Social Brands: The Future Of Marketing eBook by Simon Kemp

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socialbrands!
the future of marketing!simon kemp

the most successful
brands don’t just predict
the future; they deﬁne the
future on their own terms.!
2

SocialBrands:TheFutureOfMarketing
You have permission to print, post and share this
document for free in any online or ofﬂ...

SocialBrands:TheFutureofMarketing
The world’s best brands don’t just predict the future;
they deﬁne the future on their ow...

StartingOutRight
The key to delivering returns on marketing
investments (ROMI) is to set clear business
objectives at the ...

As a result, marketers often set short-term, sales-
related objectives for social media, instead of
thinking about the lon...

DeliveringLonger-TermValue
However, deep audience relationships offer a
different kind of value. Once brands achieve a
cer...

The Sociology Of Choice

Humans are highly social creatures, and it’s
important to remember that people don’t make
choices in isolation.
Our decisi...

Conversation Drives Compensation

TalkIsCheap,ButConversationsHaveValue
Humans are inherently social beings, and we like to
share our discoveries and experi...

the brands that drive the most
favourable conversations are the
brands that will achieve the most
favourable ﬁnancial outc...

It’s the conversations between people that matter
most, though, and these are not necessarily the
same conversations that ...

17
products
customer"
service
pos activity
advertising
packaging
recruitment
Everything Should Drive Conversation!

Building Brands Worth Talking About

The implications of this are huge; for example, when
it comes to a ‘content’ strategy, we should not start
with the usual ...

stop fuelling
conversations about
content; use content to
fuel the conversations
that really matter.
20

ConvertingToConversations
That inspiration can come in many forms, and only a
small number of those catalysts need to orig...

ask yourself:
is it really worth
talking about?
22

ROI Becomes Return On Interest

2
build communities, not platforms

SocialIsABehaviour,NotAChannel
Most people visit social networking sites to connect
others: to stay in touch with friends ...

PeopleBeforePlatforms
People connect around the personal, social beneﬁts
the technologies provide, not the functionality i...

Single-Serve Audiences

Sadly, when audiences move on from incumbent
platforms – and they invariably do – marketers
quickly lose out.
The investme...

From Platforms To Communities

We need to stop thinking of social media as media,
and instead focus on the motivations and behaviour
that drive people’s ...

use new technology
to add new value,
not just to interrupt
people in new ways.
32

From Eyeballs To Heartstrings

CommonUtilityForCommunities
The secret to building ‘migratory’ communities is to
understand people’s wants, needs and desi...

build strategies
around passions,
not platforms.
35

3
all your marketing must add value

Too much of today’s marketing relies on elaborate
spectacle to divert people’s attention. Brands have
come to rely on inte...

shouting
for attention
rarely wins
people’s
hearts.
38

From Interruption To Interaction

BetterEngagement,BetterResults
The secret to better marketing is not about ﬁnding
more efﬁcient ways to interrupt people. ...

in the future,
marketing that
doesn’t add
value will simply
be ignored.
41

From Ads To Added Value

MarketingMustBeAboutThem,NotYou
This shift from interruption to added-value
interaction will impact media too.
Publishers...

engage people
around their
passions, not
your products.
44

4
go mobile or stand still

MobilePhonesAreEverywhere
Google tells us that more people around the world
now own a mobile phone than a toothbrush, whil...

47
north america
latin america
africa
middle east
western europe
central &
eastern europe
asia paciﬁc
103%
114%
71%
109%
1...

Although it’s difﬁcult to measure these things
accurately, data suggest that more people around
the world now subscribe to...

49
mobile subscribers
television viewers
4.5 billion
4.2 billion
VS
Today’s Media Reality!
Sources: mobile subscriber da...

MobilesAreOnTheMove
Of course, many people around the world still rely
on relatively basic ‘feature’ phones rather than th...

51
Q4"
12
Q1"
07
Q2"
07
Q3"
07
Q4"
07
Q1"
08
Q2"
08
Q3"
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Q4"
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Q1"
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Q2"
09
Q3"
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Q4"
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Q1"
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Q2"
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Q3"
10
Q4"
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...

Perhaps more tellingly, people are increasingly
emotionally connected to their phones too.
70% of people in China say that...

InvestmentsToGo
On the contrary, mobile has a big part to play in the
evolution of TV, by enabling and promoting
phenomena...

If It’s Not Mobile, It’s Not Going Anywhere

Mobile offers a very different kind of audience
experience to TV. The latter is still largely a
communal device; a centrep...

