Social Media: Are you willing to pitch ideas with a 50% chance of failure?

Image reprinted from: Spam I am, A viral marketing book suitable for bedtime: http://farisyakob.typepad.com/blog/files/spam_i_am.pdf

From Geoffrey Sheldon, VP, Brand Planning Director, Palio

When the question of an advertising agency’s role in a corporation’s, or brand’s, social media platform was raised at a recent panel discussion about Social Media in Heavily Regulated Industries (hosted by Digital Somethings, with senior communication managers from Deutsche Bank, Jet Blue, Pfizer, and PR Newswire participating on the panel) the message was very clear: The agency’s role is not to build or run a company’s social media efforts, but to provide insight and ideas about how social media channels can be optimized to build brands and drive sales.

Unfortunately, for agencies pitching social media ideas, that’s a high-risk proposition. Like any other new, unproven, and hard to measure media, the likelihood of failure is extremely high. It is estimated by the market research firm Gartner that 50% of the social media initiatives by Fortune 1000 companies in the near future will fail… and what agency wants to be attached to a high profile failure?

So how does one minimize this risk, yet still provide the thinking that clients are looking for?

One can learn a lot by observing the successes and failures of other brands; and you don’t have to dig very far into the numerous case studies and examples of “social media success stories” and “social media failures” to quickly see some interesting patterns into what works and what doesn’t in this space.

What I found particularly interesting is that the brands that appear to have had the most success in the social media space (or social channel, as I like to call it) are the ones that have remained true to their brand. Looking specifically at Best Buy, Dell, Comcast, Obama and Jet Blue (all brands that are touted as high-profile social media success stories), their activities in the social channel are all tied together by a common thread: commitment and consistency. What has worked for these companies/brands is that, in addition to providing consumers with something useful (be it content/offers/information/a place to interact) and maintaining constant updates and real-time responses, all of their social channel tactics are seamlessly integrated into their overarching brand and communication strategy. The result, one brand, one voice, regardless of channel.

On the flipside, failures tend to be associated with not adequately supporting and maintaining social channel tactics, or allowing the tactics to deviate from their overarching brand strategy. Read through a few of the examples in Jennifer Leggio’s article “Nine worst social media fails of 2009… thus far” and you will see that it was simply a lack of commitment and/or consistency that was the cause of many of the problems with some of these social channel flops.

Overall, developing ideas that work in the social channel, is very much like developing ideas for any other media channel, and the success stories all seem to follow these 5 basic principles:

1. Clear communication objectives
2. In-depth target audience understanding
3. A long-term commitment
4. A voice/personality that is consistent with the overarching brand
5. A consumer benefit

Keep these principles in mind at your next ideation session and you might just avoid falling into the 50% trap.

Palio is a full-spectrum global pharmaceutical and consumer advertising, marketing, and communications agency that excels in brand creation and specializes in brand strategy, product launches, global marketing, and digital and integrated media.