Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Brands, Economics, Blink, Twitter & Facebook: Part II

Almost titled Part II: Economics, Brands, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, and Social Networking- Twitter & Facebook. Brevity is the soul of the blog... oops.

Part I of this Post:
Thanks to Twitter, I was reminded of an article on “Predictably Irrational” behavior:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19231906

Some more background can be found in my Part I post here:
http://randomjunkyramblings.blogspot.com/2009/06/economics-brands-blink-twitter-facebook.html

Marketing and Behavioral Economics.
The day care center experiment on the effects of social and market norms colliding provides interesting results. More importantly, it can serve as an interesting starting point for marketers to think about how to participate in conversations with their customers on social media sites.

Looking at the social media marketing vehicle as a "participant" on the social marketplace, it may help illuminate patterns that help the marketing vehicle navigate uncharted 'mindfields' with their experiential partners (read customers).

While this perspective should not be news to skilled brand managers, the key here would be developing patterns and tools that help brand managers make more effective decisions.

These theories could be used to:
1. Create markets with specific incentives (watch out for unintended consequences),
2. Make decisions that drive the market entity's/ brand vehicle's behavior within a marketplace, and,
3. Leverage various market players' behavior in a marketplace to your market entity's/ brand vehicle's advantage.

Points 2 & 3 can be interpreted as old school, carpet bombing, bulk-broadcast-media-buying strategy & social network or conversational marketing respectively.

Social Media and Behavioral Economics.
A potential application- could it help a brand decide which social media site to develop its presence on, especially if the brand could utilize all 3 approaches to negotiate? There are social marketers that would recommend using the third approach listed above as it is more "authentic". This seems to have become the prevailing thought in the B2C arena.

Where does Microsoft's strategic investment in Facebook, more a B2B deal that has B2C impact, fit across the 3 approaches listed above?

What do you think?

Update: To be even more explicit in my messaging:

1> Everything Must Go!?
As a marketer looking at the channels to reach out to your customer, you may need to understand how to leverage the new channels that have sprung up where your customer is not a "couch potato". As you learn more about the new channels and more about your customer, you will find new ways to apply your experience, knowledge and acumen in the new channels. You do not necessarily have to toss everything out of the window. :-)

2> Marketing Future 2.0
Marketing Future 2.0 arrives in baby steps- while there is an advantage to be being ahead of the learning curve, your best friend is still your ability to distill it into impact on consumer buying.

Now, what do you think?


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