Editor: media140 Editor    Posted: Friday, November 27, 2009   Discussion: 2 Comments

The advent of the Social Web has seen an explosion in new, new media agencies, clamouring to tell brands how to make the most of these shiny new marketing opportunities: just what should they be Tweeting? How best to work that Facebook fan page?

But it’s hardly rocket science, or is it? And where does this leave the traditional media agencies? Are they desperately playing catch-up or or are they quickly cottoning on? For #MKTG140, George Spencer asks whether brands actually need to employ whizzy new, stand alone boutiques to manage their presence across the rash of sometimes bewildering new web platforms.

Newly-inducted managers at NASA are reportedly made to watch the 1998 film Armageddon, noting as many scientific inaccuracies in the movie as they can spot. At least 168 technically impossible details have been identified during these screenings.

It doesn’t, however, to take a NASA manager to spot the howler on which the entire plot hinges. The NASA brains in Armageddon decide not to bother training their best astronauts to use drills (with which to dig a hole on the deadly asteroid, bury a nuclear warhead and blow the rocky aggressor to bits before it collides with our fair planet.) Probably way too easy for your average astronaut?

Instead, they decide that a more efficient use of the limited time before the expected apocalyptic impact is to assemble a team comprised of the world’s best drillers; train them up as astronauts, and then send them up, to do the already tricky job of landing on the cosmic body hurtling towards Earth at breakneck speed.

Unsurprisingly, nobody is especially confident of the plan; the sole purpose of Billy-Bob Thornton’s character, NASA chief Dan Truman, appears to be to emphasise just how goddamn risky the entire endeavour is. The film is peppered with shots of furrowed brows, “goddamnsonuvabitches” and similar forebodings.

NASA’s barmy Armageddon plan came to my mind more than once during the recent Media140 brands event in London when many of the presenters returned, again and again, to discussing the schism between traditional marketing agencies and the swelling crop of specialist ‘social media’ agencies.

One specific and heated topic was whether the “Social Web” per se was something which was being pushed onto clients by the agencies; and whether companies should be outsourcing their Twitter feeds, for example, to specialists. Many of the companies represented at the event, such as “We Are Social” referred to themselves pointedly as a ‘conversation agency’. Others, such as Ogilvy made no bones about being a more traditional (and by implication, broader) firm. The question I yearned to ask every time this came up was whether anyone believed that, just maybe, we’re in the process of training the oil riggers to be astronauts with these divergent approaches on offer?

During the Survivor’s Club panel, James Hart, Director of E-Commerce at ASOS was asked whether ASOS would persist with Twitter if its user-base dwindled, like so many social networking sites before it. His reaction was telling. He looked utterly perplexed. He explained: “No. We’re about being where our customers are. There wouldn’t be any point if we aren’t reaching people, it’s just a new way [of reaching people].”

I believe that this is the key to the entire revolution. We may be witnessing internal reshuffles, both at traditional agencies and at the brands themselves to better accommodate the altered landscape of the Social Web. However, the core disciplines have not changed. If you want to provide customer service on Twitter, you need to have CS teams who know how to deliver a consistent brand message and who appreciate the gravity of their task. Nothing about Twitter is different for Customer Service, except, perhaps, for the semi-public nature of the conversation?

All of which begs the question: do brands need specialised agencies to work with on their Social Web presence, when most larger agencies are already equipped to provide solutions across a broader spectrum?

As Tom Bedecarré wryly noted in his introductory keynote, of Twitter’s 40 million users, 35 million of them are social media gurus. However, I am not suggesting that We Are Social or other specialised social web agency does things any old Twitter-user could do; they tie the strands of different platforms together and have experience running campaigns across them – but these are platforms designed for humans to use. It’s not the same as producing a TV advertisement; it doesn’t require that kind of specialised knowledge and expertise.

Robin Grant, head of We Are Social, was quizzed over his concerns regarding client attitudes towards the social web; and specifically whether he felt it might be a transient phenomenon. “That’s one of our fears, both internally at We Are Social and as a member of the community. There are clients who are just interested in social media because they are chasing the new toy, and that will create a backlash.”
Read More…

Read more...