the ideas are way older than that - just read about advertising in the 60's - Bill Bernbach and co. In fact listen to any creative of any note over the last 50 years, quite a few digital practitioners are surprisingly ill informed about advertising and therefore believe all this stuff is new.

I could not agree more with the last quote you have, but this was Bernbach back in 59':

"It took millions of years for man's instincts to develop. It will take millions more for them to even vary. It is fashionable to talk about 'changing man'. A communication must be concerned with 'unchanging man', with his obsessive drive to survive, to be admired, to succeed, to love, to take care of his own."

The trick is now to be an interesting, funny, witty, informative, persuasive, charming human - everyone is human but not all of them have these qualities.

Hey Dave - thanks for popping by.

You're are right of course, we are wrong to forget the rich heritage that people like Bill Bernbach (quotations) and David Ogilvy (quotations) have left us.

However, they lived and worked in a different age, an age when mass media, especially TV advertising, was in its very effective infancy. Things are very different now (as this video helpfully illustrates).

Interrupting people with interesting, funny, witty, informative, persuasive, charming one-way stories, however human they sound, is no longer enough.

People expect to be able have conversations, and those conversations need to be with humans, otherwise they're not conversations at all.

If companies are to adapt and survive in this new age, they need to learn to do this wherever and whenever they communicate with customers and prospects.

That's the point that I was trying to make above (and I think those I quoted from and linked to were too). I have no doubt, that if Bill were alive today, he'd be saying the same thing. To quote the great man himself:

Word of mouth is the best medium of all

People can only create in their own era - Bill was revolutionary in his day - precisely because he believed advertising should talk to people, employ wit and charm and not patronise them (just look at the first VW ads and compare to another car manufacturer at the time). Unfortunately for Bill the media landscape at the time meant that this conversation could only ever be one way -
I agree with you were he alive today he would be embracing this era as a completion of what he was trying to achieve.
I write ads, so this is a shallow view from that perspective, but an analogy we use to help us write is this: Imagine we did not write ads but wrote jokes instead - today a joke can appear on TV, in a press ad, on twitter, on your iphone, in a app or whatever they invent tomorrow. However the most important thing is how funny that joke is, if it does not make someone laugh they don't pass it on, they don't like you. To write a funny joke is the skill, knowing about cultures, judging your audience, knowing the angles and knowing how you should structure and present that joke to get it to the right audience.

To write something good you have to think on human terms, and that is the common denominator of all really good creatives regardless of the era and media around at the time.

All sensible thinking. Nothing has changed really. We are still all human beings. There's just more ways of interacting with each other these days. Perhaps this is the start of us all coming full circle and back to the beginning, where a lot of the roots of advertising are.

However, as Robin points out, it's a rather different world today - so a lot of advertising theory feels wrong. We're a bit wiser these days as consumers and people being advertised at, from all angles.

Exciting times though. ;-)

I still give the cluetrain manifesto to clients. It is basically the book you need to have read if you claim to 'get it'. Dave's quote from Bill (as I like to call him) is also bang on.

The video you posted Robin of the evolution of marketing is of course a gross simplification, and in my view a bit facile. Take a look at Jeremy Bullmore's 1974 speech to the Kraft marketing board for a more realistic interpretation. I think it is on the Stauffenberger Repository. There never were any 'good old days' when people were gullible chumps and making them buy new stuff was a doddle.

I think the trouble is that there never were really any Hidden Persuaders, secret puppetmasters pulling the strings of life. It was and is incredibly difficult to get people to give a shit about your brand or product or service because they have a lot of other things to be getting along with thank you very much.

Not all of these people want to be having a conversation with you, or me, or any other shill that globocorp can throw at them, and while it does and will have its place, there are plenty of places where interrupting people in an interesting and charming way will remain to be as, or more, effective.

So basically, I think I am saying yes, I agree.

Hey Matt

You're right, perhaps there never were any 'good old days', but remember that people like Jeremy Bullmore (here's his 1972 speech to the Kraft International Management Conference) and Stephen King (here's his Planning Guide from 1974) were working around 10 years later than Bernbach and Ogilvy.

So, yes, interrupting people with stories that engage them still has its place (let's call this 'advertising'), but as I said in response to Dave, this is no longer enough.

But you get that - I think we're just arriving at the same point from two different directions...

Ah, I am honored to be in the presence of so many Volkswagen / BMP / DDB Alumni. Hi. Aus Liebe zum Automobil, etc.

Great area of discussion. Agree with lots that has been written already.

My starting point (as we seem to be quoting the canon here) is something C P Snow said about technology exactly 50 years ago in a seminal Rede Lecture in which he proposed that the gaping divide between the arts and the humanities was harming 'mankind's' abilities to solve the world's problems:

“Technology ... is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.”

