Social Media Marketing- Where’s the Control Gone?

In the darkness of Earth Hour, I started to ponder the nature of Social Media Marketing and the role Brands and Digital Marketing Agencies play in controlling their messages. But I found myself coming back to the same issue; Brand and Marketing Agencies no longer control the message. They need to understand and acknowledge that in this brave new world it is near impossible to control the message. Social media marketing will (and is) having the Brands and Ad Agencies sit up and revisit their 101 subjects on models of centralization vs decentralization media control.

centalizedSocial media is shifting the power to define and control a brand from the Brand itself and Ad Agency to the individual or community. As each day goes by, the ownership of all brands are gradually becoming the domain of the user. Essentially, social media is providing freedoms and decentralized control for people to read, validate, comment, influence, engage and participate in and within online community’s. So from the perspective of a Brand or Ad Agency’s continuing to work with their traditional marketing approach within a dynamic online community, they find it chaotic and unmistakably inefficient as a channel for ‘pushing’ PR strategies and traditional ‘packaged’ messages.

There has been a number of very visible failures where the community being engaged by a Brand or Ad Agency has actually revolted and created an unexpected backlash. Not a good result when trying to ‘promote’ a more positive response but I think this comes from the execution of the campaign … using the ‘old way’ of centralized control where Brands and Ad Agencies have been able to control the message (via a well thought out PR and comm strategy) and in most part predict the outcomes.

But for the Brands and Agencies working with social marketing, they must understand the medium in which they want to work. This channel contains dynamic communities with members with the freedom’s to question and influence others with their posts and comments. A double edge sword for marketers. So does that mean we can’t use use social media as marketers? Of course not… it simply means that we must adapt and be aware of the dynamics of the community we wish to engage.

This is a new world for marketers and one that is still evolving. Currently, I believe many Brands and their Ad Agency’s struggle to understand this domain …. Maybe I should now consider the impact of ‘culture’ and ‘freedom’…. This has contributed to the Chinese Internet user having the highest average time for online engagement and game playing…. OK, will hold this idea over for another post….