Two days ago I wrote a post about the 10 Commandments to Social Media based on the The Ten Commandments of Branding in the book Emotional Branding by Marc Gobe. The first commandment is called “From Consumers to People.” The point of the next 10 posts is to connect the c
oncepts in Gobe’s book with the strategies of social media marketing.
Let’s dive in.
From Consumers to People
Traditional marketing and communications has created a landscape of constant battling. The board rooms in advertising and marketing firms have conversations surrounded around the concepts of “attacking” and “owning” a particular consumer group. Times are changing with social media marketing as part of the overall marketing strategy. Marc Gobe gives reference to the concept of marketing battles:
“Terminology like “breaking down their defenses, decoding their language, and strategically to win the battle” is in my day-to-day experiences, still commonly used.” (pg xxviii, Emotional Branding)
We are now a community centric consumer base. We listen to our peers more often than the billboard on the side of Interstate 465.
Your consumer (client) is human.
They live. They breathe. They have families, small children and college grads. They love everything from American Idol to Dirty Jobs. They have lied, hurt, and been punished. AND… they buy.
You are no longer dealing with separate groups of consumers. You are dealing with hundreds of millions on people…
And they talk daily.
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Where is the bleeding edge as it pertains to marketing, advertising and this societal shift? I agree 100% with this post, your point and most of your ideals. But I struggle with where the majority of our society is and if they are experiencing this transition or if they are a few steps behind the experts and pioneers advocating these shifts of business philosophy. There are many different levels of a society and each is more or less embracing of change. A few examples that come to mind is the failing auto industry and cell phones. There are an abundance of technical advancements that each industry have sat on for years because their consumers are not ready to embrace them. The option for better and greater is available but the manufactures have repressed these advancements because the consumer is note “ready” yet?
Do you have similar concerns for the introduction of social media into our society? Do you fear that only a small percentage are ready to embrace it? Perhaps not the consumer or “people” buying, but rather from the businesses selling????
[...] 1. From Consumers to People [...]