Hello, we are social. We are a conversation agency. We help brands to listen, understand and engage in conversations in social media.

We’re a new kind of agency, but conversations between people are nothing new. Neither is the idea that ‘markets are conversations’.

We’re already helping Ford, Skype, Eurostar, The Economist, Absolut, Dunlop, Barclaycard and the WWF.
If you’d like to chat about us helping you too, then give us a call on +44 20 7576 5137 or drop us an email.

Who owns social media?

by Robin Grant in News on 17 March 2009 at 16:32

Following on from Mark Cridge’s comments in New Media Age last week, Joseph Jaffe has an inspired rant in this week’s Adweek:

Exactly where and when did the digital space earn the stripes and credentials to tackle the high roads of authenticity, transparency or peer-to-peer collaboration (just to name a few of conversational marketing’s core tenets)?

The PR business is really no better and no worse than the digital one when it comes to social credentials. With its claim of being champions of “earned media,” it tacked the word “relations” onto blogger, lumped it together with “media relations” and “journalist relations,” and somehow went unchallenged.

Whereas the digital space has very little claim to the “physical” world and hasn’t proven itself in the virtual space, the PR industry resides more comfortably in the physical world, with a superficial grasp of the digital space and an anemic understanding of the virtual one.

I’ve seen client after client duped into charging a digital or PR agency with-arguably-the most transformational opportunity we’ve been given in our professional lifetimes and the result is almost always a shambolic disappointment. From Sony or Wal-Mart’s fake blogs to the recent Skittles.com mess, the culprits are almost always digital or PR agencies.

There’s an acute and fundamental flaw in equating “social” with “digital” or “social” with “earned media.”

So what’s the solution?

If you’re reading this, you already know the answer…

Update: In response to the comments below, the title of this post is taken straight from the title of Joseph’s article on Adweek, and it’s pretty clear he’s not questioning the ownership of social media as a whole, but rather what sort of agency is best placed to help brands deal with it.

tagged: , , , , ,

  • my guess is that PR agencies will continue to win business, make mistakes, but learn along the way. n the meantime, best practise will be established by niche players like your good selves. then WPP will buy everyone.
  • No one does. Social media = the web. And that belongs to everybody ;-)
  • gedcarroll
    The smartest guys in the room with the best ideas and the client's trust. If you wanted to be really controversial you should have asked who really owns PR now.
  • We are social own this blog, but I own this comment. With Social media your actions are in the open - just because it's considered unproven doesn't mean you can leap in with wild experiments, without thinking things through first. Everyone owns social media - in fact the person who talks the longest get's heard the most.
  • Indeed, the marketing obsession with trying to brand control everything and therefore missing the point entirely. People own their own content, though if they post it in public forums it is available to be used and shared. I want to see companies thinking less about ownership and more about engagement. Unleash the brand shackles and let your community grow with nurture (support, advice, monitoring to protect integrity) and nature (the organic actions of your audience).
  • @Jonathan, @Nigel and @James - I've added an update to the post to make things clearer...
  • I don't think anybody owns it. Some PR companies have been doing great things and so have some Digital shops (some haven't). Where does a failed media buyer like Joseph Jaffe fit in to the picture I wonder?
blog comments powered by Disqus