As a new addition to the Organic team, bright eyed, bushy-tailed, and fresh out of ad school, I can generally be categorized as a sort of receptacle for all things advertising. Good, bad, or unsound, it all goes in. This tends to be the case for most of my peers, since we have no real world experience to back up any harebrained ideas of our own. Let me clarify: this is the case about 99.9% of the time. The other .1% is accounted for by social media – a topic that often has young people raising the skeptical eyebrow of a harrowed, old pro. Most social media “strategies” are composed of hasty tactics with the social punch of a Texas Instruments Facebook fan page. So imagine my intrigue when I was asked to cover a session at Mediapost’s OMMA conference, grittily-titled, Media Agencies: Making Social REALLY Work for Your Clients.
Moderated by Richard Rocca from Six Apart, OMMA pulled together a nicely rounded panel including Ekaterina Walter (Intel), Blake Cahill (Visible Technologies), Eric Porres (Lotame Solutions), Matthew DiPietro (Federated Media), and our very own David Lewis, strategist extraordinaire and longtime Organic SF staple. Points of view were thrown down and many a metaphor made. Matthew DiPietro referred to social media as the “ocean we’re all swimming in.” Richard Rocca likened it to a “party” in which we would have to seek out and make better through “food and drink” (social tools and conversation). David Lewis challenged us with the question, “If you do happen to find the party, are you even invited?” A valid point, often overlooked by too eager marketers.
Popular topics seemed to be centered on authenticity. Matthew DiPietro stated it’s the wrong idea for a brand to try and “build” a community when there are so many out there and active already. It’s about adding value and enabling the established ecosystems. Driving the point home was David Lewis, who emphasized the importance of successfully seeding the conversations that are already happening.
Blake Cahill reminded us to think across channels and be consistent. A company cannot just say, “let’s try Twitter this month,” and then drop the effort if they don’t get the response they desire. It’s important to keep the conversation going because once a brand taps into social media, their audience will continue to expect them there. Richard Rocca told us not to think of social media as a self-sustaining community you can just set up and let run amok. It’s a long-term commitment - a “continuum” as David Lewis put it. The highlight for me was when Ekaterina Walter fervently threw her hands up and said, “Please do not say, ‘Social media is free! It’s cheap! Let’s just hire an intern.’ This is absolutely the wrong way to go about it. Social media is important and should be treated as something that represents the brand. It has [the opportunity] to do damage and needs expertise.”*
So what have we learned? Social Media is a culture of transparency that lives and dies by authenticity. It must be nurtured and embraced as a lifelong element of a brand. Well Twitter me surprised, it looks like some agencies really do know a thing or two about social.
* Full disclosure: Ms. Walter did have my skeptical eye twitching when I read the word Intel on her badge. Needless to say, I was pleasantly humbled.
