Brands need to understand their customers? No shit, Sherlock
In this guest posting Simon van Wyk argues that the future of digital marketing is not simply social media.
OH no! The PR industry is finally interested in the Internet.
The Sydney Morning Herald published a shrill piece from the digital director at Burson-Marsteller. The article reads like a piece from 1995 and to be honest it is just plain irritating. For the past 15 years the digital agencies have lived off the crumbs from the traditional agencies tables. We got a brief for a global consumer brand about five years ago. They were launching to a teenage market and their online budget was big – their words. Well it was $90,000 and the rest of the global repositioning went to TV and magazines.
The industry is now on the verge of a power shift. Digital will start to come first and not last when strategies are developed and budgets are allocated. A senior marketer from J&J wrote in AdAge about the huge changes needed to take advantage of these shifts. So with this huge change imminent their PR person suggests: “In most cases traffic to branded websites is in decline”. The article then goes on to talk about brand centric vs. user centric communication, social media and web 1.0 hangovers etc.
I was so annoyed I spent a few hours looking at Nielsen data. I looked at Automotive with brands like Ford, Toyota, General Motors, Honda, I looked at banks, I looked at household brands and I looked at the photography category.
It’s not true.
Within each of these categories you have had increases and declines that mirror the health of the brands but the traffic to the categories has actually increased. Not a lot but Internet penetration is now pretty high so it’s not going to be huge. Why has it grown? It’s grown because more and more consumers are using the Internet as part of the shopping, buying and customer service cycle. More than ever its critical marketers realise their own website is often at the beginning and end of a sales cycle. If you don’t get the user experience right here you’ve lost the consumer.
The article suggests the game has changed with social media – it goes on to explain how people are spending time with the social networks and successful brands will be “brands that understand their customers”. No shit, Sherlock!
I thought understanding the customer was fundamental to the marketing job and I’d like to suggest that the rush to social media has done exactly the opposite. The debate about whether the “Greatest Job in the World” campaign delivered any sales is a perfect example. The reason people come to Australia differs by age, country, circumstance, pricing, bundling etc. It’s a complicated market, the honeymoon travel purchase is completely different to the burnt out executive travel purchase. The “greatest job” blog did nothing to differentiate between these markets and looked to me like noise. The noise is probably called branding and the fact that there is debate about the outcome suggests the outcome was marginal.
I know its heresy but there are a number of people who are questioning the Ford USA social media activities. While Ford is selling more cars, they have better vehicles than ever and a competitor in Toyota USA who have had a few issues. Apparently the dealers are not seeing the impact of this social media activity and again it makes sense. How does video of someone driving a car donated by Ford add to the buying process. Again it’s a complex purchase with a myriad of decision-making factors. Also the final stage of the buying process is almost always a visit to the manufacturers website and if you fail to satisfy here you’ve lost the sale.
Apparently personalization is the future. We’re going to move from sites that treat every customer equally to a more tailored experience. I think most brands have been working with the concept of personas for around 10 years. Many of our biggest brands deliver highly personalized experiences and have been for years. Just because brands are not talking to their PR companies about this stuff does not mean they are not doing it.
The article finished with a criticism that just 20% of the top 20 brands in Australia have a blog and thank goodness I say. Lots of these companies don’t really have enough to say that is not said elsewhere and a blog is a complete waste of time. If you can’t keep the content fresh and you don’t have enough to say don’t have a blog. You can only have a conversation if there is room and interest in a conversation. A lot of products are really dull, really low involvement and are just not going to generate lively engagement on a blog. A glib one size fits all – get a blog and a Facebook page does not deal with the complexities of marketing through channels, distributors, franchisees or selling direct.
This type of article does the industry no good. The digital industry is on the verge of being the primary owner of the strategy and budget. An article that regurgitates old thinking adds to the belief of some CMO’s that the digital industry is not ready to lead. Social media fits well with PR but it’s a small part of a digital strategy. Suggesting it’ll be the entire strategy is naïve and ignorant of the huge landscape of digital marketing.
- Simon van Wyk is the managing director of HotHouse Interactive
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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…And a digital strategy is but one arm of a total communications campaign is it not?
Forming lasting relationships with a company’s audience is achieved through public engagement. We need to connect with the correct audiences via multiple channels where consumers go to seek out and validate information about a product or service, and these channels exist both on and offline. Sure, a digital strategy is important but it’s definitely not the be-all and end-all.
