Flights of Fancy? Adweek article
Brian Morrissey discusses how social media is extending the life of ad campaigns in an Adweek article published today. As usual he's spot on and quotes me discussing what it means."The traditional campaign model doesn't work anymore," said Shiv Singh, director of strategic initiatives at Avenue A/Razorfish, owned by Microsoft. "If you have a social-media driven campaign, you can't stop it necessarily when you want to stop it. It's akin to having a dinner party and suddenly turning the lights off."What are the implications of this? Its harder to budget for a social media driven ad campaign. While you can always turn the media spend off when you want to, you can't necessarily turn off the campaign. If a conversation has started and people are participating, linking and talking about your campaign you have to let that carry on. Problems may arise when the message gets tired or when the conversation degenerates into something you don't want but that can't be helped too.
That's why when you think about the social media in the context of a campaign, think carefully. The returns maybe awesome but the risks can be huge too.
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This is the big question. Can social media be harnessed/trusted by big brand advertisers? I don't think so. It's unpredictable and anonymous users frequently become hostile. The only option is for the brands to embrace criticism.
Yes, brands needs to embrace criticism and let go of them too. Some brands are more suited for this than others though just as some organizations are more ready than others. Thanks for the feedback.
I believe that some brands need to get their house in order before diving head first into social media. If you have horrible customer service call centers, it might be wise to apply whatever social media budget you have to some brand monitoring tools that will help define your problems. Time and again, the biggest social media blow-ups come from companies with serious consumer-facing flaws.