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Of kitten hats and native ads // My lessons learned from 20 months of ADventure (Part 8/8)

“I believe credibility is one of the biggest issues yet to be addressed by internet advertisers.” Jef I. Richards (Part 8/8)

Social Media empowers people to overthrow governments. The communities of mature self-determined millennials, that you like to reach, have the strength to mobilize nations and cause rebellions. How dare you think, you can control them. Credibility is not something you can decide upon in a marketing board meeting. Credibility is something you have to earn by acting according to the community’s ethical standards. There is no way to maximize your earned media exposure without credibility. You can multiply your media spendings on the social web, but you will never ever earn positive word-of-mouth amplification, if you are not transparent, reliable and “lovable”. On the contrary you will experience the community backlash to be even more massive, if you are present with cheesy sponsored posts and sidebar ads right when your CEO claims that access to free water is not a human right. The real world is not about strategy, it’s about sincerity. Having to handle a so called “shitstorm”, or as I’d rather put it, a backlash, is probably an unpleasant task. The worst thing, that you can do though, while desperately trying to control it, is treating your Social Media channels as if they were “owned media” by cleaning your profile from unpleasant comments. You do not own your Facebook page. Your borrowed it from Facebook and Facebook borrowed it from the Facebook community. There’s no way you will get away with ignoring these facts and trying to persuade yourself, that you were in control. You are just a member of a self-cleaning community. This is the real world. Its inhabitants appreciate relevancy, credibility, transparency and having a voice. The first step to credibility is listening to their voice. Respect their opinion(s) and take them seriously. Hand over some control to them. There’s nothing you have to fear as long as you are relevant, credible and transparent. They will defend your brand against attacks without you having to intervene. They will sort out things with critics and you will after all benefit from the community being self-cleaning. If you’re not credible and transparent: Stay the hell away from the social web!

To sum it up, here’s a short addition to the above to-do list especially for brand marketers/ advertising companies:

Admit to yourself, that you are not in control

Take risks

Do not advertise on the social web - become a part of it

Be relevant

Be credible

Be transparent

Be sincere

Treat our planet with respect (and feel free to talk about it)

Obey ethical and moral standards (and feel free to talk about it)

Inspire people

Be everything that you have not been over the last 70 years

And Finally:

Try to get used to the fact, that it’s often people, that seem to know nothing about advertising and marketing, that can give you access to the real world. This world is full of constantly changing opportunities. Take your time to look at even the smallest entities, that shape the future and change our reality every single day. It is seldom the big time corporations that start revolutions. I was lucky enough to meet some of these lone wolves. Guys, that are part of the “critical mass”. Guys that make a difference (in marketing) even though they do not care about advertising and corporate brands. Guys, that care about people and how to inspire them. Lee Martin is one of these guys. I met Lee for the first time at the SoundCloud office in San Francisco. He had been working in the music industry for quite a while and joined SoundCloud as a creative hacker. I had already seen some of his builds on the SoundCloud blog and other developer sites and was truly impressed by his way of approaching, implementing and explaining things. Hence I was really excited to finally meet him in person. We quickly found common ground over a beer on the roof deck and so we hung out for Whiskey and beer for three nights in a row. He had published a “timed comments hack”, which in addition to the storywheel hack mentioned above inspired me to get a new perspective on advertising on SoundCloud. So I picked his brain and soon we found ourselves pitching random ideas, ready to change the world instantaneously...or rather on the next morning. After all we significantly changed one, wait, two things: My and his perspective on advertising and last year’s Whiskey sales revenue in The Mission District. We approached from different ends of the world. I had a pure standard media sales background, trying to calculate a cpm for everything and driving everyone at SoundCloud crazy by constantly talking about net reach, GRP and efficiency. Lee had worked in the entertainment industry, so he was all about engaging people, making them touch, feel and experience a product. He would have preferred five users that actually try out his build and experience the product over 1000 impressions. We somewhat met in the middle. For me this one and our later encounters were game-changing experiences, that had a real impact on the way I look at my business. Even though there’s definitely just one Lee Martin out there, there’s a whole bunch of creative beautiful minds, that know, how to be relevant and credible in the real world.

So, my last advice is: Look out for these people. Listen to them. Try to understand them. You don’t need consultants to tell you, how to optimize your social media campaigns. You need the guys, that actually build the world, you're trying to get comfortable with, to tell you how to create and present relevant and engaging content. You need to start thinking about contact quality in a different way. You need to stop thinking in terms of campaigns and start a consistent transparent dialogue, that really makes a difference for your consumers. Tear down the sidewalls of that good old media box. You will not harm your brand by taking the risk to follow these advices. You will harm your brand if you stick to buying media on the central market an keep on communicating like you used to. At least, this feels right to me. On the other hand I might just have crush on smart Cajuns wearing knitted kitten hats.