Social Media or Advertising Campaigns?

11/12/2009

Just Thoughts for a Friday the 13th afternoon ...

Over the past few years I've asked hundreds of people what they thought social media meant.

  • Duncan Wardle's, VP Global PR for Disney, response was typical of most. - "Creating dialog with consumers."
      Women_whispering

Spent the last 2 days at social media events in Atlanta. Blogwell, complements of Gaspedal, and Atlanta Interactive Marketing, sponsored by an alphabet soup of Atlanta marketing groups: AiMA, AMA, AAC, BMA, PMA. The format for both was case studies which always makes for great learnings. I had the opportunity to see work from some big brands in a space that we mash-up and simply call "social media."

Although fun and creative, several of the strategies shared were not traditional social media in the sense that Duncan described. Let's call them Consumer Engaged Digital Events. The goal didn't seem to be for people from the brand to develop relationships with their customers but to provide a playground for customers to upload their own media photos, videos. Of course there was the proverbial for popularity voting and social bookmarks included.

Although these elaborate campaigns wrapped around peer-to-peer available conversations options, social media channels like Facebook and Twitter were used more as a vehicle to present messaging than conversations. Social media tools became the back drop to play against not the focal point. Think of it as putting social media in the role of as a support character. Ethics 2

Are these mash-up or hybrid campaigns "social media?" Are they digital WOM? Are they new media advertising campaigns? Does it matter?

Just Thoughts for a Friday the 13th afternoon ...

Consumer Engaged Digital Events

Nikon D500

Honda Musical Road

2010 Olympic Advertisers

Tide

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Comments

Social media channels were made to make the communication easier among people and create interaction. People do use it for the sake of presenting their messages more effectively and for the purpose of advertising but we still call it social media as it fulfills the main purpose of making the people interact. However, there were some rules defined for the use of social media and social media marketing but they are becoming obsolete.

Posted by: Catherine Turner on Nov 18, 2009 3:56:31 PM

@catherine - Thanks for adding your point of view. I'd love your thoughts on what you meant by: "However, there were some rules defined for the use of social media and social media marketing but they are becoming obsolete."

Posted by: Toby on Nov 18, 2009 4:05:45 PM

I wouldn't say there are rules, but an ever changing etiquette

Posted by: john on Nov 20, 2009 6:07:33 PM

Thanks for all the details.Since i use social media a lot for business purposes..it's great to read these posts.

Posted by: Website Design on Dec 2, 2009 12:35:05 AM

@Tuby - thanks for appreciating.

@John - John now a days such etiquette's have been developed which are socially unacceptable. Those unacceptable etiquette's are putting bad impact on the acceptable ones due to which social media is losing its importance.

Posted by: Catherine Turner on Dec 8, 2009 12:29:17 PM

There are not fix rules for social media marketing, you can do it in your own style ...
I will advise you to continue the use of social network communities to promote your business. Sites like facebook, twitter, orkut etc provide you the facility to communicate with general public directly and offer them your products.

Posted by: Amanda Jack on Dec 30, 2009 11:01:15 AM

The points were very nicely raised...and since I am someone who's come across the concept of social media marketing very recently ...your entries are definitely interesting:)and easy to relate to...


Posted by: NanditaKhan on Mar 12, 2010 6:27:06 AM

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