By Francis Moran
I understand very well that setting up straw-man arguments just to knock them down can be a useful presentation tactic and a powerful rhetorical device but at some point, if that’s the only way you can prop up your case, you run the risk of sounding as vacuous and intellectually dishonest as the bleating sheep in George Orwell’s seminal “Animal Farm.”
I’m afraid that’s the chief reaction I was left with following this morning’s Social Media Breakfast Ottawa where presenter Chris Greenfield of Toronto’s Clever Communications had an argument that regrettably distilled into the single phrase, “Old way bad; new way (by which I mean my way) good.” He got a lot of chuckles from the crowd and several tweets hailing him as a fresh-thinking skeptic merely by highlighting the most egregious failings of traditional marketing and communications practitioners and then showing how the brave new world of social media is totally different from how those dinosaur hacks operate.
Here’s the thing, Chris: Many — dare I say, most — of us old-school marketing practitioners understand very well that the opportunity to communicate effectively lives at an intersection of interest between the participants in the communications process. We have been working our entire careers either to build those intersections or to meet our customers at the intersections where they already gather. By definition, this means we must engage — one of your most repeated terms but not an alien concept to the rest of us — in a bi-directional conversation characterised by honesty, openness and the fair exchange of value. For most of us marketers, a social-media strategy is a potent new tool we add to a complete and integrated campaign when they deliver the ability to bring us to the intersections where our customers gather.
For all his social media eagerness, Greenfield seemed to be peculiarly derisive about one tool, Twitter, with an argument that simply left me confused. On the one hand, he told us that social media tools were superb at distributing content through trusted channels to where customers can actually interact with that content. On the other hand, he was critical of Twitter because too many tweets simply parrot content available elsewhere. Huh?
Maybe I started with a chip on my shoulder because I walked in a little late but in time to hear him say that “ad agencies are just like print shops.” They have made themselves undifferentiated commodity propositions that “aren’t partners (with their clients) any more.” Only social media agencies can play that role, apparently. Tell that to the countless stand-out agencies — and yes, Chris, I think there are even some in Toronto! — whose people are creating brilliant, compelling and breakthrough campaigns, many of them effectively deploying social media elements, that are creating massive value for their clients’ brands as well as their own.
Finally, I have to comment on one piece that I think exposes Greenfield’s whole proposition that what he is doing is somehow new and different. “We use 30-second equivalents” to measure the effectiveness of social media engagement, he said, suggesting that perhaps 10 minutes spent on a web site is equal to a 30-second television ad. For as long as I have been a communications practitioner, I have railed against the common and popular but downright wrong and misleading practice of measuring media relations results by calculating ad-value equivalencies. Now Greenfield suggests we take one of the very worst and most discredited practices in measurement and apply it to social media, an approach that fails to recognise that the objectives of the social media component of a campaign are simply not the same as the objectives of the television advertising component of the campaign.
Sometimes, both four legs and two legs can be good. Even Orwell’s sheep eventually found that out.
/// COMMENTS
No Comments »Joe Boughner
April 15, 2009 1:41 pmInteresting thoughts, Francis. I’m not sure you and Chris are as far apart in your take on the role of SM as you might think but I won’t profess to know you or him well enough to make that call. In any event, you both provided great food for though (at least for me).
As one of those who tweeted the presentation, I should say that I “hailed’ him as a “fresh-thinking skeptic” largely because of his criticism of social media agencies and practitioners, not traditional marketing and communications agencies. He’s a skeptic in the context of these events, which tend to get a little navel-gazey and full of ‘social media can solve everything’ rhetoric. I didn’t get the same takeaway as you did in that regard.
And yea, his comments on Twitter did seem a little odd to me but it seems to be one of those things that you either find value in or you don’t. Like every other tool in the realm, it’s just not for everyone.
Anyway, thanks for this post, it’s always helpful to challenge what we hear.
Francis
April 15, 2009 2:36 pmThanks for commenting, Joe. In fact, you beat me to the punch; I was planning on adding a comment to the thoughtful post you wrote on your blog coming out of this morning’s session.
I agree that there are good questions to be asked, not least among them the future of the agency model, which is part of what your post addresses; and by whom and under what circumstances should a social media campaign be implemented.
And ya, I got just the opposite take-way; in fact, I would have put Chris squarely in the social-media-can-solve-everything camp. Are you sure that was you sitting just in front of me? 😉 (And squirming down lower in your seat when he dissed Twitter.)
Ryan Anderson
April 15, 2009 3:25 pmYou raise some very good points here – but I do think that you might have missed the context of Chris’ arguments.
His comments against agencies were, I think, mostly directed at the media agencies who still operate under the same model of blasting a message in front of eyeballs that they did in the 60s when it only took three placements to target 80% of your audience. While he comes at it from a distinctly digital perspective, I know that his approach to strategy is quite media agnostic, and involves digital, analog, PR and social media.
