suspect if it isn’t walking the walk, not just talking the talk. I can’t imagine ever advising a client to deal with an advertising, PR, or interactive team that doesn’t get social media. One of the best ways to demonstrate your agency’s participation is to incorporate new media into your new business program.

First, I’m not sure that the growth of new media, presumably social media, mandates agency participation. At least not the agencies I’m familiar with. I say this partly because social media isn’t the kind of media you can buy. Oh, there are plenty of places that will gladly sell you social media, but you are not buying social media, you are buying mass media.

Secondly, I’m not sure social media is mainstream yet. A show of hands. Who’s mom is on Twitter? Okay, now who’s mom has an email account? Interactive yardstick: Email = mainstream.

Third, do not fear the agency (advertising, public relations, interactive or otherwise) who does not get social media. That is, unless they tell you they do. Most of them don’t and many of them won’t for quite some time. It’s okay. Your ad agency should get advertising, which is enough of a stretch for most of them. There is still tons of value in creating great advertising and great brands. Good agencies know how to tell good stories - a timeless currency.

Lastly, if your agency has social media in their pitch deck, ignore it. They want to experiment and you don’t want to volunteer for that. Experimenting is fine as long as it’s cheap and low risk. That’s something you and they can and should do on your own, not on each other. Hell, it’s practically free. Just go to wordpress.com or blogger.com or tumblr.com or twitter.com and give it a whirl. The fact that it’s so cheap is what makes it such a phenomenon - anyone can do it. Here in lies the other reason I don’t believe agencies have a mandate to participate. The ‘social’ in social media means you get to socialize. Like a real person. Like when your agency takes you out for dinner and drinks - kinda.

Anyway, I’m not trying to take the piss out of Mr. Gass, I’m sure he’s a great guy. My point here, rather, is to bring some perspective to all this, to quell the panic a bit. Social media is important and it’s getting more important. But if you try to buy it, you’re just giving away the learning you’re going have to do eventually anyway. Worse, you’re paying for someone else to learn. Just feel your way with it. This is one of those instances where you kinda have to dress yourself. You have to wear your own clothes as ill-fitting as they may be. But if you don’t, if you dip into the agency wardrobe, dapper as it may be, it’ll show. And people will know. They’ll call you out.

Look, this is everyday stuff. Day in and day out. It’s going to challenge and change the culture of your brand. But you gotta stand in there and grow. Remember junior high. That’s what this is - ugly but necessary. You may not get it right the first time. Or the second or third or fourth time. It’s possible your company or your brand isn’t ready yet. Fine. The thing is though your agency can’t do it for you. You just have to try it. Try. And try it again. But whatever you do, don’t buy it.

Here it is http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23smms

Steve and I on the road again.

I saw on Adrants “Most Think Marketing Should Manage Social Media, We Think It's PR”
by Steve Hall on Mar-19-08. Not sure that it squares with my experience. Let’s parse:

Attending Advertising Age's Digital Marketing Conference, Steve Rubel reports attendee sentiment regarding "management" of social media, tweets, "Where should social media lie? Audience poll: 53% in marketing, 5% say in PR, 9% say customer service and 33% say some new division."

This is interesting. To me it says a couple of things. First, most people think (rightly I believe) that marketing can be sorta social, demented and sad, but social. And that quite a few people don’t know what to do with “social media” so let’s put it in a new department. I think that squares with my experience.