How Social Media Changes the Way Brands Communicate

We Interrupt This Program

The Martians landed just after eight o’clock on the evening of October 30, 1938 in Grovers Mill, New Jersey and promptly incinerated its residents with their heat rays.  At least that’s how it seemed to the six million people listening to Mercury Radio Theater’s infamous broadcast adaptation of H. G.  Wells’ classic novel War of the Worlds.  The program began, harmlessly enough, with the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra but was soon interrupted by news bulletins about unexplained atmospheric changes, strange explosions on Mars, space craft landing near farms, and eventually, by eye-witness accounts of the murderous Martian conquest as it advanced amid plumes of poisonous gas through futile defenses toward New York City.

Panic ensued. 

Despite repeated disclaimers throughout the broadcast, nearly a third of the listening audience thought the attack was real, according to some estimates.  People variously hid in basements, readied weapons, or prayerfully knelt in churches anticipating the end of the world. 

The War of the World’s broadcast is more than a curiosity from our past.  It contains an important lesson for marketers.  The circumstances that transformed Radio Theater into panic that night also empowered advertising for the last century, but no more.   

Well Connected to Mass Media, Poorly Connected to Each Other

A single radio broadcast could incite widespread panic because people were well connected to mass media but poorly connected to each other.  At the time of the broadcast nearly 80 percent of American homes had a radio while only 36 percent had a telephone.  This meant nearly everyone could hear the gruesome reports dispatched from New Jersey, but few could corroborate their validity.  Without other sources of information radio’s authority was absolute.

During the last century, one-way mass media technologies were developed before and adopted more quickly than two-way interpersonal communications.  AM radio debuted in the 1920’s followed by television twenty years later.  FM radio arrived in the 1960’s and the 70’s produced cable TV and the VCR.  By 1962 90 percent of American homes had a television and a radio, but it would be almost ten more years before the same percentage homes also had a telephone! 

By contrast, technologies that allow us to communicate with each other like the cellular telephone, the pager, the fax machine, the answering machine, the camcorder, message boards, the PC, digital cameras, and the Internet are products of the last twenty five years.  Innovations like VOIP, Instant Messaging, Blogs, Twitter, video conferencing, and online social networks are more recent; many of them emerging within the last five.

Another reason for mass media’s rapid adoption was its instant utility.  When people bought a radio or a TV and switched it on, the broadcasters’ signals were already present.  By contrast, interpersonal communications devices like the telephone had no value until a person’s friends and family also had them.

Not only did interpersonal communications lack instant utility, they cost more too.  Local TV and radio signals arrived freely but a telephone call to a friend in another town incurred long distance charges and those charges increased with distance.  These differences rewarded people for consuming free mass media but penalized them for connecting with their friends.

Communities of Convenience

When people are well connected to mass media but poorly connected to each other, as they were for most of the last century, they tend to organize by proximity into communities of convenience.  Unable to find programming or relationships that precisely match their interests, people settle for those that are physically near.  For most of the last century people watched local television, read their local newspaper, and listened to local radio.  Their best friend probably lived next door.

These circumstances produced the traditional mass advertising model where brands blanketed metropolitan areas with advertising monologues through mass media.   DMA’s were simply communities of convenience defined by the coverage limitations of the mass media at their center. 

This model worked wonderfully for the latter half of the last century until two trends that began in the 1980’s tipped in the new millennium.

Loosely Connected to Mass Media, Well Connected to Each Other

Over the last twenty five years, technology spawned new media vehicles whose specialized programming splintered audiences into ever-smaller niches.   During the decade of the sixties an advertiser could reach 80 percent of all the women in America by running a single spot simultaneously on the three television networks.  A similar “roadblock” today would require hundreds of channels at a prohibitive cost.

Expanding channel choices did not similarly expand people’s range of interests. Between 1994 and 2003 the number of televisions channels available to the typical American grew from 40 to 100 but the number of channels they actually watched rose only from 10 to 14.  So, while more channels increased consumption slightly overall, individual audiences shrank. 

As advertisers wrung their hands over media fragmentation another equally important but less visible trend was changing the advertising landscape; Consumers were connecting to each other on an unprecedented scale. 

