Mortgaging The Future for Quick Social Media Gains

The business impact of the continuously shifting landscape of all media will be felt for decades to come. The impact will radically transform how businesses are run and the talent, education, leadership, and services ecosystem necessary to run them well. This is already seen in the marketing agency services gap that exists between agency and client, a gap existing because the needs of businesses are growing increasingly more complex.  Technology choices, social media outlets, and data analysis have all grown in size and scope. Yet most business and marketing leaders are not only unsure about how to untangle the complexity of the new media landscape present and future, they continuously underestimate the effort and resulting value in a media strategy well executed.

The result is that businesses develop strategy for what is currently known and measurable across the media landscape, and execute with very short-term expectations. An approach at which consumer brands are becoming especially adept. For example last fall, HP leveraged social media influencers and pop star Meghan Trainor to roll out their new Pavilion x360 tablet-laptop. The development of the video for Trainor’s ‘Lips Are Movin’ was a collaboration of micro-celebrities across social media platforms such as Vine and Instagram.   A confluence of art that resulted in a stunningly beautiful visual married with not so subtle product placement to aid said product’s launch.

The HP example, while clever and creative, is nothing new. Since the Old Spice “Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign of 2010, big consumer brands have invested heavily in timely and well produced creative to capitalize on the reach of well established new media.   This is a tactic that consumer brands can make big bets on because they have the capital to do so and they are going to spend it one way or the other. In 2013 P&G, for instance, shifted approximately 35% of their advertising budget to digital.

The trouble is two fold. First these tactics are difficult for smaller businesses and business to business companies to duplicate. Secondly while the aforementioned Old Spice campaign had an immediate and direct impact on sales, consumers are becoming blind to similar versions of such advertising happening today. This is best seen in the repetitive and boring attempt by brands to ride trending hashtags on twitter. What was once an edgy, creative, and rapid communication tactic has become emblematic of big brands not really adapting to the new media landscape but instead just pillaging it for cheap impressions.

In the meantime new media opportunities continue to rapidly evolve. For example Instagram will soon be offering advertising, and Snapchat has launched channels of news and entertainment.   Businesses that respond (if they respond at all) to these new options with more of the same are placing themselves at a serious disadvantage in the future. Why? Because a failure to make investments to understand and intelligently leverage the shifting media landscape usually means the company sees media choices as tactical necessities rather than strategic opportunity.   Tactical execution, while important, does not drive company choices in key areas such as product, culture, workforce, or competitive direction.

A willingness to see beyond the current known quantities of new media outlets leads to more creative investments in both content and talent in ways that have almost no immediate impact to their current business model.   Starbucks, for instance, is making a big bet on creating journalistic content focused on tackling social issues. General Electric has consistently taken an organic story telling approach focused on representing what they value for the sake of propagating their values.

The dust on new media is unlikely to settle anytime soon, and the temptation is to either wait and see or get the biggest immediate bang for the buck. No matter what size a business is these are temptations that must be resisted. Failure to do so creates a bad habit of allowing the tactical to drive the strategic. Business and marketing leaders have no choice but to stop looking at their media plans as necessities and instead work to master the deeper meaning of the impact of their products and services and commit to telling that story honestly and transparently.