Run away ! Brand marketers now want to use social media to interrupt us !
Seventy-six percent of respondents said they welcomed brand advertising on social networks, and most have sought to initiate interaction.
Seventy percent said they had read a corporate blog, 67 percent said they'd sought out and watched a commercial on YouTube, and 65 percent said they had played at least one branded casual game online.
First I have to look at who is doing the research and their motivation at the findings. In this case it's Razorfish which obviously love to promote to brands their digital social media capabilities. Recent research from Forrester indicated that close to 50% of consumers expect their online experience to be brand free. While the research suggests that some consumers do want to engage with brands, I'm afraid that too many brands will see social media as a way to interrupt us when we use Twitter, Facebook or YouTube.
The first clue
that something was amiss here was that 67% sought
out and watched a commercial on You Tube? OK, I
mean there are a lot of people out there who need
a life but 67% ?!
So let's clarify this research a little bit:
-Consumers will CHOSE to interact with you if you
can offer them value and all too often that value
is in the form of discount, coupon or
sweepstakes.
The key word here is that consumers CHOSE to
interact with you. That means you have to offer
them something of value to have a relationship
and all too often you have to keep offering them
value to keep them. This isn't branding, it's
sales promotion my friends and it could lead to a
downward spiral that could cost a lot of dollars
to keep going.
Let's say you normally order a pizza once a week
for the family. Normally you call Pizza Hut,
Pappa John's or Domino's to order your pizza.
However, now you have befriended Domino's on
Facebook and every week they have a coupon for
discounts on your pizza. Is Domino's the better
brand? Not necessarily but since you normally get
a pizza from them why not use their coupon to
save money ? The key question than becomes what
percentage of your audience was going to order a
pizza without a coupon anyway? In other words
have you given a discount when a discount may not
be needed.
These are tough economic times and retailers are
discounting up the wazoo the same time they are
laying off a lot of people to reduce costs.
Eventually they are going to find that margins
have declined and they have cut costs to the bare
bones. Then where do they turn?