Have always seen the sense in that thought. Today I see this manifested in one form in what I mangle into simplicity in describing as the rush towards the algorithm and away from art. Towards science and away from emotion. Towards the machine and away from the human. Frankly, I think the marketing and communications industry (in whatever channel you might name, but especially in the interactive world) is doing a shocking job of creating work (or producing devices) that talk to people as humans who have feelings and emotions.

Not only is a world of increasing relevance removing the chance encounter, the random find, the horizon-stretching, off-brief experience (think John Andersen in Minority Report), it's acting as a mesmerizing charm upon the world of advertising, as agencies small & large, digital and pretend-digital, rush to fill their ranks with analytics, digital planners, producers, and anyone else who can talk the language of the algorithm (zero waste + absolute relevance). What's being squeezed out is the artist. And it's artists who have always possessed the ability to talk to - and profoundly touch - people as human beings.

When was the last time you really laughed or cried, or thought differently about the world and your place within it, as a result of seeing some advertising, digital or otherwise?

It's time to stage the arranged second marriage of the world of art with the world of data, and create content we can describe not as merely a utility. but as magic.

brilliant blogversation going on here...

totaly agree with the points here and on jopkins' blog. it is not about technology it is about truly realizing the P2P (people to people) opportunities that the web offers businesses.

it's not digital or ad or new-marketing agency that clients need today - it's relationships and conversation specialists that can help them make their business sustainable. Because sustainable brands promote sustainable relationships, and we all know that sustainable relationships create sustainable business.

re 'markets are conversations' - while there is plenty of sense in the cluetrain lets not kid ourselves that it's revolutionary. flip the phrase and you get 'conversations are markets'. its still right wing corporate/business driven thinking.

Don't think that's the same the other way round - try it like this: 'markets should be conversations' yes. 'conversations should be markets' don't think so

I think there are 2 prongs to the same thing here.

1. marketing is becoming more conversational in it's nature due to 2 way media and increased consumer-to-consumer conversation

2. businesses are finding they can have direct conversations with key stakeholders (trade, consumer, potential employees. etc)

point 1 is interesting and leads us to all the cool user generated type campaigns that we are seeing these days. I wouldn't call it conversation as such. It's more analagous to a brand hosting a party online, which is cool, and kind of relevant to the brand, but not really conversations about the brand. Like when a beer brand sponsors an art exhibit and we all go talk about the art. Agencies that undrestand brand and social media are good at making stuff like this.

point 2 is more fundamental, but nothing to do with marketing and is best not done by agencies of any kind. Agencies can never know the business as well as clients, and therefore can never have the most meaningful conversations with key stakeholders. I am being slightly OTT here, but real good conversation about a brand is not a marketing function. It's isn't PR, it isn't advertising, it's just honest, deep meaningful chat from people who are closest to the brand and can add the most value.

The most valuable company blogs are formed when the important, useful people inside a company are motivated to blog. They then learn how to do it really quickly, and don't need an agency, except to possibly guide them slightly.

Soon, 'getting' social media will be second nature to at least a few people in every business, at which point I am not sure what a "conversation specialist" will look like, or how they will get clients to pay them.

But generally I agree with what everyone else is saying.

If companies are to adapt and survive in this new age, they need to learn to do this wherever and whenever they communicate with customers and prospects.

Why then, does the above seem to extremely difficult for companies to actually put into practise?

No one said it was easy. But we are here to help...

I'm not saying it 's easy but it should be less painful.

HMV, Blockbuster etc. Very very slow to move - lots of pain later on.

Poor management? or management being judged on the wrong performance indicators and therefore innovation of emerging channels is way off the radar?

There are probably two communications books that were prophetic. McLuhan's Understanding Media which is still breathtaking given it was first published in 1964 and of course The Cluetrain manifesto which we all really wanted to be true 10 years ago, but had to hold our breath for a while before it manifested itself as brilliantly prescient.

That doesn't mean both are flawless, but the sheer volume of predictive accuracy gives them a slightly mystical halo which they both solidly deserve.

However, the notion of markets as conversations is completely contextual (everything is contextual) and was (still is....) a brilliant summary of the anthropological traits that drive much/most of commerce and life.

But let's be clear. Markets are transactional micro and macro models of human interaction, and here's the point that the Cluertrain authors were brilliant enough to articulate; conversations too are transactional. It’s a two way street to be absolutely perfick as the Darling Buds of May once showed us.

Furthermore even though we talk about the ability to just be human and refrain from carpet bombing each other with marketing jargon through what is evidently (to me), a completely new dialectic (based on ancient principles), the hard truth is that many of us often don't know how to engage in a conversation because to be really good at it requires incredible patience, lots of concentration and a paradoxical lightness of touch so as to make it fun, informative, comforting or constructive. That’s just for starters. The list is endless as are contexts.

