Is there New Media Cynicism?
Twitter, Facebook, Link’d In, Bogging, Jaiku, Pownce, Digg, all of these sites, applications, and meeting places are all meant to basically link people together. Give us…the consumer….the marketer…the whatever a place to be recognized and connect with others on a friend to friend or peer to peer basis.
I have to be honest and say that I have created what I know to be genuine relationships using these channels, but I cant help but wonder when “The Man” will infiltrate the situation and blow the whole thing to bits.
I am currently reading Joseph Jaffe’s “Join the Conversation” and he is speaking about conversation as a form of marketing. This marketing is especially good for not only the producer, but the consumer as well. In fact the consumer is often times or even most often the main conduit to other “Like minded” consumers. These days “Sally” across the street carrys more marketing power than the big ad agencies when it comes to marketing a vacuum cleaner.
Lets take the interactive T-shirt company Tee Tonic for instance. They build a complete busines around consumer generated content. The shirts are designed by the consumer, the shirts are voted on by the consumer, and then all the company becomes is a listen and produce company. Customers want X…we produce X. Very cool, I love the idea, and I love the model.
There is one problem though. Not all companies fit into the Tee Tonic model. So what do these businesses and corporations do to increase “Conversation” and more to the point positive “Conversation” or “Buzz” to increase their brand awareness and ultimately add to the bottom line?
This is what scares me.
Right now we seem to be able to make pretty genuine relationships through means of Web 2.0 tools. When does it get to the point where the large corporations are jumping in and buying up these small companies to basically “melt down” the information and hoard it for themselves. When do the corporations begin to “Join the Conversation” and you or I can not tell if we are being fed a line of absolute crap? When do these companies start hiring “evangalists” to just spew good content about themselves.
In this community we speak about being transparent and honest with our friends, peers, and customers. When do these lines begin to blur into traditional marketing…ala the thirty second spot?
I’d love to think that this is not going to happen and that companies will begin to see the value of being transparent and honest with their customers, but when was the last time a company decided to just let go of “control?”
As a woodturning artist, I am always trying to be open about my work, my creative process, and ultimately my goals. I believe in the power of community, but I believe that honesty is the best policy. I think consumers, friends, whoever can sniff out a rat in a mere nanosecond and I hope that the web 2.0 model never ceases to exist in light of people being dishonest and ruining it for the rest. So I guess if I had one question to ask my community it would be this.
“If I was building a business around my wood turned art, my bottle stoppers, my bowls, my art……how would I leverage communal marketing in a transparent and honest way to help build my business, keeping in mind that everything is handmade, and that I am not a machine in China spewing out pieces by the thousands a day?”
I would love any feedback you could give me(us), and Joseph Jaffe I would love your expert contribution as well……hey guys “Join the Conversation“
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Stumble it!
February 3rd, 2008 at 10:37 am
“…you or I can not tell if we are being fed a line of absolute crap…”
Not only accurate, but more true than we realize. Apparently we consume a lot of it, and we will continue until we lose our taste for it.
February 3rd, 2008 at 11:03 am
It reminds me of the character in William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition who was a paid marketer, but she just talked to people directly; met them in bars, chatted with them, mentioned a product of film in passing to create a positive buzz. Those trying to sell will do whatever to reach their intended audience. It is inevitable, I think. Anywhere people are meeting together, a salesman will follow. I think the question is: Can we tune out the crap and focus on the real relationships? That will be the test of new media.
February 4th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
The line between marketing and just interacting can get blurry, and will blur further as social media and old-school corporate networking gradually blur together as inevitably happens when late adopters start stepping up to the technological curb.
That said, all these tech toys and new ways we have of communicating will never change two things:
1. There will always be someone out there who is ONLY out to sell and
2. Nothing can unseat the power of a genuine connection.
As marketers are getting more sophisticated, so are grassroots users. Grassroots users will always have the know-how and flexibility to stay ahead of the marketers because they are smaller, are able to learn faster, and are the real players that can and will change how the sell or be sold game is played.