Socon2011 - Brand Journeys In Social Media
20th October 2011, ICO, London
When I spoke to Karl Havard there was one point he was particularly keen to get across; social media isn't new. And he should know. Having worked in the digital world since the mid nineties, Karl is something of a social veteran. (Though you wouldn't know it if you spotted him out on his lambretta scooter).
Currently, Karl is working as the Strategy Director at Wunderman. There, he works to create social media engagement strategies for clients such as Landrover, Nokia, Microsoft and Ford. Though this client list is certainly impressive, Karl doesn't believe in over-theorising social media.
“I find it quite funny,” he says, “how all the hype over the past few years has jumped onto the social media 'bandwagon', but it's just how the web started.” It's true; the internet was developed in a social way, but back then the socialising was done by technical whizzes not Joe Public. For Karl, the growth of social media has meant that the internet has returned to these social roots, but now everyone is able to get involved.
Currently VP of Product at Last.fm, Matthew Hawn has had a long career in the digital world. Starting out as a journalist in the 1980s, he switched over to the music industry in 1998. This meant that instead of teaching journalists about the changing platform of their work – he was teaching musicians and labels instead. “It was no longer about putting a record out,” he says of the time, “it was actually about being part of your fan base, being a direct to consumer business. It really shifts your perception when the audience talks back.”
Since joining Last.fm, Matthew has become very interested in the question of what he calls the “dependent” social web versus the “independent” social web. With “dependent” Matthew refers to the giants of the digital world such as Google and Facebook, companies who are slowly buying up more and more of the social space. With “independent” he refers to smaller social networks that work with a more specialist audience.
It's no surprise that IBM are forward thinking when it comes to the world of social media. Founded in the early part of the twentieth century, they've been consistent when it comes to staying ahead of trends in computing. Just last week they published a global CMO study, evaluating the way chief marketeers are reacting to the changing marketing industry. A change that is in no small part related to the growth of social media.
I talk to Brendan Dineen, Director of Demand Programs for IBM in the UK and Ireland. When asked what social media means to him, his answer is simple. “It's exciting,” he says, “I think for all marketers it represents an exciting opportunity.” This is an opportunity that IBM are working to take advantage off; both to better communicate their message to market and to better sense the needs of their clients.
Actiance is a company dedicated to the safe and productive use of real time communications, a category of course that includes social media. They traded under the name of FaceTime for a decade before selling the trademark to Apple and re-branding as Actiance earlier this year. I talk to VP of Marketing Sarah Carter about her thoughts on social media.
Living 6,000 miles away from home, Sarah has come to value social media more than most. For her there is no real distinction between the way she uses the medium personally and the way she uses it professionally. She tells me, “I cannot separate out Sarah Carter the individual from Sarah Carter who is VP of Marketing at Actiance.” This mentality is one that sits comfortably with the direction that Sarah believes social media is moving in. “Whilst at the moment the majority of consumers engage with brands,” she says, “what we'll see tomorrow is consumers engaging with personal brands. Therefore enabling distributed teams within the organisation to use social media is absolutely key.”
Currently Director of Digital Strategies at PR agency Ruder Finn, Ged Carroll is no stranger to the social world. He's worked with big names such as Yahoo, Flickr and del.icio.us and describes his remit as exploring “how digital in the widest meaning of it can be employed to deliver success in marketing campaigns.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly considering his PR background, when asked about what social media means to him Ged talks of it in terms of how it's changing the relationship between brands, traditional media and their audience. “Social media allows us to disintermediate the media,” he says. Though he's quick to point out that there is still a very real need for traditional media, social media allows brands to “develop a direct relationship with their audience.” This control can be hugely valuable to brands. “Kelloggs would never have had the opportunity to have its own television network and broadcast directly to housewives in the fifties or sixties,” he says, “now, they can do that.”
After eleven years working within marketing companies and agencies, earlier this year John Horsley struck out on his own to further his career as a self-described internet entrepreneur. Already he's got a great deal of digital experience behind him. John is the man behind the one hundred thousand member strong 'Digital Marketing' group on LinkedIn, and last year he was named as one of the top fifty most influential people on the internet by Fast Company Magazine.
Currently John is involved in a start-up called Ace-A-Metric, which he describes as a “social lead generation platform.” The company works to put advertisers together with advocates (otherwise known as individuals who have gained large followings online). This is an area of social media marketing that John feels is often overlooked. He thinks it's important for brands to seek out those individuals that are influential in their industry and build connections with them so that in turn those advocates can help spread brand awareness.
Professionally, Antony Mayfield runs digital agency Brilliant Noise and is the author of best-selling book Me and My Web Shadow. Personally, as I find out, he's a man fascinated by the power and scope of what he calls the social media 'phenomenon'.