57
93%
52%
70%
55%
40%
44%
81% 80%
43%
84%
58%
67%
62%
59%
39%
71%
75%
43%
45%
17%
15%
26%
11%
8%
13%
15%
7%
China
South K...

Because of their size and ﬂexibility, mobiles have
also become many people’s most important
devices, following us to the b...

Car
PublicTransport
Travelling
LivingRoom
Kitchen
Bedroom
HomeOfﬁce
InStores
Friend’sHouse
Outdoors
School
Work
Restaurant...

1 in 3 smartphone
owners would rather
give up sex than give
up their phone.
61

Social By Design

ConnectingPeople
Mobile phones started life as a truly ‘social medium’;
they were always intended to be a means of
connect...

Crucially, the importance of social networking on
mobile devices continues to grow.
819 million people accessed Facebook ...

J.D. Power found that American smartphone users
spend an average of almost two hours per week
using social media apps, whi...

Marketing Implications

FiguresOnTheGo–GoFigure
Mobile doesn’t just offer new opportunities to drive
attention and engagement though; it is increa...

68
China
Australia
India
Vietnam
Thailand
South Korea
Philippines
Indonesia
Malaysia
Japan
55%
24%
26%
15%
23%
37%
23%
26%...

in the future,
strategies that
don’t come to life
on mobile will never
come to life at all.
69

So how do marketers make better use of mobile
apps? The answer doesn’t need to be about
building native apps.
Indeed, even...

Simple principles for better mobile marketing:
1.  Deliver value: utility, entertainment, or social interaction.
2.  Harne...

SociallyMobile
Take advantage of the fact that most people use
their mobile devices in some kind of social context,
whethe...

5
the rise of the comms leitmotif

RethinkingTheModel
For the past few decades, marketing has been
dominated by a mass-media paradigm.
During that time, we’v...

The result is communications that have been
distilled down to their lowest common denominator:
a selection of sound bites ...

A quick look at deﬁnitions reveals our fundamental
error. The English word ‘communication’ evolved
from ‘communicare’, a L...

communication isn’t
about what you say;
it’s about what other
people understand.
80

Brands As Social Entities

Before we can build a shared understanding with
our audiences, we need to gain greater clarity of
those audiences’ motivat...

most brands behave
like new-born children:
entirely egocentric,
and totally oblivious to
the needs of others.
83

However, studies have found that the traits we ﬁnd
most appealing in other people are those that are
socially oriented:
!...

BeNatural
Popularity is more pull than push, and trying to
become popular through hollow ﬂattery and false
mirroring is un...

leading by example
impresses people
more than screaming
for attention.
86

BeConsiderate
People appreciate a good listener, so don’t talk
about yourself all the time. Take time to hear what
your au...

BeGenerous
In order to build trust, give before you take. What
does your audience want, need and desire? How
can you help ...

in order to
build trust,
give before
you take.
89

BeTrue
Stay true to your ideals, but don’t force them upon
other people. Strength, honesty, humility and
kindness are far ...

BeSocial
Conversations are as much about social discourse
as they are about the sharing of information. Avoid
an over-reli...

For brands, the last principle – Be Social – is
perhaps the most important when it comes to
building enduring success.
Of ...

The Art Of Conversation

It’s important to assert here that you can’t ‘win’ a
conversation. Conversations are about a mutual
exchange of value; if ...

To this point, let’s borrow a section from a Wikihow
post entitled “How To Stop Talking About Yourself”:
Respond to questi...

thetruespiritofconversationconsists
moreinbringingouttheclevernessof
othersthaninshowingagreatdealof
ityourself;hewhogoesa...

Change Is Coming

OneRingToRuleThemAll?
It’s becoming increasingly clear that the ‘matching
luggage’ approach associated with Big Advertisin...

One of the reasons why this approach is rarely the
best option is because lowest-common-
denominator messaging rarely deli...

In order to maximise effectiveness, therefore, we
may need to convey our ‘message’ in a variety of
different ways over tim...

Enter The Leitmotif

RifﬁngOnATheme
In musical theory, a leitmotif is:
“a musical term referring to a short, constantly
recurring musical phras...

If that all sounds a bit complex, this Star Wars
explanation nails the concept beautifully:
“Each important idea [and char...

Critically, a leitmotif isn’t the same as the constant
repetition of music like techno, nor that of broadcast
advertising ...

Leitmotifs: From Theory To Practice

TheDandelionApproach
As Cory Doctorow asserted in a seminal blog
post a few years back, the dandelion doesn’t put all
its ...

TheTapasApproach
Meals comprising many small, shared dishes are
popular all over the world, from Tapas in Spain
to Dim Sum...