We talk about ‘The conversation” as if it's not rocket science but here's an heretical view I hold. We think humans are terrific at communication. We think that the evidence shows quite clearly that throughout the entire animal kingdom, the human species is the finest and most sophisticated of species for communication because we get those featherlight nuanced nods of humour about prophylactics and hey, we've got the internet too, which if continuous partial attention is anything to go by could well be something akin to extra sensory perception. But let me park that ticking time bomb to one side for another day/blog.

The reality is that the human species is borderline cretinous at communication. A quick look at the 20th century and its two global wars (everybody fighting everybody) plus say Gaza and Zimbabwe for good measure should be sufficient evidence of our astonishing ability to, say the wrong things, misunderstand what was said, take offense, read intent that doesn't exist, put pride before pragmatism, or pragmatism before pride when necessary.

Point is we've always been rubbish at communication, and the internet seemingly adds a depth of understanding that was never there before. Or is it just me that would quit smoking or TV in order to keep my internet connection?

But to suggest that a conversation is easy...... Fuck me.....

Try striking up a conversation about the most pressing problems of our time with the next person you meet.

As I said. Everything is contextual.

Its a great conversation and brilliant points being made.

What I find interesting is how we can find metrics within this to prove the point even more solidly to the luddite agency types.

Its allll good. :)

re metric and ad agency luddites: its the clients that need convincing. most will still take the press ad with 1% OTC or some shite, cos its a known. i'm not saying its right but a load of us naval gazing is a long way from the coalface. IMHO. now quick gimme some of that kool aid.

V interesting stuff. But I still think we're missing something. And that something - as previous commentators suggest - is rather older than Doc & co's meisterwerk.

Think we'd all benefit from examining our ideas about "conversation" and "talking". I suspect we're still stuck with ideas about human communication being based in the transmission of bits information between folk.

Unfortunately, most human-human communication is "phatic" (about the relationship) and "analogic" rather than "digital" (gestural rather than about transmitting information). Even if your mouth moves and intelligible words come out, that's largely not the important bit in shaping your interaction with conversation partners. Ditto, text-based communication. Wierd, I know, but ponder it for a bit.

I suspect this is part of the explanation why we still struggle with making good the brilliant metaphor of markets as conversations that Cluetrain uses. Also, it's another way of explaining Adriana's argument for humanizing the conversation.

Let's be clear about the conversation bit and what it really means and then we might make a bit more progress?

Herdmeister is spot on, as usual, about what I am trying to get across. My presentation didn't come on the back of Cluetrain actually, though of course as a groupie, I would have been influenced by it. But that's a long time ago, long enough to build on it. And in any case, Cluetrain is being updated as I type this..

The presentation was delivered to a roomful of 'communications professionals' of a rather large healthcare company (a double whammy as they are regulated out of any meaningful communication with the outside!). The slides are loosely based on this blog post: http://www.mediainfluencer.net/2007/09/power-eq... plus the context of the audience etc etc.

It was meant to reflect my experience of the (social) web and of working with comms depts of large corporations. My point was that cutting through all the 'comms skills' BS we find something much older and much more basic than what marketers, PR, agencies etc peddle as communication or, more recently, conversation. I never claimed to have 'discovered' this, merely stated the obvious - i.e. communication is older than the industry that purports to be expert at it. I make a similar point about marketing and advertising here: http://www.mediainfluencer.net/2009/02/nightmar...

I don't care about the industry/agencies/marketers/social media wannabes etc etc making sense out of all this. I care about individuals and their ability not only to create, publish, distribute, collaborate, share and all the juicy web goodness but ALSO about their ability to ignore interruptions, impositions by others and to resist imbalances of power (market or otherwise). That's why I love the web and do what I do (cue VRM).

If you use the term socail media you're not speaking human.
That is all.

If you use the term "socail media" you're not speaking English. ;)

Social Media is the wrong term full stop. It has become a floppy inaccuracy that breeds suspicion and hopelessly unhelpful 'strategies'.

Any human two-way exchange can be considered a 'conversation' whether digital or analogue (Watzlawick et al) - imbued with contextual meaning. Quite simply from a businesses perspective it is about sell - or die. The conversations will always be there, so if you want to 'sell' stuff - be useful + interesting and have a great product. You will never create sufficient potent positive conversations about crap products that increase sales. Crap products get talked about more than great ones (allegedly) and if a company chooses to interact through technology (always thought the telephone was quite a good medium but there you go) then it may mitigate to some effect. Mitigation isn't a massively compelling reason to run a so called social media campaign (and they are not campaigns of course) - PR used to think it did this really well.

These conversations take place with or without a company being involved and those purporting to create strategies that drive conversations are selling snake oil in many ways - sorry Robin. if a business chooses to join the conversation (and it may well be a hygiene factor in future) then this should be labeled under 'customer engagement' with new measurements such as Return on Involvement being the first step. When folks work out the link to profit through engagement and brand equity measurements then I guarantee there will be fewer freeloading 'social media experts' around and the feeding frenzy and poor thinking will cease. Amen.

