Sunday, November 23, 2008

"Socialutions"

I like this blog - The Relationship Economy. This caught my eye because we've been talking about this in class. I found it on AllTop under Social Media:

Ok, the marketers are now signing the swan song: “It’s about relationships”.
So with all the emphasis on relationships where is the evidence that it hasn’t merely become a tag line or another marketing theme?

Let’s be real. A brand cannot have “real” relationships with hundreds of thousands or millions of customers. However, they can significantly improve those relations by leveraging the power of social technologies as a means of interacting with the customer more effectively and efficiently.

And this:

Businesses are just now beginning to examine the power of the social web for business purposes. However most approach it as a marketing mechanism rather than as a movement which requires a new management model if organizations are truly going to optimize “Socialutions”.

Management practices and theories have changed overtime as markets have matured and pressures for performance have increased exponentially. From the industrial Era through to the Information and Knowledge Era organizations have had to adjust their management methods to survive and compete. Now we enter into the “Social Era” and again management methods and theories must change to survive with the globalization of markets and interactions with people. more here

5 comments:

Unknown said...

"A brand cannot have “real” relationships with hundreds of thousands or millions of customers."

This is true, but I think it misses the point, which is: social software enables the people that work for a given brand to [dramatically] scale their relationships.

Jay Deragon said...

I would agree to the "scale" issue but it really depends on how you define a "relationships". brands using the trick of the trade to caputre you on the web and your information with slick and misleading ads does not build a relationship.

What say you?

Thanks for the reference to my blog.

Unknown said...

I'm not quite sure what we're discussing here ;-)

The point I'm trying to make is that "brands" are changing from inert facades that are optimized to communicate value propositions through one way media (packaging, print, TV). Brands are instead becoming the sum of all the information available about the product/service/people that work at the firm in question.

A brand can't be one thing that's said a million times to 100 million people. It's a million different things communicated among networks of millions of people, some of whom work for the company whose brand is being discussed.

Social software (FB, Twitter) enables those people who are agents of the company to interface with this network a lot more efficiently.

So, that's the long version of what I was originally trying to say ;-) To be honest I don't remember the original context of the quote, but I just want to emphasize that next gen branding=people (not media)

HTH

Jay Deragon said...

Your point "I just want to emphasize that next gen branding=people (not media)" is spot on.

People act and think differently than brands. Past PR and marketing has been focused on "getting attention" rather than keeping attention". You keep attention by relating to "people" in a way that is human.

Hope my comments didn't create confusion.

Unknown said...

Cool!

Ethan

ethanbauley.com