On July 12, 2009, The Financial Times front page held an article praising the efforts of Matthew Robson, an intern at Morgan Stanley, who enlightened his co-workers with the mechanics of the teenage mind. If only I had had the idea first. The fifteen-year-old’s assignment was to write a report on how social media is perceived by young adults; instead, he wrote a Bible. By outlining the do’s and don’ts in teenage marketing, Mr. Robson did not wow the world with the untold secrets of the digital age. The bottom-line is that the most successful social media outlets (twitter, facebook, youtube, to name a few) gained popularity for having a user- friendly interface; so should the manual that explains it. Mr. Robson’s report cut the analytics from the real potential of social marketing. His work is valued for its straightforward, honest, and clean-cut voice.
The phenomena that is buzzed about in many office buildings has been a reality for many teenagers whose first words were preceded by “<>” and casually ended with “< / p >”(html coding for the start of a paragraph). This past summer, high internships in Wall Street were given to those who could decipher and manage social media sites. But how much deciphering is it really needed to turn advertising into skyrocketing profit?
The desire to be inside the consumer’s daily life has taken marketers to invest millions on consumer behavior research. At every office I have worked at, account managers and creative designers draw up innovative plans to keeping their clients close. But is infiltrating one’s daily routine a tactic of the past? Models that were once applicable have lost value with the introduction to the digital era. The 21st century consumer suffers from attention overload and is often driven by emotions rather than attracted by information. Today’s world is filled with multi-dimensional issues, considerations, and opinions. Such complexities have in turn given birth to motley personalities that seek individuality and new forms of expression. In this arena social media has opened its doors with a boom.
The spectacle that seeped into our computer monitors has become an essential aspect of our daily lives. We share photos through facebook walls, blog about our latest vacations, and if you’re chicken from last night gave you the worst stomach pain in the world, no worries you can tweet about that too. The digital age has provided society with a means to personalize, customize, and essentially leave the so-called “legacy”. By exposing our thoughts and lifestyles to the virtual world we are imprinting our personalities into our very own html. Cyberspace has given the individual the opportunity to grow his/her personality into abstract boundaries. Marketers should do the same.
People want to feel voiced. Marketers should therefore work to voice the consumer’s personalities and not shape his/her personality. Globalization has brought a wide range of products to our fingertips, breaking the correlation between one’s uniqueness and brand selection. By providing the runway not the fashion show parse, social media serves as a cradle to one’s success. From this model the consumer relationship becomes one of dependency. It is time for businesses to step away from the traditional, the dos and don’ts, the facts and numbers. Marketers should cater to consumer’s needs by embracing the simplicity of social media in order to become a listener to and cheerleader of its own consumers.