Having said all this - Robin sent me a Twitter (practicing what you preach right?) and here I am adding to the conversation. Difference is - I am not selling anything and just because I am using technology doesn't mean i am fueling Social Media - I am simply engaging.

Really good discussion.

I'd disagree with the snake oil comment, but it's easy to see why so many agencies etc are being branded that way. You can't create a conversation - what you can do is find existing conversations, and make it easier for people to engage and collaborate with whatever you do by building it into the product, and indeed the product creation.

Where a specialist internally (like myself), or externally (agency) is valuable is in being able to demonstrate effective ways to find, allow, measure and reward conversations, involvement and engagement, and provide the technology to let it happen - even if an organisation has developers and the will to converse they are likely to find it more efficient to talk to someone who can explain and set up a the tools for them than spending time and money experimenting to try and get it to a relatively effective stage.

As Anthony said, the best conversations are generally between those deeply involved in a product or service and the people interested in it - but allowing that to happen without any help, advice, support or suggestions on how to do it effectively means that 9/10 times it'll go tits up quickly.

And Mitigation can be very valuable..look at Dell for example, Kryptonite, or Ford defusing two damaging situations.

I'd agree that a lot of communication is difficult, and non-verbal etc...and that's why I get a bit annoyed when people seem to see the current incarnation of Social Media and the current Social Networks as a final transformational chapter....

The important thing is to see this as an early stage in transforming what businesses can see as people valuing/responding to, and working from there on what is core regardless of technology.

Work out what matters. Work how where the value can be created. And allow people to be as involved as they choose to be.

Dan, Ford maybe not the best example. they are in the shit big style. all the social media (ahem) experts and they still cant sell a car.

@eaon That's a bit extreme, don't you think? The entire auto industry is down - with very few exceptions - but Ford managed to increase its market share in four (4) consecutive months. Hmm. I think we're selling some cars.

As to some of the other comments overall, yes, mitigation can be one intended outcome. But it's not the only one. Awareness, changing perceptions and informing are others; and having other influencers activate their networks is also realistic.

In the end, it's just people talking to each other online. And Edelman's Trust Barometer consistently tells us that people inherently trust someone like themselves over any corporate entity, including advertising or PR.

If we can learn to engage with our customers again - at both a micro and macro level, as @charlesfrith mentioned above - it's not that hard to achieve those goals. But to keep doing the same thing over and over, albeit in a different medium, is insane. As Hugh McLeod's famous sketch said: "If you talked to people the way advertising talked to people, they'd punch you in the face."

Scott Monty
Global Digital Communications
Ford Motor Company

Scott -- interesting and valuable rebuttal. Something I've wanted to ask you for a while: where do Ford's dealerships fit into this brave new world? To the end-user, their dealer is Ford's representative. To Ford (I imagine - based on experience with other marques) the dealer is effectively a kind of "customer." Is this something that will need to change now?

To me, dealers are an inextricable part of the process. No matter what we do well at the corporate/brand level, if someone has a negative experience at the local level, that's going to color their perception of Ford. To that end, we'll be working with dealers this year to train them in both traditional and social media, giving them the tools and access to advisors as they need it.

I'm convinced that the more forward-thinking dealers will be able to grasp this and survive this difficult downturn. Stay tuned.

Tend to agree with Anthony here - 'conversations' that take the place of advertising aren't about the brand - they are hosted by it. The witty, charming, informative bit is how people are invited there in the first place. To continue the party metaphor, if you have great night out with a bunch of people round someone's house, you remember whose house it was before you remember each individual conversation you had there. Some of the attributes of the guests rub off on the host by virtue of their hosting. On the other hand if someone barges in uninvited halfway through and starts talking about themselves for 30" you'd think they were a dick. No matter how funny and informative they thought they were being. As Dave points out, ad agencies have always been pretty good at talking in a human voice, it's just now the voice should be an invite rather than shouting.

Also think that how agencies take account of this is a very different skill to joining in conversations that actually are about brands, which fall into two camps - Love and Hate. To me this really is basic customer service - If a brand screws up, they either sort it or they can't really justify their continued existence. That's maybe the paramilitary wing of VRM, but it is such an easy thing to do, why bother being in business if you don't?

I love the idea of a paramilitary wing of VRM...

Do we get uniforms?

All media will be social. There will be conversations around all kinds of content, whether you like it or not. And the conversations won't be in designated or controlled areas, they'll be wherever people want them to be. I agree with Anthony that it's the interesting people inside organisations that people are interested in engaging with, not the companies themselves. Agree with Charles that conversation isn't always easy. And I agree with Dan - this is not just about communications, or social media, or whatever you want to call it - it's about how companies engage with their customers. The one thing that the world lacks right now is trust. This is one opportunity to redress some of that balance

All media will be social? No it wont. I frequently blank monologues. Would you like a URL?

No. I didn't think so.