The key takeaway for me from this morning was the need for a holistic approach to social media. In other words, it’s not about a Facebook page, or a Twitter account – it’s about fitting it into a campaign as a whole so that you can be where your customer is.
As someone who works alongside a lot of traditional agencies – I can vouch for the fact that their model is completely broken. Small agencies have it a lot better in that they can adapt and provide value, but the big ones are still addicted to the media model that they were built on. That’s not to say that the social media consultants are going to swoop in and save the day – I think most of them are full of it. But as clients begin to become more savvy about where their money is being spent, and more importantly, where it’s being wasted, budgets are going to shift from the big guys, to the more nimble companies that can look at a brand campaign as more than just a question of where to put the banner ads.
From what I know of you (which is little) and what I know of Chris (which is quite a bit, as I work with him often) I would be surprised if your personal philosophies were as far apart as you seem to think.
That said, I have no idea what he has against Twitter. I was sure to give him a hard time about it after the breakfast.
Francis
April 15, 2009 7:32 pmThanks for chiming in, Ryan.
If I get a third comment suggesting I misunderstood Chris and that he and I are philosophical soulmates, I just may have to eat my words.
With a side of fries.
Chris Greenfield
April 16, 2009 7:41 amHey guys, good to hear some discussion is arising out of the presentation yesterday. I enjoy reading the feedback and getting the perspective that people took away.
To provide some focus… I agree social media is a powerful tool, but it can not work in isolation. This was the whole point of a holistic approach and not a single facetted approach (posting a Youtube video or setting up a Facebook page and expecting real results) or something based on the latest fad (twitter – still not established its staying power yet as a long-term viable tool at least for marketing and advertising purposes).
Every social media tool has its place (including twitter) and its use but I think some practitioners (big agencies/media guys in general) tend to forget what they were originally built for and start abusing them or trying to force fit a message that doesn’t fit (to make a quick buck off uneducated clients). The point of the presentation was to expose those that are selling bad programs that don’t work. There was even some examples of good and bad approaches used to demonstrate this.
I’d like to see clients actually get some value for their marketing and advertising spend and there is yes some shops (stand-out shops) that offer that up but the large majority are still not. Those who are, the stand-out shops, like ourselves (I think this includes you Francis) we need to bond together against the falsehoods and the peddlers, as real professional practitioners offering real value to our clients.
I must say Francis that I think you and I are a little closer in our thinking then you might have taken away… I think you may have misconstrued a good deal of my points but that might be because you missed the setup or this tends to happen when you do a high-level presentation and don’t go into depth to fully explain your points. Or maybe you are right and I am wrong… don’t know as we are all trying to figure it out. I intended to start a movement to expose those doing it badly and provide some thinking, yes my thinking, on how social media vendors and clients need to approach the use of social media in their programs so it actually works.
There are just too many ill-prepared clients and too many false social media practitioners capitalizing on the fads and trends but providing clients no value in the end because their approach sucks.
I’d love to dig deeper into the points and see how close we really are in our thinking. I am still a little old school myself where I like to interact with people directly, wished you had grabbed me after the pres. But I guess I can buy the fries.
Francis
April 16, 2009 8:38 amOkay, it’s official: I must have misconstrued Chris’s presentation yesterday.
My visceral reaction was to a theme I identified that suggested everything that came before — dare I say, before Chris? — was wrong.
My blog post did put me in terribly unfamiliar territory, defending a marketing and communications industry of which I am much more usually a harsh, harsh critic.
I agree with Chris that there is far too much dreck being peddled to ill-informed clients at far too high a price with little or no quantifiable return. But among the things that get me out of bed in the morning is the realisation that there are many of us who achieve both creative excellence and value creation.
I’d welcome the chance to explore this with you further, Chris, especially if you’re buying the fries. Let me know when next you’re in my ‘hood and I’ll do likewise.
Joanne C.
August 22, 2009 12:01 pmWhat I have skimmed of your discussion is very timely. The company I presently work for is just beginning to incorporate social media into its marketing plans. I’m a bit old (50) and just a bit behind the curve my kids are on, and confess to being a bit overwhelmed by it all. As I listed to our newly-hired digital media manager’s overview of the services and sites, etc., my sense grew that we would need to ask the basic questions and get the answers before we designated large chunks of our budgets, like who is my target market, how many of them are using these media, how much are they using them, which ones are they using, to do what and how can I track the results, etc., etc.?
Francis
August 23, 2009 10:54 amThank you for the comment, Joanne; very nice to hear from you.
Your last sentence is exactly right — these are undoubtedly potent new communications and marketing tools, but their use must be subject to the self-same strategic considerations that have always ruled.
You and I may be a bit too grizzled for the social-media adoption curve but our well-seasoned skepticism will never be old-fashioned.