Every day we read about how Social Media is completely changing the landscape of marketing.  That’s a huge Statement.  Is it changing that much?  Has it changed you?  Or are you one of those Brand Leaders that keeps trying to figure out “HOW THE HELL DO I DO THIS?”  I think the statement really should say “Every day, we see traditional Brand Leaders still confused by Social Media with no clue what to do”.  Thank god we are past the “Like us on Facebook” stage and thank god we have stopped doing websites on how to cleanse a wound.   The next stage is to stop saying your brand is on Twitter when you have 57 followers and you send out a tweet every 3 weeks.

builFor generations, they talked AT the consumer, but now they have to talk WITH the consumer.  In the old school, Brand Leaders were trained to try to INTERRUPT the consumer in a busy part of their day and then YELL at them over and over again.  It was all about AWARENESS-PURCHASE-LOYALTY where Awareness leads to conversion to Purchase which then the brand experience leads to Loyalty.  The new school of marketing is all about LOYALTY-AWARENESS-PURCHASE where the most loyal users will be the ones driving Awareness and the influence of the conversion to purchase.  It’s no longer about yelling at strangers on TV.  Instead, you have to engage your most loyal consumers, and they become the medium for reaching new users as they WHISPER advice to their friends.

The modern Brand Leader gets the power of being a loved brand.  When your brand is loved, demand becomes desire, needs become cravings and thinking is replaced by feeling.  Consumers become outspoken fans ready to speak out and battle competitive users.  Next time you want to leave a cocktail party but can’t convince your spouse to go, find an Apple user and tell them that Android is way better.  It will create such a fight that your spouse will drag your ass out of that party very fast.  Now, that’s brand loyalty.

This connection between beloved brands and their consumer becomes a source of power for that brand to use.  In today’s world of Brands, the most Loved are the most powerful.  Brands like Starbucks, Google and Whole Foods aren’t using TV advertising, but instead they are taking their brand experience to social media and influencing their most loyal brand lovers to spread the word.  People post a picture of their Pumpkin Latte on Facebook and now 137 people now want one.

The old school thinking is what gets measured gets done.  Old School media has always been about efficiency and the ROI (Return on Investment).  But New School media is about Impact and ROE (Return on Effort).  The influence of social media is like the new “invisible hand” that you know is there, but can’t always measure.  Yes, TV is and always will be the most efficient medium. It’s easy to stick with what you know and has a whole system of measurements.  But TV is an announcement medium, not an influence medium.  TV is best used for broad awareness and new news.  But it’s not as good at influencing as social media.   There are loved brands who still spend 95% of their ad budget on TV.   Yet, their TV ads tell us nothing new and fail to move the brand forward. The better spend would be take all that stored energy within their most loyal users and get them to influence their network of friends.  Your most loyal consumers become the medium for attracting new users.  

For Brand Leaders to get it, they should be living in the space of social media.  It’s a great chance for Brand Leaders to get in the shoes of your consumer, see how they live, hear what’s important to them, use their rich language and feel what they think about your brand.  Be active and be engaged.  You’d better hurry up though, because pretty soon what we see in front of us as new school media will be old pretty soon.  And then you’ll be completely out of it.