Actually I would. Conversation online is not just in comments, it's distributed and a link to someone's post is a contribution to the conversation. Comments are often a noise, as I learnt from the days of political blogging.

Also, if you bother to publish your thoughts under your persistent identity, i.e. on your own blog - it becomes a better contribution to a conversation than a mere comment on someone else's.

As for media being social? Who cares when the term 'media' and term 'social' are both being redefined on the web... ask 5-10 years from now.

Here's your url.

http://branddna.blogspot.com/

I long ago gave up either reading or contributing for the monologue reasons I mentioned.

I see you're getting into the conversation dialectic. As for who cares A. We do (ha ha) It's our job.

Nice to see you here.

The Cluetrain is a modern marketing/communications bible - a guideline of how businesses can improve communications with consumers. So in answer to 'why do companies still not practice effective communications with their customers when it is so obvious?' this is like answering a question such as 'why do individuals still commit cheat, steal, lie when they too know of the consequences?' It is all down to human action, personal principles, motivations, beliefs, education, desires and the list goes on.

The job of an agency as Robin rightly pointed out is that 'we are here to help'. If we as social media/digital pr advisors understand and follow the cluetrain guidelines then we can educate and assist clients in getting it right. On some occasions we can advise on the best approach however if this does not fall within a client's personal and company agenda then it falls on deaf ears. But as long as the agency has pointed out the correct methods and remained 'true' to the cause rather than 'take the money and run approach' then at least he/she has done the right thing. This I hope reinforces the actual subject and underlying message of this post "...something we try our best to help our clients remember…" as essentially this is an agency blog and if referencing the Cluetrain: an open stall within the online market place.

None of this is difficult to comprehend and to most it should be playground tactics. As a client I would attend networking events where social media types hang out and assess how effective they are at communicating with others - then we would see if they are good at advising others on how to be human!

@charles not sure I understand your point. My point was about the socialisation of media, not about monologues?

Agreed. Sorry about that Nigel. Just trying to squeeze in a last comment before bailing out the other night. It was inspired from a conversation I had where a friend was talking about watching a DVD or something and although quite articulate was floundering for the the right words to the describe the media exprerience he was seeking and I chipped in you were looking for a monologue which seemed to hit the spot.

However I agree fully that what we are witnessing through the internet is pretty much a socialiastion of pretty much anything if it so chooses to be.

Sorry if I came off a bit haughty.

The truth in the points can't be argued with. The fact that it needs to be said implies that there is a significant amount of people who've missed the point and this needs to be vocalised. That last point is kinda scary

Scary or an opportunity?

Ben Malbon - I could not agree with you more. Unfortunately at the start of online marketing no 'artists' were present (too busy writing films) only suits selling clients the 'holy grail' of advertising - 'we now know exactly how many people looked at your advert!' - Common sense and RISK that essential ingredient to making any form of interesting content went out the window there and then.
The point I was trying to make - badly - was that whilst I agree whole heartedly with what the Cluetrain manifesto my issue is that it is seen as something new and revolutionary (probably not by the writers) when in fact it isn't - yes media is different today but the key point is PEOPLE have not changed. The enemy now as it was back in the 60's is bad advertisers who do shit ads and talk to people as if they are idiots and don't have conversations - Bernbach etc revolutionised advertising and fought against those crap advertisers in exactly the same manner as the Cluetrain points out today - they just did not have the brilliant tools we now have to take it any further - therefore for those who cannot see past the media and technology they wrongly bracket Bernbach into an 'old' way of doing advertising which given you are talking about the past is ridiculous. On a different note I agree (much to my reluctance with Matt Law) most people do not want to have a conversation with a brand (there is far more interesting things to talk about being made by more talented people). When is the last time you had one with an advertiser instead of trying to create one? Me personally the answer is hardly ever. The only time I want a conversation is if something is wrong or I need something doing. And this is where all of this 'conversation' bollocks can get up its own arse. How annoying is it if a brands communication and 'conversations' are brilliant and engaging but when you want to actually talk to someone to say change your handset or query a bill you then go through to an automated service! Most 'normal' people would call us arseholes for that bit of strategic insight and they'd be right.
Anyway it is a bit stupid to eek out such arguments becuase the fact is if we all believe it is about being 'human' then just as you cannot talk to everyone you meet in the same manner (if you want them to do something for you - either listen or buy something or like you or introduce you to another friend) so every client problem needs a different approach. Forget rules the only thing you can do is try to hire people who are good at creating interesting conversations in whatever media you use, which as Ben points out should be more of these 'artists'.

Sorry, terribly formatted copy in my last post - how can I expect any human to read that...

Wow, what an incredible debate.

I too found the Cluetrain Manifesto incredibly inspiring when I read it first, and I frequently dip back into it, despite the fact that I find its proselytizing tone a bit irritating. It's full of statements that are difficult to disagree with but actually very challenging for clients with businesses that are *extremely* hierarchical and often some way off from being liberated by the hyperlink, to embrace. It's almost aggressive in it's "wise up, you dumbass" tone - full of 'you must do this and that'.

