Are brands set to become Big Brother or be consigned to Room 101?

The government spied, lied, rewrote history and generally manipulated people and people lived by the rules of a leader that may not even have existed. 
 

Once 1984 really arrived, none of this was true. But also life back then was very different to the one we experience today. There was no Internet. No iPods. Video Games were played in arcades. It was the year when Tetris was invented and Mark Zuckerberg was born. Mobile phones cost over £1,000 and were the size of house bricks. The height of sophistication was having a telephone answering machine that linked to your telephone and recorded messages on a tape. 
 

Now, communication is evolving at a rate none of us have previously experienced in our lifetime. And at the forefront of that evolution is Social Media and Content Marketing.  For some these are separate streams of activity but for brands they are one and the same thing. And for many they are a must-have item on the marketing shopping list at budget time. 
 

The ground rules of social media marketing are very clear. And the clue is in the title – SOCIAL media. To be accepted in any society, you need to conform to their rules – that is, until and unless you earn respect and have influence, and then you may be afforded the respect of contributing to the definition of those rules.   
 

A recent study conducted by the Content Marketing Institute showed 88% of UK marketers now invest in content marketing as part of their overall marketing strategy; However, with 46% of those surveyed saying they cannot produce enough content and 44% admitting that they find it challenging to create interesting content, it would appear brands are still finding their feet in the world of social media, let alone convinced they are getting a pay back from their involvement (52% of content marketers rate their activities as not very effective or worse).
 

Key to getting started is an effective social listening programme. This requires the intelligent use of technology to review 100’s of thousands or millions of posts, tweets, blogs, vlogs and articles to get a sense of what is interesting, irritating or iridescent in your brand world. This is the first place where most brands get despondent. After many, many millions of pounds of investment in traditional media over the years, most brands do not warrant a mention in social media. But often the clue is not in the brand but in the behaviour; of the consumer. 
 

For example, when AIS wanted to sell more Skoda’s for their client, the Volkswagen Group, they did not rush off and start making witty films about Skoda’s (although had they been doing this in 1984, many a gag about a skip with wheels could have been borrowed from common parlance), no, they ‘listened’ to how and where, and even more importantly when, people were talking about buying a new car. And they entered the conversation with a relevant contribution. Getting to the ‘when’ can be more about statistical analysis, than about following the sales norms in the calendar year. Messages from cars on Valentine’s Day are just a crass intrusion if not perfectly executed. Whereas an intrusive page take over, taking you to involving and informative content, when you are in the market for new wheels, could be just the trigger to take you on a new line of thinking, for a marque not previously considered.  
 

So a lot of science and technology will get you into a place where you are noticed within your desired social group and these skilful and considered interactions with both formal and informal content will, if delivered considerately, enable you to rise up the ranks of influence.  This is when, and only when, you can start to develop the role of the brand into an ambassador of the mission or musing that occupies the lexicon of your chosen social group. This is nirvana for brands; being used as the signpost for social discovery within social networks. Perhaps obviously, but not without a great deal of exceptionally hard work and careful deduction, and in many instances abduction, Kindred have positioned the National Lottery as the beacon for those transfixed by the opportunities wealth can bring. Granted, the highly poignant footage of a newly minted millionaire has a gravitational pull for this group like no other, but just having such footage, fluttering limply in the random gusts of interest on the internet, would not have achieved the access now afforded to the Lotto brand, through the sharing, SEO prominence and anticipated timed releases of new content. 
 

The great skill to social media, and it is a mind-set most marketers are trained to avoid, is to understand how your brand can participate in a social group. How it can be useful, interesting, entertaining or just plain accepted by that group. The group is not your ‘audience’. Your brand has no rights to be heard, or respected among that group. You have to earn their respect and become valued as one of them. To many bands brought up in the world of advertising, and still occupying that world, this means having to acquire the skill to doublethink. To be able to stand out and broadcast your message through one set of media and to engage and draw in through another. It is not a skill that comes naturally to many marketers, who are often convinced by their own Newspeak, but it is vital if they do not want their brands confined to Room 101, by the very people they are trying to impress.  

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