Part 2: The Slow Painful Collapse Of The Social Media Marketing Fantasy

Today's post is the 2nd part of "The Slow Painful Collapse Of The Social Media Marketing Fantasy" which began here on Monday.

It seems like only yesterday we couldn’t turn on the TV, open a magazine, or go to a website without someone exhorting us to “join the conversation.”

“The conversation” was the physical manifestation of the marketing industry’s fascination with social media. The idea was that people were highly interested in our brands and would be eager to chat and share their enthusiasms on line with other people.

The philosophical seeds of this conviction were planted in the mid-1990’s when it was postulated that the “interruption model” of advertising had run its course. 

The theory went something like this: consumers were no longer responsive to advertising messages like TV spots, radio spots, and magazine ads which interrupted their activities. Instead, marketing was transitioning into a period in which the “permission model” would dominate.

The “permission model” posited that in order to be effective, marketers had to stop bothering people with advertising, and instead gain their permission to market to them.

The way you got permission was to engage consumers with useful, interesting messages (currently known as “content”) that gave consumers value instead of sales pitches. If you did this, they would trust you, like you better, and permit you to market directly to them. In marketing terminology, they would “opt in” to your marketing programs.

Best of all, they would share their passion for your brand with their network of friends and followers who would, likewise, share with their network. A multiplier effect would be born.

There was only one problem with this wonderful proposition. It misinterpreted consumer behavior by substantially overestimating consumers’ fervor for brands, and concomitantly misjudging consumers’ inclination to share their presumed fervor.

Believers in this ideology assumed that a person's use of a product was a demonstration of enthusiasm for the brand. Sadly, in the vast majority of cases, it is merely an indication of habit, convenience, or mild satisfaction. It is not proof of devotion or enthusiasm.
 

Regardless of the time, energy and money we spend “differentiating” our brands, most people see very little difference between our brand and our closest competitors. While there are some brands that people do have great loyalty to, and some categories that people are truly interested in, these are the rare exceptions. In most cases people will change brands with very little bother if it turns out to be convenient or otherwise beneficial.

Most people will gladly switch from Skippy to Jif if they can save a buck or two. If the ballpark doesn’t serve Coke, most people will happily return to their seats with a Pepsi. 

The idea that social media would become a channel in which consumers would share their strong enthusiasms by having “conversations about brands” has turned out to be largely a delusion.

Most brands are finding that their social media programs are more time-consuming, more expensive, and less capable of driving sales growth than was promised. Consequently, they are abandoning the “permission model” and reverting to the “interruption model” in their online advertising.

You can see this most clearly on Facebook. Facebook calls itself a social medium, but its advertising model is good old-fashioned paid advertising plastered all over the page. Compare the number of paid ads you see on your Facebook page with the number of "conversations about brands." 

YouTube calls itself a social medium but it sticks pre-roll (mostly recycled TV spots) everywhere it can. 

The reason is clear: marketers are finding that they can get more value out of these websites by treating them as avenues for advertising, not conversations.
 
And, just a reminder, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc., don't make money from us having conversations about yogurt. They make money the old-fashioned way -- they sell ad space.

Social media are quickly evolving into just another channel for delivering traditional interruptive advertising.

It is also not surprising that the social media lobby has learned another lesson from traditional paid advertising. When you point out to them that they're not very good at generating sales, they default to the universal excuse for failed advertising -- it's not about sales, it's about branding. Whatever the hell that means. 

Social media is not going to die or go away. It will continue to grow. But the fantasy of consumers having conversations about brands and sharing their passion for brands -- and the claim that this will replace or surpass traditional paid advertising -- is simply collapsing as the evidence rolls in.

The “conversation” was a nice idea. It would be lovely if consumers were as eager to share their enthusiasm for our brands as we are. Sadly, they have other things on their minds.

It turns out that “the conversation” has been mostly a monologue.