TheKaizenApproach
Kaizen is a Japanese term meaning “change for the
better“, and is a central part of a continuous
improve...

110
Sharing a wide variety of
disparate content that "
appeals to people in different
ways at different times
Bringing a v...

ListenAndLearn
There will be many more ways to bring such an
‘evolving theme’ approach to life, but the
approaches that wi...

6
from selective hearing to active listening

As we saw in Chapter 3, marketing is all about
creating mutually beneﬁcial exchanges of value. The
nature of that value ex...

MarketersNeedToBePeopleWatchers
If you want to deliver real value to people, you need
to understand them as people: their ...

if they are to add real
value, brands need to
understand people’s
lives, not just their
demographic proﬁles.
115

Enter Social Media Listening

Every day, hundreds of millions of people around
the world share valuable insights about themselves
via publicly accessibl...

It’sThereIfYouListen
When we explore people’s social media activities
with an open mind, we’re almost certain to ﬁnd
somet...

From Big Data To Big Insights

One reason why we’re missing this value is that
marketers are too often caught up in the demands
of a quarterly sales cycl...

We spend too much time looking for ways to
interrupt people. But it doesn’t need to be that way.
Indeed, this interruptive...

Even amongst those brands that do listen, most
only do so on an ad-hoc basis, usually by paying a
research agency to ask a...

Social Listening vs. Social Monitoring

Fortunately, rich insights are readily available to
marketers with the willingness to listen.
By paying attention to the s...

SocialValueBeyondSocialMedia
More importantly, these insights can add value well
beyond your social media activities too; ...

127
products
customer"
service
pos activity
advertising
packaging
recruitment
Social Listening Can Add Value Everywhere!

Furthermore, by moving beyond the simplistic
measurement of ego metrics like share of voice or
campaign engagement, you’ll...

Getting Started

The ﬁrst step towards uncovering these rich insights
is to identify who you want to listen to.
Don’t restrict this deﬁniti...

Select a few people from these conversations at
random, and take some time to listen to what
they’re saying about other th...

tools offer little
value if they’re
managed by tools.
133

TryItForYourself
There are a number of great, free listening tools out
there too, so don’t let budgets stop you – we
regul...

7
experiences are the new products

TheDifferenceBetweenBuyingAndSelling
When people buy brands, they’re usually paying for
something more than a core product...

people only really pay
for beneﬁts; products
and services are just
means to an end.
137

This approach applies to brands across categories:
!  Nike uses participative events like We Run as core revenue
streams, ...

ExperiencesAddMoreValueThanProducts
It’s clear to see why this approach works:
augmented experiences offer people somethin...

Critically, there are also more compelling reasons for
people to talk about great experiences than there
are to recommend ...

the social marketer’s
mission is to create
brands that are always
worth talking about.
141

8
csr evolves into civic marketing

Society increasingly expects brands to give back at
least as much as they take. As a result, CSR is
moving higher up the e...

MoreThanMarketing
Many of the world’s best-loved brands started out
with a civic agenda at their heart. A great example
is...

Modern-day civic-minded brands have extended
this sense of community beyond their own workers,
and brands like TOMS are de...

147
TOMS: Making Shoes, Making A Difference!

Brands are also increasingly using CSR as a
cornerstone of their marketing. American
Express’s Small Business Saturday ini...

149
Earned Media That Money Can’t Buy!

AHappyCompromise
Most people still recognise that these activities as
marketing, but when the alternative is interruptive
...

making things people
want is much more
effective than making
people want things.
– John Willshire
“
“
152

Giving And Growing

Brands can also use community programs as part
of their market development activities. A great
example is Nike’s ‘Reuse-a-...

CSR Should Be Win-Win

This ‘mutual beneﬁt’ approach is the key to
sustainable CSR success, and offers the greatest
potential rewards too.
The ob...

More importantly, though, audiences are far more
likely to share their own stories about brands that
make a real differenc...

the brands that will win
tomorrow won’t just give
back to communities;
they’ll actively nurture and
build communities too....

You’ll only succeed if you put your plans into action.
The sooner you start testing your hypotheses, the
sooner you’ll kn...

About The Author

Simon Kemp is a marketing strategist and practitioner with
a particular enthusiasm for all things social, digital, and
mob...

164
Connect With Simon!
twitter
linkedin
slideshare
email
website

About We Are Social

We Are Social is a global conversation agency. We "
help brands to listen to, understand, and engage in
conversations thro...

This eBook © 2013 by Simon Kemp. All rights reserved. Find out more at eskimon.com

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