Thursday, August 19, 2010
Canadian Gaming Article
Here's my latest article for Canadian Gaming News. It's about being true to who you are, or as grandma says, Grow where you're planted!
The Atkins diet and new media
I believe in moderation. Too much of anything is, well... too much.
My radar goes off when someone tells me there is one solution to all that ails you. Diets are a great metaphor for what is being said about social media these days.
From a media perspective, there are very few people extolling the virtues of a well-rounded diet, and loads of people claiming that you need to go protein heavy or all social media. I don't think it's for everyone. And for most, it's best in small doses.
It's frustrating when the experts are insisting all the brands start conversations with their consumers. Connecting is important, and I applaud their passion. But I would add some words of caution.
Pamela Ross, VP of communications and CMO at Sunnybrook in Toronto wrote a great piece on this for Strategy in March. She quotes Mitch Joel as saying, "without a one-to-one connection of some kind, consumers won't care about a brand." Pamela then goes on to say, "Such a proclamation makes me think hard about my connections to brands I use. I think, for example, about the fact that I have no one-to-one connection with Tide, but it's the only laundry detergent I'll buy."
Does Pam want to have conversations with Tide? No. And I don't want a coversation with my phone company or my toothpaste.
If your product has fans in the real world, it will have fans online. Sports teams, bands, movie stars, TV shows and movies - they had fan clubs before the Internet. People wanted to read about them, learn about them and connect with them.
Now, we're being advised to create that relationship with nearly everything. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
I was in the check out at Safeway and greeted with the offer to Follow us on Facebook. Follow Safeway? Facebook is filled with brands that want you to become their fan. I shop at Safeway. In fact in my neighborhood, 13th Avenue Safeway is small and quite intimate. I feel connected to the store, but do I want to fan it on Facebook?
No. I don't want to have a one-to-one connection with the store. I know a few cashiers, and the pharmacists, and the shelf stackers, but do I follow them? That's getting weird.
And that's a store with which I have a pretty good brand relationship. Most of our untilities in Saskatchewan have FaceBook pages - The Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan has a FaceBook page. Is this what people do on FaceBook? Not in my experience. My experience has friends connecting with friends. They're playing scrabble, FarmVille and sharing photos and experiences. They aren't talking about brands.
For most brands FaceBook is not a strategy, it's wishful thinking.
So should we advise brands to pull money and resources away from mass media and into social media? Perhaps. For some it might be a very good strategy. But for most of the brands we have the privelege to work with I would argue that you have a better chance of reaching customers through their interests (sports teams, TV shows, movies...) then you would through FaceBook or Twitter.
My radar goes off when someone tells me there is one solution to all that ails you. Diets are a great metaphor for what is being said about social media these days.
From a media perspective, there are very few people extolling the virtues of a well-rounded diet, and loads of people claiming that you need to go protein heavy or all social media. I don't think it's for everyone. And for most, it's best in small doses.
It's frustrating when the experts are insisting all the brands start conversations with their consumers. Connecting is important, and I applaud their passion. But I would add some words of caution.
Pamela Ross, VP of communications and CMO at Sunnybrook in Toronto wrote a great piece on this for Strategy in March. She quotes Mitch Joel as saying, "without a one-to-one connection of some kind, consumers won't care about a brand." Pamela then goes on to say, "Such a proclamation makes me think hard about my connections to brands I use. I think, for example, about the fact that I have no one-to-one connection with Tide, but it's the only laundry detergent I'll buy."
Does Pam want to have conversations with Tide? No. And I don't want a coversation with my phone company or my toothpaste.
If your product has fans in the real world, it will have fans online. Sports teams, bands, movie stars, TV shows and movies - they had fan clubs before the Internet. People wanted to read about them, learn about them and connect with them.
Now, we're being advised to create that relationship with nearly everything. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
I was in the check out at Safeway and greeted with the offer to Follow us on Facebook. Follow Safeway? Facebook is filled with brands that want you to become their fan. I shop at Safeway. In fact in my neighborhood, 13th Avenue Safeway is small and quite intimate. I feel connected to the store, but do I want to fan it on Facebook?
No. I don't want to have a one-to-one connection with the store. I know a few cashiers, and the pharmacists, and the shelf stackers, but do I follow them? That's getting weird.
And that's a store with which I have a pretty good brand relationship. Most of our untilities in Saskatchewan have FaceBook pages - The Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan has a FaceBook page. Is this what people do on FaceBook? Not in my experience. My experience has friends connecting with friends. They're playing scrabble, FarmVille and sharing photos and experiences. They aren't talking about brands.
For most brands FaceBook is not a strategy, it's wishful thinking.
So should we advise brands to pull money and resources away from mass media and into social media? Perhaps. For some it might be a very good strategy. But for most of the brands we have the privelege to work with I would argue that you have a better chance of reaching customers through their interests (sports teams, TV shows, movies...) then you would through FaceBook or Twitter.
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