Jeffrey Dachis, who many will remember as the co-founder of Razorfish is at again working in “enterprise social software at his start-up Dachis Corporation. There was a short interview of him in the July issue of Media magazine. He brings up a point regarding brands and media and marketing. Dachis says “Brands can’t really assume personas and engage customers in conversations.”
It is an interesting point and one that he later goes on to say is something his new company is addressing. My guess is that branding within social media is probably something many companies are currently addressing. I doubt that Mrs. Butterworth, Uncle Ben or Tony the Tiger will start tweeting or posting on Facebook, and yet companies big and small will need a way to market, control their brand, practice p.r. and do damage control if need be, all within the twitosphere and the everything else social media sphere.
It’s simply not going to work to have brands touting themselves and extolling their own virtues. As we move more and more into a construct of “referrals”, we will want to see others taking up the gauntlet for these brands. Even now, it carries more weight when someone apart from the owner, almost anyone, suggests some website or service or even a new energy drink. Thus far, it might appear that the structure for brands to market themselves has been one of two paths; the company spokesperson or the enthusiastic user. Albeit, these two basic forms appear in many, many guises. We’ve also seen attempts to pass off the company spokesperson as the enthusiastic user and most have failed. We’ve also seen applications where the enthusiastic user was just a tad too enthusiastic, which also seems to hurt credibility, if not make you want to silence the source.
It will come down to ways the brand can participate, contribute and share and perhaps more importantly, marketers may just have to realize that while there’s a lot they can do in terms of getting a brand to communicate, there’s also a lot that simply won’t work well. What’s important is remembering the core values and how our brands affect the consumers. By fitting in well with the landscape, we allow our brands to maintain a presence and by delivering on the brands core promises, we will continue to please the consumer and that consumer will be an advocate for the brand. In short, put the energy into delivering upon the promise of the brand and we will create organic, social advocates for the brand, who will support us in social media.
