Social media: The experiential view
By Kai MacMahon, Digital Director, New York, Jack Morton Worldwide
Social media is now definitively mass market. It’s hard to find a trade publication that doesn’t talk about it, and not that hard to find characterizations of social media as the holy grail of everything from reaching priceless networked communities (say, moms) to political organizing. Big brands are on board (see GM’s Fast Lane blog or Procter & Gamble’s foray into pop music). UGC (user generated content) was, famously, Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.
Consumers are now able to talk back directly to brands like never before, and they’re doing so in unprecedented numbers. According to a 2008 Universal McCann study, 73% of active Web users have read a blog… and there are over 200 million blogs online, according to conservative estimates. Facebook and Myspace each get 115 million unique worldwide visitors a month. That’s a lot of eyeballs.
But what is social media, really? It’s a catchall for applications that are driving the evolution of the mass market Web from a flat, two-dimensional medium into a truly interactive exchange—applications like Facebook, Digg, Twitter or blogs. For some, the “man bites dog” potential of social media is a terrifying proposition. Brands have typically crafted and controlled how they talk to consumers. Suddenly consumers now have the power to talk back.
But in fact social media is part of a broader shift towards experiential brand-building that is happening both online and off. Smart brands are listening and responding and embracing just this aspect of social media: the capacity to engage audiences more deeply and thereby transform communication into dialogue… and experience.
At a very high level that’s why social media makes so much sense as a centerpiece of experiential strategies for building brands—because experiences, whether in a blog or a real-world brand environment, make people talk… and word of mouth recommendations yield extraordinary impact on key marketing metrics.
For example, talking to an advocate increases purchase intent by two to seven times depending on industry and brand, according to the Brand Advocacy Dashboard. And 92% of people trust word of mouth as the best source of new product ideas, according to GfK/NOP Roper. A personal recommendation will always have a greater impact, for two reasons: one, it’s qualified, delivered by someone known and trusted, not a faceless marketing message; and two, it’s a conversation, with unprecedented potential to convert eyeballs into brand enthusiasts.
Experiential marketing behaves the same way: the consumer doesn’t have to take the marketer’s word for it, they can interact one-to-one, touch, feel, experience. What could be more compelling than that?
The developments in the social space afford experiential marketers unique opportunities to continue the conversations they start—and that’s how we approach the opportunity at Jack Morton. Microblogging (e,g.,Twitter) live from events extends the audience and the potential to acquire and convert more customers over a longer period of time. Helping our clients set up social spaces to engage event participants deepens the networking and the connections they’ve already made on-site. The ability to solicit feedback, either live at events or in the days and weeks following presents our clients with a unique new channel from which to hear from their customers.
Something as simple as a blog—or a live experience--can also yield amazing insights into your customers. A key element of the social space is the ability to listen to what’s being said about you, to ask for insight and perspective. It reminds me of a marketer who said: “My job is to be the voice of the customer.” Social media and experiences both provide great platforms to hear and broadcast that voice. Use the information to your advantage, in the knowledge that whether you like it or not they’ll continue to talk. Shouldn’t you be listening?
JACK360° ©2009, Jack Morton Worldwide
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