Not Stopping Believing

Don’t worry, Mad Men, your jobs are safe, no matter what that social media whippersnapper down the hall is saying. Print this post out (don’t email it, go old school) and leave it on his desk the next time he sends his weekly “death of advertising” email to everyone in your ad agency. You can trust me, because I am one of those whippersnappers.

Why Social Media Works

In a word: trust. It’s the key to social media marketing. I trust my social networks to market to me more than I trust faceless corporations. My buddy Luke knows more about the kind of snowboards I like more than Burton does, so I learn about Burton through something Luke shares with me via Facebook. Successful marketing in this context becomes about facilitating a conversation; Burton needs to provide Luke and I with things to share and talk about.

Direct conversations with brands are possible (JetBlue on Twitter), but it’s not like the Olden Days. Sure, TV and traditional channels still generate the mass awareness. But in addition to firing off the big guns, brands also have to climb off their high-budget Superbowl pedestals and talk to me, and act like Luke, a trusted peer. On the new playing field, brands (and those that represent them) are being forced to behave like parents with kids in college: they have to act a little more honest and let go of the steering wheel a little.

And as the social media channel grows, more and more people are publishing content and opinions, giving me unprecedented access to all sorts of non-branded content.

OK, great. A beautiful system is emerging, chock full o’trusted, filtered opinions, right?

Well, maybe not.

Luke and My 4 Bazillion “Friends” Have No Idea What They’re Talking About

According to Edelman’s recent Trust Barometer, trust in peer opinions has dropped from 45% in 2008 to 25% today. That’s a big dip, one that coincides with consumers’ rising dependence on social networks to provide recommendations. The more I trust Luke for buying advice, the more I realize Luke is not quite as smart as I thought.

The vast array of opinions at my disposal may not be helping either. Recent studies have shown that too many choices may cause paralysis or increased feelings of regret. One particularly famous study mentioned in a recent Times article, involved consumer reactions to selling jam:

In a California gourmet market, Professor Iyengar and her research assistants set up a booth of samples of Wilkin & Sons jams. Every few hours, they switched from offering a selection of 24 jams to a group of six jams. On average, customers tasted two jams, regardless of the size of the assortment, and each one received a coupon good for $1 off one Wilkin & Sons jam.

Here’s the interesting part. Sixty percent of customers were drawn to the large assortment, while only 40 percent stopped by the small one. But 30 percent of the people who had sampled from the small assortment decided to buy jam, while only 3 percent of those confronted with the two dozen jams purchased a jar.

This study has been replicated with all sorts of products, with similar results. People think they want choice, but it ends up freaking them out.

Getting the Brand Back Together

It loops us back around to why brands exist in the first place, and why they will never die: we all need help making decisions about who we trust. It has nothing to do with technology. We simply don’t have time to do the legwork ourselves. Even if we do have the time, we get overwhelmed by the blizzard of choices. I’m too lazy to go do the field reporting in Afghanistan myself, and Luke doesn’t know his Kabul from his elbow, so I trust CNN (an established brand with a carefully crafted identity) to do it for for me.

So rest easy, Adland. Branding isn’t dead; it’s going to be a crucial ingredient in sorting through the inconsistent and dizzy mess of social media.

Originally written for the ISM blog.