I guess its intended to be very challenging - and to be fair, its power and enduring appeal is derived from its Lutheran-esque '39 Articles' style. One can easily imagine Doc Searls nailing it to the Door of the Schlosskirche in Wittenberg. Like the Reformation in fact, the real Cluetrain revolution is much more intricate than its neat and rousing slogans/articles make it seem. Like the Reformation, there are complex interlocking socio-economic, political and technological drivers. And weirdly enough - to take up my brother's point - there is a spooky parallel in the perceived "decline of magic", caused by the new humanism of 'algorithmic man'.

Whatever. I think I might have become a little diverted with the Reformation there (that's how I tend to think and speak, so you really can't complain!).

I think we need to be accountable storytellers: people with the empathy, humility and compassion to win a client's trust and the insight, skills and rigour to deliver. Remember, we're asking them to trust us with the future of their businesses - not just to agree with us on an abstract point of view about how the world might be changing. Our job is to make them successful, not simply to make them loosen up, take off their ties and start 'speaking human' - that is not an end in itself. We have to find the right business contexts for them, and to demonstrate the benefits. Sure, we'll be impatient with what we perceive as old-fashioned and retarded thinking - if they could do this sh*t themselves we wouldn't have jobs - but it's probably more about taking them on a journey of smaller steps, and demonstrating at each stage that the world hasn't ended, revenues are safe and everything still works (hopefully better, otherwise there's little point in changing it). We need to sell them on the benefits, but also demonstrate the value for real. Sometimes that might mean being clear about the cost of NOT doing something as much as the gains involved in doing it. I agree with Dan Thornton (above) that some some of the social media thinking we see suffers from its own kind of group-think. We are *not* about to create a collective hive-mind any time soon, and Jesus and the Saints are not going to come marching in.

With one or two exceptions most of these comments are very advertising/marketing orientated. We didn't need The Cluetrain Manifesto to tell us that two-way communication is what's important. It's what public relations has been about for decades and their is a wealth of practical and academic literature pointing to it.

The main thing that has struck me about practising 'social media' or 'word of mouth marketing and communicaitions' is that the terms are a bit of a sham. We use them as a short hand so that people who've been sucked in by the hype can identify us. In reality what we're doing is practising real public relations (two way communication), rather than the rather simplistic media relations that too many advertising people frequently confuse PR with.

There's always going to be a practical requirement for interruptive messages delivered to largely passive audiences, delivered thorough broadcast media. No media has of yet fully displaced any previous media. Video hasn't yet killed the radio star as yet, and social media is not going to kill the broadcast star, as much as some of us may like that to be the case.

What is of course true is that the past 10 or so years since the Cluetrain has seen a radical shift and rise in the requirements and possibilities given to us by interactive, two-way communication and conversation, which we are all rabidly enjoying participating in.

So whilst traditional mass communication requirements aren't going to vanish, the likelihood is that conversational social interactions are going to become far more if not the most important form of interaction in the years to come. Traditional media will be continually changed and forced to adapt as a result.

Looking at the discussion around the recent T-Mobile ad is a fine example of this. Whilst it received a degree of criticism of not being authentic, that would be missing the point somewhat. It did for me a very simple thing which was to 'fictionalise' a real event, or genre of events, and in doing so packaged up and made more palatable for a grateful and welcoming more passive mass audience.

What it created was a convenient middle ground, 'based on a true story', that has no doubt allowed that particular piece of communication to bridge both worlds in as relevant and enjoyable way as possible. So whilst I wouldn't want to necessarily celebrate to actual packaging up of a story in this type of way (as Iain tried to point out recently), it is an interesting example of how we're all going to have to fumble our way forward as we explore and experiment with what might work.

As Dave suggested if we don't bridge the gap in some way you're left with the traditional lot off making up stories about brands in ads, potentially being completely contradicted by the real life human from the company chatting away on twitter. Polarised disconnected approaches are simply not going to work.

I have a book coming out in Europe in June called Mastering Web 2.0 and I have a whole chapter on this topic...about corporations becoming Corporation/People. This is so crucial...and so hard for so many companies!!!

The authenticity of a brand's role is increasingly in question. Corporates posing as individuals within social networks is scary. "Sock puppet reviews" from competing developers in the iPhone app wars is one example. Today on Twitter a fake follower led me to a pyramid scheme that Fonejacker's George would have been proud to try on. Or Iain's recent post about the all-seeing meerkat. It's nasty. A form of grooming, for naive and unsuspecting consumers...

hey robin.

i'm like the old guys from the muppets on this one (slater and waldorf??). it just gets me going on a rant (http://www.contentandmotion.co.uk/blog/social-m...).

social media isn't media.... its just social. and i think 90% of the world's in violent agreement.

and i violently agree with you.

and i never want to talk about it again. never. ever.

yours

waldorf

: )

At first glance I want to applaud this. At second glance there are so many weasel words in the comments section alone that (I suspect) they make a mockery of everything that's being said here.

