Social contract vs. investment

A brand’s ability to reach consumers on an emotional level is obviously critical. However, as consumers continue to empower themselves through education and increased participation within various technological platforms, down goes the attention span and patience for 20th century marketing tactics. The downside of this trend suggests that the threshold required to first grab attention and then hold it seems to have evolved into that of the ridiculous spectacle.

When I speak to a client and use the word “bravery” in part I’m referring to this trend as a barrier of entry into the consumer’s psyche. Emotional engagement can only happen if both parties are willing and accepting participants, some feel that to get there a spectacle is required and there is definitely truth to that.

Social contract or social investment?

Some refer to this engagement between brand and consumer as the beginning of a “social contract,” I’d like to make the case for the use of the word “investment.” I recently expressed my opinion on well-known Forrester researcher Jeremiah Owyang’s blog and referred to a portion of our recent work with MacEwan School of Business as the example.

Owyang’s post was a higher level discussion about how consumers information was given out via various social network platforms and the ability of an agency such as ours to scrape that data, turning it into meaningful intelligence as the basis for the “contract.”

My point of view is that reaching an emotional level of discussion with prospective clients, consumers or partners is a key event in the relationship and can only happen with certain conditions present. Many efforts within the social web and across many industries do not accomplish this at all, at any level. Others do reach that level but unfortunately the emotion is anger on behalf of the consumer.

So which brands are more likely to embrace the concept of emotional centric “social investment?” I believe those who’s cultures are built on a foundation of mutual respect, giving and caring. More specifically, I think brands with women involved in key leadership positions are more likely to take these sensitivity and psychological issues into consideration when building out their marketing campaigns. This habit should serve them well when engaging the rest of us within the social web.

My personal social media journey started in 2004 and I’ve been studying these types of aspects ever since as well as participating. Certainly, I’ve made mistakes in the past; sometimes I can be a bit forward and offer an opinion when silence should have been my course of action. Having said that, I think that my grasp of the social web, and more importantly people, is stronger for these interactions, good and bad. This I feel, translates into a stronger customer experience here at fusedlogic.

Out of curiosity, a quick tally of all projects past has the number of ones with women as the key stakeholder in the lead. Further, fusedlogic’s best client experience ever (from our perspective at least and I hope theirs too) on all accounts is MacEwan and it was led by Jana Clarke, Marketing Manager for the School of Business.

We’ve been fortunate to have many great clients and this project was a ton of fun, very productive and went off with little to no issues. The organization was phenomenal to work with, as was her team, the majority of them women. Please don’t read anything into this discussion that isn’t there, I’m simply stating statistics. fusedlogic doesn’t specifically target women entrepreneurs or executives; it just seems to have progressed that way. For example, we have recently been asked to supply 3 proposals and 2 of the three are to organizations led by women.

Am I being stereotypical throughout this discussion? Probably. The more important question should be whether I’m off base with what I’m saying. Is my assumption that men are more likely to gravitate towards the term “social contract” vs. “social investment” in terms of general approach correct?

What about the flip side and my belief that in the above context women are more likely to approach business as an emotional “investment,” which I believe then provides them with an advantage over men regarding their social media marketing efforts? Do you think men are more likely to laugh at this E-Trade commercial and even go around calling their friends “shank-a-potumus” afterwards? I know I have, I think it’s hilarious, if you have research to the contrary I’d love to see it.

Ultimately, my experience has shown that the social web is an “investment.” If I forget that fact I’m promptly given my hat and shown the door. What about you?

Written by Walter Schwabe, have a wonderful Easter long-weekend everyone.