Statistics. Impressions. Matrix.
We’re sorry. Digital marketing is a very big topic. Let’s focus on the main thing business owners think about when people say digital marketing: Social Media.
We get it. Everybody’s talking about it. Your kids are on it all the time. There’s doom scrolling. Then there’s that great big word everybody keeps saying.
VIRAL.
That sudden burst of popularity. Then everybody cares about your business. Sales shoot through the roof. Everybody loves your product or service. You’re a millionaire now. Right? So, you keep making content. One post a day. Just put it out. We don’t know what will go viral. It’s all good, as long as we keep putting things out there. Lightning can strike.
It’s a year later, and you’re only getting 2 likes per post. 12 likes are amazing. Even when there’s thousands, your business is not getting the benefit of that.
Sound familiar?
What’s Wrong With Statistics?
Statistics. Targeting. Impressions. Likes. Engagement.
What’s wrong with all this? What are you doing wrong with digital marketing?
Easy. Let’s break some myths.
What is social media? It’s not as groundbreaking as you would think. It’s a medium. It’s a place for you to say things. How do we decide what makes a good newspaper? Imagine a newspaper that says HAPPY MONDAY on its Monday edition. Would you buy it?
The world got caught up in the potential of social media. There’s this growth hack. The agency overwhelmed you with numbers and statistics. You’re busy, and you won’t even bother reading your own content if it’s not paying you money. Why should others engage?
Are You Even Saying Anything Worth Hearing?
Forget the gimmicks. Forget the influencers and KOLS. Forget the fancy design. Of course, forget the cinemagraph and cool videos.
You’re not saying anything worth listening to. How many posts exist in the medium? Billions? You’re advertising. You’re a new kid participating in a massive conversation alongside the cool kids. Can you really afford to play it safe and say the bare minimum with no thought behind it?
Why should the world care? Say it differently. Say it loud and proud. Make it count. Grab the mic with who you are and your idea. Keep the same conversation going. Deepen the narrative and create new offshoots of the same idea. Be your own customer and ask what will I WANT to read.
It’s not what they expect. It’s not what they might not be angry about.
In fact, it can be a tactical move to make them angry. It’s a genuine reaction. They’ll at least remember you. They’ll talk about you. The worst thing to be in social media is to be bland.
In order to instigate a real discussion, we have to risk offense. That’s when discourse happens. Understanding comes from clashes.
Case Studies
GSC
This time, let’s start with something local. One genuine example of a change of stance in a social media profile is with Golden Screen Cinemas. Anybody remembers the “Hello Cannot” campaign during COVID 19?
During a time when people felt the most distant from a cinema, this campaign made you remember GSC and all the negative memories attached to the cinematic experience.
“Hello Cannot” is a bash from the cinema to all the bad habits of the cinema goer. The loud talking. The phone lights. The ringtone blaring out across the hall. As cinemas started opening its doors again with its strict protocol, GSC uses the same logic base to explain the new protocols for social distancing at the cinema.
Think of it as a common-sense FAQ about the new normal.
We came from the same house. Cannot sit together ah? CANNOT.
It was a campaign forcing the customers to re-establish their common sense about cinemas. It talked about COVID. It discussed what cinemas used to be. It’s different, and yet the same.
It made GSC the cinema of choice upon reopening from lockdown. That tiny social movement sold their own campaign merch. We loved that campaign.
Dove: Real Beauty
Let’s talk beauty. For something we all use as a standard, we rarely talk about it. The idea of what it is changes quietly through the ages. So many brands sell beauty. These businesses just keep pushing the narrative or inserting their own spin on what beauty is through their ads and conversations. Be beautiful through us. Be better. Look shinier. Be slimmer.
Perhaps by realising the stagnation of this, Dove launched a new campaign. Real Beauty is genius in the way it forces us to reconsider what beauty is. It starts a new discussion. It breaks a myth that only media can decide. It upset what beauty ads looked like. It used “unconventional” models.
Dove even pushed further and took strong stances.
- Dove and Twitter ads teams partnered to identify and respond to negative tweets about beauty and body image (#SpeakBeautiful campaign)
- Dove flooded Shutterstock with photographs of women tagged “beautiful”, all taken by award-winning photographers, and encouraged others to do the same
- Dove and Getty Images made 5000 images of underrepresented women free for public use
Does that sound like something worth saying?
How To Have An Identity To Brag About
Now we’re at the difficult part. How do we figure out what to say? What will connect with the audience? To this I say, welcome to the fun world of advertising and branding.
Before you figure out what to say, you have to figure out who you are. You have to set what your business is (a strategic narrative and framing of your business or product).
What are the visual elements that makes people identify who’s talking? How do you sound like? What are the words you use often? What do you believe?
That’s a tough discussion. That’s why there are people who devote their lives to find a creative way to do that. Enter agencies. Creative agencies, advertising agencies, branding agencies can help. The ones that care, anyways.
Invest in branding that sets you up. Have the tough discussions that seem unimportant to the bottom line this year with the Creative Director and the agency representatives. Get ready to be challenged on the standard communication items you’ve done for decades prior to this branding.
Branding is painful, we tell our clients. It should be. It’s growth.
This makes everything after easier. We can build new angles of value creation and talk about how your business adds onto the world and industry. It’s not just a new technology that’s more expensive. It’s the technology we built because you need to spend more time at home and less time doing unnecessary things. Don’t invest in a gadget. Invest in the ability to laugh at home with your kids without reminders and texts interrupting that.
Framing.
Engage For Real
Now you’ve said something. When the content is deemed important, everybody will respond. They might casually like it, they might love it, they might hate it or they might think you’re the new public enemy. The world will have opinions.
Scary.
A lot of social media wars are won in the responses. Brands can clarify, reiterate, apologise, hype, agree or disagree. Every response takes the conversation further. It builds a rabbit hole your customers and prospects can keep digging into.
Now they know more about you. They’ve thought about you consistently across days, if not weeks. They might bring it up in a conversation with a friend or parent. Guess how much that will influence them when they see your product up on a shelf. Guess how much that will help when they’re looking at a list of businesses from your industry to select.
At the least, they’ll be curious.
Conclusion
Plenty of clients have asked us to help them with their social media. Honestly, it’s difficult for us to take these requests seriously when the conversation is about frequency, aesthetics and “budget”.
How can agencies make people care about your business and product when you expect 30 designs done in a week with amendments? Designs shouldn’t be a factory belt. Copy shouldn’t be AI written for efficiency. It’s not a report. How do we instigate something impactful when no conversations can be had about who you are and why this product matters to people? Agencies can’t.
There needs to be creativity brought back into this platform. Social media is a powerful medium. It’s not a miracle cure to be taken lightly.
Let’s play on social media, or don’t bother.