Too many people are saying "social media", "conversation", "human" and "authenticity" when they mean -- what exactly? To quote Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Also - there's a lot that is very wise -- but the interesting wise stuff seems to run counter to what's being said in the article.

I need to look at this all much more closely. Analyze it. I'll come back to it.

“When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.”

anyway.

being 'social' is about trying to understand the non-commercial motivations that drive people to do stuff and talk about things and build relationships and that.

which is a problem for companies because they have commercial motivations and are attempting to leverage social ones to drive commercial interests.

that said, the right to speak and get a reply is now demanded - so cluetrain style companies need to cater to this, understand they don't get to control other conversations like they can control what goes in their own, and realise that if they want people to talk about them they should do things that are worth talking about.

and remember to be nice.

FX

Agree with the way you frame the conflict: yes -- to do better marketing we need to understand "social" motivations, and that what we and our clients do often seems antithetical to these. Let's put that to one side.

That the "right to speak and get a reply is now demanded" seems more problematic to me. The word "now" for example: I grew up watching consumer watchdog and right-to-reply programmes (boring as they were.) Customer complaints departments (now called "customer relations" with any luck) have existed for as long as mass-produced brands [no evidence supplied].

We all know that people haven't just started complaining or sending in suggestions or calling up and asking for stuff. So why do we pretend that this is the case? I'd suggest that it's because -- until now it hasn't really been seen a marketing issue. It's been an operational thing -- now it's a brand thing.

Why? Well -- because the complaints are much more public, for one thing. Because they pile up on Amazon reviews, or smart customer activists have better tools at their disposal than they did (iPod nano flaw/Kryptonite.)

But also because in the past people complained to the retailer (who gave them a new widget, or a voucher, or a refund or whatever.) Because circumstances are beginning (for a variety of reasons) to kill off the relationship between retailer and customer.

Because the web meant that all the brands we work for suddenly developed a public face. At first they thought it was going to give them a competitive advantage, or reduce overhead on their call centres -- only much later did they realize it was a new overhead. I recall, in the very late nineties, a client asking us if we could please stop his customers from emailing his company.

Ultimately I agree with you Faris -- if brands want people to talk about them they should do something worth talking about. What worries me though is that this something should really be embedded within the product or service they sell -- and not something as peripheral as their marketing activities.

This in turn puts a massive strain on the relationship with their agencies. In the long term, I think everyone in this comment stream has an idea of where we should end up. In the short term, circumstances are such that it's remarkably hard to innovate. As a result we focus on what we can achieve -- cosmetic activities like making campaigns famous, or creating value-add services -- without really addressing the issues that make it so hard for big-brand owning clients to "get it."

Does this mean that we're contributing to the very problem we're trying to solve? I hope not. I hope that we're involved in a constant evolutionary process where little by little we help the brands that want to change direction do so and set an example for the others.

"What worries me though is that this something should really be embedded within the product or service they sell -- and not something as peripheral as their marketing activities."

I don't understand this bit. Is this an aftermath of the Nike+ work? Wherein all agencies now think they have be product designers and add utility to everything. Its might be relevant for some briefs, but not all. By a long way. This then boils down to make better products have better services and let word of mouth do the rest. What happens when everyone is as good as everyone else? When say all jeans are the same actual quality? How do you get a lead on the the other brand - marketing.

If there was a way to retweet what Faris wrote, I would, but I'd do it, but without the Jerry Yang lowercase. (See what I did there? A Twitter reference in the first sentence. I’m sure I score extra for that.)

I was really happy to see Faris mention ‘control’ as a real issue to contend with. What's still missing here is a debate about the signal-to-noise ratio, as the pile of stuff we have to sift through is getting bigger every day. Invent a good sifter, and you’ll retire early.

In the meantime, let me add to the noise:

One of the fun parts of language (part of being human) is you can call things whatever you want. So, if you want to call something “social media”, for example, that’s just fine with me. The trick is for people to understand what you're saying and for them not think you're a dick for saying it. I'm obviously struggling with that at the moment ...

And Matt, you're right, we should all keep handing out copies of Cluetrain and use it as discussion a guide with clients and colleagues until they get it. FFS, it has been a DECADE!

And since it is late (or early) and I get snarky 'round this time, I thought a bit of multiple choice might be in order ... So here goes … What happens when you put a bunch of adver-mktr-twitr-blogr-planners in a room and ask them to think about human communications? Do they:

a) Google quotes from admen of days gone by and then quote said admen using their first names (as if they knew them, Don Draper style) in order to establish their credibility? (Seriously folks, I'm just kidding.)

b) Happily mix and match human comms theory with marketing manifestos without ever mentioning that brands and products aren't human and people know that.

c) Not come up with anything more interesting to say that hasn’t already been said by the aforementioned admen of days gone by and The Cluetrain Manifesto.

d) alloftheabove

Hint: There are no wrong answers.

