Social media and advertising
Back in April 2009, Mark blogged about how brands succeed in Social media
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Now that we’re an award-winning digital creative agency, it’s probably about time we revisited this area and took a look at some of the work we’ve done over the past couple of years that has helped shape our social media strategy.
Brands in the age of perfect information
Back in the ‘good old days’ of advertising, brands were sat up on a pedestal. They offered consumers interruptive one-way communication, and the brand itself dictated what it stood for.
Nowadays a brand exists in the stories told by its audience, and brands are learning fast that they need to compete for attention, offer a value-based dialogue to consumers, and be an active participant in the conversation. This means brands are behaving more and more like people, with listening and being seen to listen, both incredibly important.
Traditional broadcast media was (and still is) very good at communicating brand promise. With online, ‘saying stuff’ just isn’t enough. Brands now operate in a world of ‘perfect information’. In just a couple of clicks, you can learn everything you want to know about a brand through: online articles, blog and social media posts, customer reviews, and even the Tweets from employees.
In an increasingly participatory world, consumers are not just spectators, but sensitive and globally-connected participants, who are advocates and activists (both for and against brands). The strength of digital is that it allows brands and consumers to ‘do stuff’. Things like apps, widgets, communities and social networks all help fulfill the brand promise and build a community of consumers who are brand advocates.
To stimulate positive conversations, content is king, and a great way to pull consumers into a dialogue with the brand. A seamless digital experience that uses social media effectively will give a campaign a greater ‘half life’ and make assets work harder. A piece of content’s longevity is not determined by the media spend, but by the community that is built around it.
What it means to be social
With so many sources of news and information competing for our attention, these days many of us receive news first through social media channels. Consumers integrate their media consumption across numerous devices and platforms, so in order to be successful, content needs to be device agnostic and completely ‘frictionless’.
The easier content is to view and engage with – whether on a laptop, phone or touchpad device – the more likely your audience will be to engage and interact with it, and share it with their peers. With consumers digesting content through multiple media channels – often consuming social and broadcast media content simultaneously – the more effortlessly they can switch between formats and devices, the better.
When it comes to thinking about what it means to be social, we need to consider the following:
- What makes people want to share things?
- What does it mean to be social?
- Can content be inherently social?
In order for someone to engage with and share your content, it needs to be compelling enough for them to value it. Consumers value content that is entertaining, provides them with useful information, provokes an emotional response, or makes them laugh.
As David Armano recently pointed out, media in itself is not social. If you are reading an article, watching video content, listening to music or gaming – these are essentially solitary activities. It is the consumer’s emotional response to media content that makes it social. For example, if I read a book or magazine article that I enjoy, I will recommend it to someone. The act of recommending it is the social part, not the book or magazine article in itself.
Here at Saint, we believe that content is made inherently social when it is genuinely compelling and engaging. What makes it social is the audience’s reaction to it. The more of a stake you give consumers in where a piece of content goes, whether it’s a piece of art, a game, or a means of collaborative consumption – the more they will invest in it.
Be open with your content
As consumers move from being passive spectators to participatory stakeholders, who add value to your brand, you also have to look at how they can add value to your content. Social media is not just about brand engagement, it’s also part of your customer service provision, IT, HR, and even R&D. Some good examples of brands understanding this and using social media to improve the way they work include: My Starbucks Idea, Right Move or Best Buy’s twelpforce.
Here at Saint, in our award-winning Recode Decode campaign we offered the digital art community unique access to our content. Tasked with promoting the V&A’s ‘Decode’ digital art exhibition, we commissioned a piece of digital art from Karsten Schmidt and offered the source code for users to download and put their own coding slant on it.
Completed Recode works were not only shared across the internet, but also came to be part of the show itself, exhibited in the museum, and used in digital advertising on London Underground and at Westfield shopping centre. The campaign was a huge success for the show, delivering a massive ROI for the V&A.
Other campaigns like Can you draw the internet? and Twitter Knitter also showcase how integrated our approach to social media is here at Saint. From a user’s perspective, social media and sharing is so simple, a successful campaign needs to have a great idea behind it to have any chance of success. Social media just provides the medium for amplification.
When your audience’s creative response to a campaign becomes something newsworthy and genuinely interesting, you have reached marketing nirvana. By making groundbreaking digital ideas accessible through social media, users will value the content and engage with the brand in a way that provides clients with an ROI that vastly exceeds their expectations.
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