When asked, Antony describes this phenomenon in terms of collaboration, sharing and communicating. His overwhelmingly positive attitude surprises me somewhat. By far Antony's most successful writing on social media is his book Me and My Web Shadow; dealing with personal reputation management online. I had expected that because of this he might be more wary of the negative side of the digital world. But as it turns out, Antony is a self-confessed optimist. “I think [social media] helps to bring out the best in people,” he says, “it helps us to get things done faster, it helps us to innovate.”
Something that Antony returns to a number of times is the idea of social media as being supercharged human social networks. He takes a fairly anthropological line here when he says “human social networks are what defines us a species, they're how we form our societies.” (Antony, you won't be surprised, has a degree in History). Channelling these human social networks into online platforms for Antony is simply to supercharge them, to create opportunities that wouldn't otherwise have been possible.
As well as CMO of review and recommendation site Qype, Richard Dennys can also be described as a dot-com veteran. “I'm old enough to have gone through the first dot com bubble in 2000/2001,” he says. He's been involved in projects such as AccountingWeb, TravelMole, BBCMusic, CraftBubble and TheLocal.com. I talk to Richard in Spain, where Qype are opening a new office.
Set up in Germany six years ago, Qype is “an online community of people who are passionate about customer service and reviews and recommendations.” This year has been a seminal one for the platform. They've hit 1.5 million users and are working to expand beyond their four major markets in Germany, the UK, France and Spain. Mobile is hugely important for the company at the moment. They have a mobile app which Richard describes as“extremely successful” to the tune of around ten thousand downloads every week. With these figures behind them, the challenge for Qype now is to build their revenue streams.
Richard describes Qype's strategy in terms of three things; social media, mobile and making customer service better. The success behind these processes and the revenue they're creating is, according to Richard, “hiring people who understand how to manage yield within any kind of internet site.” It's through understanding the value of each and every pixel on their site that Qype have been able to really work to increase their income.
Nick Bennett is a man with a number of digital achievements under his belt. Managing partner of STEEL London; NMA top 100 digital agency, a client list boasting a string of high profile brands and blogger for SocialMediaToday; Nick has extensive experience in creative social media strategy.
“It's not as difficult as it seems,” Nick says about this strategy, “...it's about being human.”He elaborates on this point; “social media is about people; it's not the channels, it's not the next fad.. it's about people and how people behave.”
Not only does Nick believe that social media has heralded a new era, he also believes that it's making big changes for brands. “People [are] being a lot more engaged and vocal about products and services,” he says, “you can't hide anymore.” To deal with this shift, Nick emphasises the importance of basing your social media strategies on people, not brand objectives. It's important to listen to your audience first, to really get to know them. Only then can you start to build a strategy which incorporates those brand objectives.
For a man that lists "making the world a little bit better" among his interests, Will McInnes isn't doing too badly. He's co-founder and MD of social media agency NixonMcInnes, he's a non-exec at Wired Sussex and he's spoken at TEDx Brighton about radicalising business. Only a “little”?
“What social media means to me,” Will says, “is the opportunity to be connected to people I know and people I don't know.” The word opportunity is one that Will returns to a lot. Another of his favourites? Change, and how businesses can adapt to it. “The future is radically different for brands and big organisations,” he says. For him, the real question is where it's going to lead to.
This is a question Will likes to think about sociologically rather than technologically. “Fundamentally we're humans and we've been around a long time,” he explains, “technology is changing us but we're more constant than the technology is.” In other words, we're just doing what we've always done on new platforms. Or “on steroids” as Will puts it.
Nokia is a brand that has never been afraid to hold it's own in the social space. No doubt as a result of this, they have a global audience of over seven million. Tejal Patel leads social commerce at Nokia. She's passionate about the accountability and ROI of digital, and during her time with the brand she's been working to prove the value of their social efforts.
Professionally, Tejal describes social media simply as "another way to stay connected with consumers." But, she continues, it's not just about staying connected. It's about relating to them, educating them and engaging them. “It's much more of a one to one communication than we've ever had in marketing," she says, "[but] it's not as sale driven as some other [methods] can be."
Internationally renowned speaker and CEO of PeopleBrowsr UK, Andrew Grill describes himself as “passionate about marketing.” He tells me he's been an advocate for using technology to connect people for around thirty years – through the current form of social media, amateur radio and even the original online bulletin board. “We've started to call it social media in the last few years,” he says, “it's really about communication.”
Professionally, Andrew describes what he does as helping brands to deal with the “pain” of social media. It can be a difficult transition to make, but Andrew advises brands to be honest about their aims. “Sometimes social media is the wrong thing to do,” he claims, “it all depends on your objectives.” Of course, such objectives can be varied. Some companies want to make more sales, some want to build their reputation, some just want a platform from which to tell people what's going on. For Andrew, it's hugely important to outline this objective and then find the best platform to achieve it on.