Social Media is Different

This is more of a memo to those on the client side.

I get it. We get it. Social media is scary. It’s fast-paced, risky and unpredictable. You just want to have nice organised initiatives with clear goals, and obvious start and end points.

But social media doesn’t fit those rules. And we all have to learn that. Because effective social media is never going to fit into neat calendars with pointed dates and transitional movements from campaign to campaign. Because it’s social. And it doesn’t need your content. You have to prove to people why they should like, comment, share and subscribe.

There’s a well-known joke that using social media for free means that the people using it are the product for sale. There’s a lot of truth to that. But we’re a living product and we do determine our behaviour.

And social media is, well, social. Brands which post at particular times and respond in particular ways don’t tend to be that popular. Because good social media doesn’t just mean knowing your audience, it means understanding them and empathising with them. Having a genuine conversation with them.

So enough with the Turing test, brand approved, signed-off, squared-off model. Social media is about the genuine – so let it be a real conversation.

You might find that people like you more as people than as a company.

The Interesting Product Trilogy Part 3

It seems I can’t leave this topic alone.

This is more just a clarification of the underlying point of the previous two posts on motivation and the justification for advertising.

Why do you need to work to advertise boring products?

Why waste money advertising the mundane?

Both of those questions are themselves begging the question. What makes a product boring?

Boring is subjective. That is the issue that too many people don’t understand. What makes great advertising is not the ability to make something boring into something interesting. It’s the ability to make anything interesting. Because boring is not a meaningful term for a product. Boring is a limitation that we work around.

After all, what makes flowery smells exciting? Why do ads about fermented grain fill us with glee?

Beer is not a fun product just because it makes you drunk. That’s a leading factor, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. Products are interesting because we decide they are interesting. Sure, we are human. We have biases and tendencies. But ultimately our defining trait is our sociability. That is to say, our ability to change opinions and behaviours based on what others around us believe – or even simply what we think that they believe.

The point is, when dealing with dullness it’s important to remember that dull is not a scientific concept. It’s a human one. And you only have to be limited by it as far as you want to. Or as far as your abilities allow you to stretch it.

Why Put Toilet Bleach on TV?

Why waste money advertising things that just aren't interesting? 

These days people have a myriad of ways to tune out and turn off advertising for things that don't interest them. So there's a legitimate question to ask about the reasons for advertising the mundane.

This piece is effectively an extension of one of the thoughts behind my last post - why after all should consumers buy into things we don't buy into ourselves?

Sometimes it does have to be conceded that there are certain products and circumstances in which money spent on advertising is no longer worth the candle. It certainly may be the case that television is ceasing to be a worthwhile medium for more humdrum products. But that is not to say that advertising for them needs to be abandoned.

There is though a very important point here, which is that with TV ad effectiveness dropping, advertisers for less “sexy” products have to innovate a lot further than most to keep getting their message across.

This can manifest in highly creative art direction, which can act independently of TV and instead work with lower cost formats such as out of home or print (to further this point there are some great recent examples collated at trendhunter.com/slideshow/cleaning-product-ads). After all, in some ways the obvious solution to a less interesting product is to use your creativity to render it more interesting.

But equally, you can go what we might call the "Ogilvy" route, putting emphasis on facts and figures to drive home trust in products - and this is something that print and social media can do well, by capitalising on the higher dwell time and a broader scope for longer copy. Most especially with social media, that dwell time gives the opportunity to build a rapport with your audience, to build personal connections that just aren't possible in other media types. The power of that kind of personal connection is exactly the response we can give to those who would argue for the death of FMCG advertising.

The truth is that if so-called "boring" products can’t be advertised, nothing can. The heart of advertising is convincing people to buy into not only the product, but also the brand behind it, building a relationship between brand and customer. If the message is good, and the relationship is maintained, engagement will follow.

That is as applicable to toilet cleaner as it is to Toyotas.