So, how’d you do?

Don’t you all think this would be more fun around a table with a few drinks? Robin, many of the folks who have commented here are in London, and if you wanna help organize something the first round is my shout. Twitter: iboy

~G~

i think faris (as he often does) has nailed it. this debate probably wouldn't exist, or at least be as heated, if we thought about people as humans rather than consumers, and brand owners thought about the larger world and just not their category.
the other useful point of reference in all this is the stuff dan ariely wrote about in predictably irrational around commercial and social grammar. because marketing is the social function of a business entity to fulfill a commercial goal, it is perhaps unsurprising that so often they get it wrong, or at least, come across as alien rather than human. it's those companies that have an ambition beyond business, a social mission not just a commercial proposition, that will succeed in a more 'human' business world.

one final thing - can i join iain and the others in the plea to ban the phrase 'social media'. it's getting more useless than the concept of the brand:)

robin, sorry it's taken me so long to reply to your request to join in the debate.

if anyone has worked in customer service or retail - the vital thing is to communicate with your customers. regulars, new customers, complaining customers and those annoying 'browsers' who just wanted a quiet place to make their phone call five minutes before you close up.

so, yes marketing is a conversation, and therefore social.

However, just as a square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not a square - being social is not necessarily marketing, it's expressing yourself, or being informed.

being well informed is vastly different to sounding well informed - for one it involves a hell of a lot more listening.

So effective use of social media tools for marketing -should mean that you listen more, say less!

maybe why so many traditional corporate marketing types find it all a bit confusing...

Some brilliant points here.

Just to pick up on something really important that Gareth said:

"it's those companies that have an ambition beyond business, a social mission not just a commercial proposition, that will succeed in a more 'human' business world."

I think that we can apply this same sentiment to our private selves, so that: "it's those *individuals* that have an ambition beyond business, a social mission not just a commercial proposition, that will succeed in a more 'human' business world."

If we, as professional marketing folk, have an ultimate desire to make things better then we need to walk the walk in our personal (non-day job related) interactions with companies too.

I believe that we have more power to enact positive change as consumers who happen to be professional marketers than we do as professional marketers who happen to be consumers.

Why? Well, because as consumers the best companies will listen to what we have to say.

And what we have to say shouldn't be a cry of FAIL when we suffer in the face of terrible customer service. We should apply our professional thinking to the situation and proactively suggest practical changes to the organisations who let us down.

There is no clocking off from making marketing more human.

You know when you're trapped at a party with someone who won't stop talking about themselves...yeah, it kind of feels like brands are that someone.

The best conversations are the ones that are engaging. Conversations with a lively back-and-forth (like in these comments). Conversations that are based in active listening.

Being nice never hurt either.

Sorry I'm late to the party Robin but better late than never I suppose.

I started off not having that much to say because I agreed with most of what is being said here but then I figured I actually did.

Brands being nice, as Faris said, is important. No doubt. But sometimes one has to think of the commercial practicality of an intervention vs. the individual need for personalised interaction with a brand. It isn't impossible for brands to be nice - I'm thinking of something like Orange Rock Corps or Starbucks Pledge 5. But every product by every brand does not lend itself to this, for example cigarettes or alcohol or even deodorant. What's important then, when companies cannot present a human face (we've got to the stage where not only is outsourcing cheaper than having customer service assistants in the same country, but automated systems beat them both), is to lend themselves/their name to something that is nice instead - maybe a charity, maybe an event, maybe subsidizing something for their customers, maybe just making them smile - with whatever means they have at their disposal. Whether this is through creating a social network for customers that centres around a particular activity (the Nike 6.0 Loopd community) or creating an ad like Gorilla or Eyebrows that makes people smile, is largely irrelevant.

The general public doesn't really have the time or inclination to engage in this sort of debate (which I admit I enjoy as someone who works in the industry). They just want to lead happy, uncomplicated lives. And they like people, things or companies that help them do that.

Period.

It would be wrong to say a market is a conversation because it sets you up to think in a static way. As a marketer, now Experience Planner, I know how dangerous the concept of a market can be... it induces "group think" so I never associate the market as a conversation... Markets are containers of similar conversations, but it's still the individual conversations defining the market and you must keep that front of people's minds.

Here's a blog I posted last year on the subject covering off my views: http://neuroexperience.net/2008/06/07/are-you-h...

M.

I think this is a real interesting post about being human, that should be considered http://blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/2008/12/...

Speaking Human is not necessarily being nice at all. Some of the most attractive, successful humans are obnoxious, belligerent and opinionated.

Speaking Human is embracing that contradiction, being willing to alienate some in order to stand for what you believe.

Being 'nice' is akin to being invisible...

probably why so many traditional corporate marketing types find it all a bit confusing...