Coke has poked me!

11Set08

We’re living in an exciting time for on-line branding, the new social web environment is forcing the rules of business to change dramatically. Since the launching of the ground breaking book The Train Clue Manifesto much has changed in the corporate world and how global brand relate to the web, yet many corporations are still defiant against the on-line social phenomenom.

This new interactive environment and the fast growth of two-way communication fuelled by the new digital media and disruptive technologies and social media platforms has called for a rethinking in the area of marketing and PR communication in search of a fresh understanding of what these new on-line customers and their communities want from companies, products and services, what they are looking for and how on-line reputation may help companies to be found and rewarded by those communities of consumers.

Coke is another good example of how global brands are ‘poking’ people on-line, the goal is community building, engagement with great transparency, excitement and creativity. Global brands are learning to ‘poke’ people or in Facebook language, they are ‘throwing a sheep at’ their on-line community.

Blog relations is one of the most important elements within the world of the social web today. What is really important about the Social Web and its embodiment called social media, is that it is created and nurtured by communities. A blog may be linked to a Youtube videos, which may be posted to a social network such as Facebook updating Twitter feeds and so on.

This is just an example of how a message can be transmitted virally. Soon the whole of the web, no matter which social media utility tool it is being used, will get to know about something or will have at least a slice of the story.

David Meerman Scott advocates what he calls “on-line thought leadership” content. A well-crafted on-line strategy combining the right mix of social media tools can, according to D. M. Scott, contribute to a business positive reputation and on-line. ‘Thought leadership content’ challenges the traditional approach to marketing and PR since it does not focus on the message the company wants to convey about its products or services but on how to sort out people’s problems, ex. Whitepapers, e-books, webinars, etc. It also seeks to listen first and then engages with the community offering well-thought out solutions. Conversely, those communities are talking about their brands, products as well as those of competitors; they discuss, promote or demote products and services.

In Brian Soils own view “customer service will fuse with marketing to become a holistic inbound, outbound campaign of listening to and engaging with customers that will rewrite the rules of the game. And, most importantly, the lessons learned in the field will be fed into the marketing department to create and run more intelligent, experienced, and real world initiatives across all forms of marketing, PR, sales, and advertising.”

As a consequence marketing and PR activities are converging with on-line technology to create an ultimate and maximised communication strategy to fully grapple with the power of the new social web with its social media relations, brands are now starting to investing in their corporate social map. A vital question managers should be asking themselves as they set out to the task of managing their brands and reputation is how can companies move from a transactional paradigm to a new relational paradigm where branding management is co-shared.

Somehow the answer to this question may lie in the fact that communication is becoming what it was back in the beginning – a dialogue instead of a monologue. If markets are conversations then marketing and public relations have to embody these new social media values and the new rules of engagement where according to Solis marketing and PR will be participating rather dictating.

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