The 6 c’s of social marketing….

What is happening online?

suddenly everyone seems to be talking about “social media” and “social marketing”

The only multi-person, 2 way media we have (a very good talk here explains)

a “tipping point” seems to have been reached

So what do traditional brands need to do - to “do” social marketing properly?

we at DFF have reduce the complicated morass of ideas and concept down to 6 key principles…

Dodge ball has the 5 D’s…dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge

In social marketing we have the 6 C’s…..Communities,Conversations,ContentContinuityContext& Control…..

communities…..

the web in its original form was about communities….

users gathering around blogs and forums – talking, learning, chatting, interacting….and sometimes buying

but what we seem to have forgotten is it was never about the bonds you built between the brand and the users which were important…

they can easily be broken and replaced by a new favourite….

it’s the links we create between the individual users of a community which are marketing gold…

The Lonely Planet community is massive with a deep and powerful user base

Pampers have a vast community discussing all aspects of the pregnancy and baby care

Radio 1 is community obsessed - constantly pushing their users to talk to each other

The screw fix forums are well used by tradesmen talking to each other – sharing advice, tips and contacts

Conversations…..

social marketing can be summed up in 1 word - conversations…

a paradigm shift in the way people communicate

offline marketing is a monologue– the brand pushes a message

online communication is a conversation.

…and the variety of places where conversations take place is breathtaking….

Burger King used a conversation about the stupid number of friends people had on face book and built a “delete your friend” application

thousands of IBM’s employees blog – have conversations – about every facet of its business

Microsoft showed that it perfectly understood a conversations being had by teenagers across the world about lame family Christmas's here,

Lego stimulates conversations by “Lego freaks” (its words!) and allows them to help design new products

content…..

If conversations are “this” phase of the web - the next phase is about – content Content (data) is king - websites in themselves are irrelevant…..

in other words most slick, beautifully designed, flash based sitesare a waste of time…

….if the content isn’t fresh, timely, constantly updated and capable of being viewed on multiple different platforms

To put it another way…“Users want to be able to remix, mash up and reuse your content - however they want – it is this “architecture of participation” that is driving the web”Full article here(Tim O’Reilly)

New International are on record as saying mining their customer data and using this as a principle income stream is the future of their business here

the Obama election campaign released masses of video and other content - actively encouraging supporters to use it, mash it up, change it – and most importantly – distribute it (here)

The Guardian are rebuilding their online presence to ensure users can access their content easily and freely

the BBC are spending millions of pounds organising and categorising their content “semantically” – so everyone can easily share, remix and develop it

continuity

The web has been described as a “stream” – a constantly evolving, dynamic, fluid environment…..

It will not conform to carefully planned “campaign” based marketing thinkingColleen DeCourcy TBWA challenges marketers to “advertise at the speed of culture” here

brands who are winning understand they need to be constantly developing new ideas, reacting to news events, picking up on hot conversations…..

it used to be like this….

Now its more like this (design / idea by David Amano)the era of the “big”idea is over…..

Within 24hrs of the death of Michael Jackson – The Game, Chris Brown, Diddy, Usher, Mario Winans, Boyz2Men had written, recorded and released a song here

within 2 weeks of a user finding a bug in their flagship golf game - E.A. had turned a potential PR disaster into an online marketing master class

After “Dell Hell” – Dell has 17 community managers talking to their customers every day(Dell sells $250,000 worth of computers via Twitter every month – how’s that for a return on investment from social media?)

employees blogging for Oasis on an ongoing basis means site traffic converts 17% better and spends rose initially by 14% here

context…..

if you are what Josh Bernoff calls a “boring brand” (i.e. everyone who isn’t a band, video game or TV show) there is a new concept we need to introduce into our marketing thinking…..

“Borrowed relevance” is piggybacking on existing conversations about other – more interesting stuff - that links to your brand / brand values and essence

Identifying and tracking “meme’s” to do this then becomes a key marketing activity

The Cadburys Gorilla here – doesn’t have a whole lot to do with chocolate

BMW’s AR (augmented reality) resonated with its cutting edge, sophisticated, stylised brand values

Blendtec here – have had someone in a white coat attempting to blend a different consumer durable for 5 years…

the dove “makeover viral” - the opposite of what you might have expected from a cosmetics companybut it was something which transformed the way people thought about the brand here

control…..

by now its probably quite obvious….

“companies don’t control the conversation any more”Rupert Murdoch

this is the video of Dominos employees spitting in the pizzas

This is a screen shot showing how many version of Robbie William's latest album I can download for free…

And this is a screen shot of “dell hell” – a blog written by 1 person, in their bedroom, which nearly destroyed Dell’s Multi billion dollar business

Brands no longer control their own destiny online – and those that try – usually get shot down

Starbucks launched My Starbucks Ideas – their users now control what products they offer – good and bad comments are allowed here

Skittles took control to its logical conclusion and devoted their entire site to user generated content

Even Wall Mart are understanding they need to relinquish control – they’ve created a platform for customers to tell their story on their behalf

transforming your brand to exist within the lives of users online is the goal of social marketing

Thank you…