The Expectation Game: Social Media Edition
At first I became really paranoid when I read about the TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony poll of more than 60 worldwide marketers, who basically suggested, "Agencies don't get it."
From AdWeek:
“The increase in social media has led … analysts to highlight the dearth of skills at agencies to help clients navigate the social landscape…
“Jim Nail, chief marketing and strategy officer at TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony, said frustration from clients surveyed…was across the board.
“You get the sense that agencies talk a good game,” he said. “They put up a good presentation about what social media is, but when you get to implementing campaigns … (agencies) are not meeting the marketers' expectations."
I like Jim Nail a lot; he is a former client and a smart sonuvagun. It was his last quote that struck me: “when you get to implementing campaigns…(agencies) are not meeting the marketers’ expectations.”
Now, it’s no doubt true that many PR & advertising agencies don’t, in fact, “get it” yet.
But it is also true that many clients don’t get it yet, either. Their agencies may not “meet expectations” because their expectations are off the mark.
In fact, even though some savvy marketers decry their agencies’ tendency to view Social Media as “yet another channel,” in my experience, many times it is the client who has unrealistic expectations about the so-called Return-On-Investment of engagement.
This is not true across the board. More and more clients and prospects understand that it’s impossible to bully your way into winning friends and influencing people; they understand the need to slow down, to listen, engage and empower their community peers.
But too many clients think about Social Media in terms of campaigns instead of long-term commitments.
Too many fail to understand that direct engagement with the community has the potential to realign their entire way of thinking & acting across the board. Too many see Marketing as being still-in-control, and use “metrics” as a way to prove it.
I don’t advocate marketing without metrics. But the rules are changing. And if not all agencies have figured that out, it’s probably also true that many marketers’ expectations have not necessarily kept pace, either.
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Comments
Have you been reading crayon's cred deck? I figured with all of the Jaffe links above, you mut have seen our "it's not a campaign, it's a commitment" slide. ;-)
As you can imagine, there are some seriously dented foreheads over at our shop, after we read the AdWeek piece and said, "Duh!" But I like how you picked up on the subtlety behind Jim's last phrase and made it clear that it's our responsibility to manage expectations in addition to managing marketing programs.
Posted by: Scott Monty | March 3, 2008 09:55 PM
Bravo, my friend. Having communicated with Jim before, I like him, too, but didn't know what to think of the report. You've taken care of the worry for me. Beautifully done.
Posted by: Jason Falls | March 3, 2008 10:26 PM
I agree that clients need to have an understanding of social media. In fact, this is similar to my belief that you should not hire an SEO firm witout understanding the basics of SEO. Same thing for social media / PR. Even if you hire an "expert" you still need to understand what you are buying well enough to have reasonable expectations and also properly manage the firm you have hired.
PS - For any readers interested in learning more about this topic -- so you can then hire Shift and know enough to make Todd happy :) -- we're hosting a free webinar about Blogging for Business and also one about Social Media and Marketing, links below:
http://www.hubspot.com/internet-marketing-webinars/blog-marketing
http://www.hubspot.com/internet-marketing-webinars/social-media
Posted by: Mike Volpe | March 3, 2008 11:51 PM
Great post! My take is that agencies (PR or otherwise) will "get it" when they paid to get it. Right now, most agencies are set up to be list-centric - i.e. a campaign. As you stated, social media is NOT a campaign, nor is it an item on a checklist. It takes time and patience, neither of which clients are willing to pay for.
Posted by: Justin Foster | March 4, 2008 01:19 AM
Hey, Todd. Good post.
As I said in the report: "Marketing services suppliers are in a tough spot. Clients are being overly optimistic expecting best practices in an area that is at most three years old." And, as the data also shows, there are a lot of "wait-and-see" marketers who are more focused on viral marketing campaigns, a.k.a., a new way to push messages at people.
But I think it also says that clients are savvier than many agencies (SHIFT excepted, of course) give them credit for. The sense I got from reading the quotes was that clients may not know how to conduct a real dialogue, but they know what it is not. And after they get past the agency's slideware, they're seeing same old/same old put on YouTube or Facebook instead of CBS or People magazine.
Posted by: Jim Nail | March 4, 2008 01:55 PM
Like you I had to take a moment to ponder this news - thinking perhaps this is exactly the kind of report that would make me look great for being in the "i get it crowd"...and then realizing once again in life that it is not all about me.
But your post really struck a chord. I was in a meeting the other day with a potential client who said their "execs" told her to spend 1/3 of her budget on "social media". Naturally she could not explain what in the world they meant by that.
I'm trying desperately to educate our clients, primarily b2b, on the many ways social media can play a significant role in their world and can honestly say it is just that right now, and education. And at the end of the day not everyone is really willing to pony up the dollars to learn what they need to know to launch a well thought out plan.
Which puts all of us in a very tenuous position when having to recommend the right things to do...
Posted by: Christine Campbell | March 4, 2008 01:56 PM
Thanks, everyone!
Scott - haven't seen the crayon deck, please send it along. ;)
Jim - I take your point, esp the part about how some agencies will "default" to ideas like, "Let's put something up on YouTube" as if that "solves" the social aspects of designing an outreach effort.
Sometimes the hardest thing for an agency to admit is that "engagement" does not REQUIRE a lot of bells and whistles, just good ol' fashioned relationship-building.
Posted by: Todd Defren | March 4, 2008 03:28 PM