Between 1984 and 2006 cell phone subscribers in the United States exploded from 340,000 to more than 233 million.  Each month the average American spends 13-22 hours wirelessly talking with friends, relatives and business associates.  Americans sent a trillion text messages last year and that figure is increasing at 154% per month.

Blogs, virtually nonexistent five years ago, number more than 57 million today and the number is doubling every 230 days according to Technorati.  Globally, there are 1.3 million new posts per day—about 15 per second.  Thanks to blogs and the search engines that find them, anyone can have a global platform for expressing their ideas.

Eighty four percent of Americans are in online communities.  MySpace swelled from two million members in 2004 to more than 160 million today and that figure doesn’t include members of Facebook, Orkut, Bebo, Hi5, Eon, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and the other social networking websites linking friends, students, and business associates through text, photos, and video. 

We video conference on the Internet, share photos from cell phones, express creativity on YouTube, collaborate on wikis, and communicate moment to moment with IM, Chat, Twitter, Voice Mail, MMS, faxes, and email.

These changes matter to advertisers because much of the attention people once reserved for commercial media, they now devote to each other.  More significantly, this shift has altered the way people organize with each other and it is this change, more than any other, which has altered the marketing landscape. 

 A New Way for a New Day

The circumstances that enabled mass marketing in past decades are reversed.  Today people are loosely connected to mass media but well connected to each other.  Under these conditions people organize by affinity into communities of interest.   They can now find the programming and relationships that precisely match their interests and connect to them.

“Homophily,” a term meaning, “love of same,” describes people’s natural tendency to gather with similar others.  Impossible previously, these days the Internet lets people find and build community with others who share their passions and interests; whether religious beliefs, political leanings, or passions for a hobby.   Once people find similar others, cheap interpersonal communications technologies help them sustain those relationships over time and great distance. In this new world markets are defined by people’s passions and interests not media coverage maps or even geography.  Atlanta is no longer a market.  Atlanta is merely a city.  Interests like a love for hiking or Ty food or the Green Bay Packers, now define markets.

What’s more, the connected consumer is more than advertising’s target; he or she is also a conduit through which brand messages flow.

Interest-Centric Planning
For decades most planning has been media centric.  Decide a media mix, select some DMA’s, and run your ad campaign.  That’s fine when people organize by proximity, but less effective when consumers organize around interests.  Today brands must identify affiliation networks whose interests identify them as likely customers and connect with them first.

Monologue vs. Trialogue
In this new era, advertisers must employ a “trialogue” where brands connect to consumers, consumers can contact brands, and consumers are encouraged to communicate with each other. 

Passive to Active
People used to watch whatever came their way.  Now they seek out precisely what they like when they want it. This requires brands to establish a permanent presence like a website and a blog because you don’t know when people may be searching.

Centralized to Decentralized Distribution
Time was when advertisers spoke to everyone through centralized media.  The advertiser was the hub.  Now there is no hub.  Everyone speaks to everyone else. The gatekeeper is gone.

Consumer is a Channel
Every person is a station broadcasting to an audience of friends, family, and coworkers via email, telephone, Instant Message and other new technologies.  Each has a direct audience numbering in the hundreds and increasing to millions just three degrees away. But be careful. Don’t trespass on interpersonal communications technologies.  The cell phone belongs to the consumer, not the advertiser. The question isn’t “how can you place your ad on their phone?”  The question is, “What will cause them to voluntarily add your brand to their programming?” 

Finally, to thrive in the new marketing environment, you must recognize and accommodate a few other changes.

Then	Now
Centralized Message Distribution: Few-to-Many	Decentralized Message Distribution: Many-to-Many
Media-Centric Planning: What media shall we buy?	Consumer Centric Planning: Which people must we reach?
Passive Consumption: Consumer is the target	Active Participation: Consumer is a channel
Monologue: Brands preach at “consumers.”	Trialogue: Brands to people, people to brands, and people to each other.
Geographic Borders: Markets are defined geographically.	Ideological Borders: Markets are defined ideologically.
Company Controls the Message: Brand perceptions were formed by advertising messages through institutional media the company controlled. No one else had a voice.	Consumer Controls the Message: Consumers speak for the brand by sharing their experiences through social media.  Brands merely influence the message by controlling the experience they give consumers.

 

Comments

[Jeff Goins]

Interesting post. Thanks for sharing.