Friday 15 April 2011

Corporate humanisation

I wonder if the real benefit of social media to the marketer will be the humanisation of companies. Of course businesses have looked to control the brand and the marketing experience but we all know that is getting harder and harder, closer to impossible. Trying to monetise social media in social selling works, dell do it great, so do eurotunnel, there are lots of others. But it may be coming a zero sum game of sorts. Brand a steal from brand b, brand a also canibalises its other channels and manages to give additional margin away to customers who display considerable loyalty already.

Heard it argued that technology is killing the need for intelligence and the real skill shortage will be social skills. that is not happening yet but certainly intelligence is being replaced. Normally when you say that there is a bit of an outcry but no one thought a computer would beat Gary Kasparov. Apparently that is a trivial task according to IT experts, sounds bloody tricky to me (that's the level up from downright impossible). They say quizzes are harder for computers. To be honest i would rather think that a computer is managing air traffic control than a pro plus popping physics grad so I am all for computers taking over (judgement day scenarios aside)

So back to the humanisation of companies. everyone has a facebook page, a twitter account maybe customer service staff start using it more haphazardly. Retail business like Best Buy in the US are doing this. Could service staff become almost heroic, cooler than the creative technologist, with a bigger following than the CEO. The only problem comes when they want to leave who owns the following and the fans if the they were acquired on company time, sounding corporate again.

About Me

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United Kingdom
Just curious about marketing, psychology, economics, business, irrational behaviour, people, models, communications, advertising, market imperfections, b2b marketing. I work in the marketing communications industry for OgilvyOne.