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Simon, I did not suggest that social media should be the entire focus for a client’s digital marketing strategy, and I agree that it would be naïve to do so.
I am not suggesting that brands should scrap their websites and replace them with social media mash-ups. It’s obvious that websites have a critical role to play at the beginning and the end of the sales cycle.
I do believe that brands have an opportunity to incorporate and offer more interactive, engaging and ‘social’ content into their websites. This would give customers more reason to visit and spend time on the site. They could interact with the brand, and other customers.
It’s not e-commerce versus social media; it’s a subtle balance between the two.
Programs like Ford’s Fiesta Movement add value by facilitating customer to customer feedback and recommendation.
We may not yet be able to perfectly join the dots between this sort of social media campaign and resulting sales but over time we can learn more about how to exert influence via social media and use these insights to adjust the balance between the different aspects of digital marketing.
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“In most cases, traffic to branded websites is in decline.” (SMH article)
So … true or false?
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” … the digital industry is on the verge of being the primary owner of the strategy and budget”.
Bwahahhahahahaa! Shut the hell up and make me a banner ad.
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the drama!
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Guy, Check Compete data for the brands that are mentioned above and you’ll see that most are charting a downward yearly change in the number of unique visitors. This trend continues if you track back a few years or more.
The real point is that brand websites face a lot more competition as a source of trusted information.
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The main issue for me is how people/agencies/marketers actually go about ‘understanding their consumers’. Most of this ‘understanding’ is based on meaningless fluff, out-dated research techniques and/or sources of so-called insights that are simply not robust enough, meaning at best they are useless and at worst highly misleading
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“The digital industry is on the verge of being the primary owner of the strategy and budget.”
What an absolute load of s**t.
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Coincidentally, without any prior knowledge of your piece Simon, or the one in the SMH, I did my own blog today on the same broad subject as yours.
You might be surprised to know that some elements of the PR industry ‘discovered’ the internet several years ago.
Also there’s a strong debate internationally for PR to control the social media function.
Just another perspective!
http://pracumen.com.au/2010/06.....media-bus/
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Gosh so now Compete data is being used to make these sweeping statements. Considering it’s a US panel for a start might actually have some impact on the Australian market. Yes while there is a lot of distractions to a brands site, the site is still critical to the purchase path (for most categories)
Grant I agree social media seems to have a natural home in PR – some do it well.
Anon333 I think you might be surprised. It’s easier for a digital shot to make a call to a producer and director than it is for a traditional agency to build a website and run a online campaign
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..of course that won’t for one minute stop the traditional agency from telling everybody they can build the website and run the online campaign
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A lot of PR’s think social media is sending out a press release to bloggers and expecting them to blog about it. That’s not social media!
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Sam, you’re right…that’s actually called PR or blogger engagement. I’ve seen a few companies say they are doing social media when all they are doing is engaging bloggers. It’s bizarre.
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It’s so frustrating, social media is about engagement from the beginning of a campaign, it’s not a press release at the end.
I am inundated with these requests everyday and I feel so defeated, it’s an education battle everyday and I’m running out of juice.
And it doesn’t help that the online world (especially bloggers) continues to be seen as a free outlet for brands, and anything more than that, there’s no interest from the brands to engage differently or if it will cost them anything.
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Ha ha. You agencies are so, so far behind. Argue all you like about social media versus digital versus TVCs etc. You all became tactical commodities years ago.
I think of you while developing STRATEGY in my clients’ boardrooms and deciding how it will play out across the various “creative” agencies. Or telling the 26-year-old brand managers you report to what to do.
Digital agencies. Ha! You’re the brickies’ labourers of the communications world. You can write the code but please don’t opine on communications.
Yours sincerely,
public relations
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I really hope that as part of the communication and strategy to clients, these digital agencies aren’t telling their clients how wonderful they are because they have a web analytics tool that tells them 100% of the story and how much money they should be spending on stuff that delivers them clicks. Especially when “the final stage of the buying process is almost always a visit to the manufacturers website”…. Simon’s own words… FINAL stage doesn’t demand ownership of all communications to the consumer that happen in the days, months, years before… (Admittedly, he uses beginning and end earlier in the piece, but they still had to have a need to go there in the first place, owning strategy from the website is certainly an odd way to think)…
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