You’re absolutely right, it has become a generalized term and there are a lot of companies out there abusing the potential of social media and “invading” those spaces in a way that isn’t benefiting anyone.

And you’re also right in the fact that listing copious amounts of reading material does not win an argument. Listing a moderate amount of reading material that is pertinent to the issue at hand however, should have the opposite effect.

Here it is in full.
“In psychology and cognitive science, confirmation bias is a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions and to irrationally avoid information and interpretations which contradict prior beliefs”

So, in the face of genuine research that explicitly states “personal word of mouth” is better than other kinds of marketing, including “non-personnel word of mouth” (if you make the irrational decision to call SSM that) you opted to interpret it as a win for SMM. Which would be irrational, but expected because you’re preconceived hypothesis is that SMM is the best kind of marketing money can buy, or at least up there.

Stanley Milgrams Obedience study is important because it demonstrates, in one of the most ingenious experiments ever designed, just how much human interaction influences our behavior.

Put simply, the experiment consisted of three people. A learner, a teacher, and authority figure. The teacher asked the learner questions. If the learner got it wrong, they were electrocuted at increasing levels of voltage. Up to the point where the voltage would kill the learner.

When the learner was in another room, 65% of teachers administered the fatal 450 shock.

Interestingly, obedience decreased when the physical immediacy between the teacher and the learner increased. So when the Teacher was requested to hold the learners hand onto and electrical plate to administer the shock, obedience fell to 30%. *

The role of the Authority figure was to gently insist the Teacher continue with the experiment. Without threats and in a completely passive manner.

This is important because Marketing, of any kind, is basically applied Psychology. As I like to put it, the art of making people want what they need, and need what they want.

While the demands of the modern marketeer don’t normally involve the consumer unleashing fatal electric shocks on their fellow man, there is always a request made by the marketeer which has to be fulfilled by the consumer. And the terms are often more vague, so you may tell a consumer “Brand X is really really good” as opposed to telling the consumer “Buy Brand X now”, but you’re really saying “Buy Brand X Now”, just in a round about way.

So how does this relate to Social Marketing. Well, you may spend hundreds of thousands on manipulating the publics perception of a brand, through carefully selected blogger relationships, meaningful engagement in social media spaces, creating high level brand evangelists and possibly even a well targeted and thoughtful email campaign. But without any physical contact with the consumer. Now let’s say you’re working on promoting the latest Cannon Camera and Cannon have put their money into SMM. Nikon however have gone the trade and retail marketing route and not spent a penny on SSM. The consumer walks into the store to buy the Cannon Camera which they have been systematically and cleverly exposed to for months. They know what exactly camera they want and that’s the one they’re going to buy god dam it.

Then the sales assistant shakes their hand, puts the other hand on their shoulder and sells them the Nikkon. The Sales Assistant is a well honed sales machine who dominates a consumer from the word go. They become the authority figure which leaves the consumer wide open to manipulation. At the same time, the sales assistant has been bombarded with training, documentations, sales incentives and sales tools by Nikkon. Nikkon is all they know, all they care about and all they sell.

“AH! But the consumer doesn’t Trust the sales assistant!” I hear you cry. And it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference. Trust is an abstract concept and what you think trust is… it has been proven it isn’t. All because humans behave in unusual ways around other humans. Let’s say for example I ask you to tell me the result of 5 + 6. Easy right? 11!

But put someone in a room with say 20 other people and they all answer 12. Then even though the test subject trusts their own instincts, and even though there’s no way that 5 + 6 could ever equal 12, they will still answer 12. And be wrong. Because as humans, the urge to conform over powers the urge to be right.

Now have 100 people phone in their answer to 5+6 being 12. And the test subject will answer correctly that it is in fact 11. It appears human interaction is the active ingredient here. We may live in the 21st century, but our brains are thousands of years old and at the fundamental level have not caught up with things like Television, Telephones or the Internet.

You might not like it, but the more you look at it, no amount of digital interaction, no matter how meaningful could ever compete with an equally meaningful human interaction. And human interaction marginally less meaningful will still win over. We’re a spiteful, cowardly and idiotic race of creatures open to all kinds of manipulations and ‘hacking’.

After reading the study, and doing a sort of rough and ready meta analysis against various cognitive studies, the report appears to hold up.

But this might all seem a bit excessive. And It is, I’m being a pedant. But it bugs me. Because online marketing of any kind has the potential to reach hundreds of millions of people at little to no cost, we make the assumption that it does reach that potential. But it doesn’t. And after a few years in the real world, outside of the bubble, I’ve come to the conclusion that online marketing is worthless on it’s own compared to real world marketing. Due in large part to the shoddy practices involved and the “mee too” attitude it fosters. And I’m not saying you guys are guilty of this. But it seems the industry is drunk on it’s own success. Digital marketing and SMM has a place, but as part of a much broader marketing strategy, and it sits mid table at best, It’s definitely not at the top of the food chain.

I really should get a blog of my own, rather than leave encyclopedic comments all over the tubes.

*A similar experiment was conducted on monkeys. 0% of the monkeys continued after administering the first shock. Food for though.

Nice to hear from you….. listing lots of reading does not win an argument I am afraid… I am always willing to listen but this research is still missing the point.

The problem with it, (and in fact the problem with most commentators of social media marketing) is the fact that they don’t actually understand what it is, and the term has become such a generalisation for any type of online marketing which isn’t search or display related.

WOM is about trust, if you trust an opinion there is a good chance you will act on that persons recommendation. SMM by my definition (not in ‘oooh lets create a fan page on Facebook’ definition) is about subtly influencing those people who have ‘trust’, thereby creating an advocate of the product or brand. I don’t need to spell the rest out from here..

My problem with the research is that this is not what people actually look at, they go in to Facebook or MySpace and say, this is a social network, ooh those ad’s aren’t very effective. Its just not the right way to go about it.

We are trying to conduct a piece of research at the moment and the more we get in to it, the more impossible it becomes, why ? Because it needs to be focused on micro techniques and not on SMM as a whole, which is way too fragmented to actually measure in a broad sense.

And I don’t understand how you can liken WOMM to SMM, especially when the quote you’re contesting was preceded immediately by this line

“…way below TV ads and “personal”, word-of-mouth recommendations.” [emphasis mine].

Not only did you not read the research in full, you didn’t read the the article that skims through the research in full. You might want to read up on Confirmation Bias. And while you’re looking at that, don’t forget to read up on Stanley Milgrams Obedience Study. In fact, go back to the drawing board and start reading up on everything you can that talks about Human Nature and Behavior. As pack animals, we have complex social interactions and we respond in unusual ways to a zillion different stimuli. Which is why “personal, word of mouth” marketing will always trump any other kind of marketing. There’s a reason Jackie Chan has more fans than Nike. It’s because he has a face as well as a voice. It’s the reason Apple has more fans that IBM. It too has a face and a voice.

But the travesty is that we are presented with some genuine research that has very real implications for how we do our job. Yet, instead of looking at that research and thinking about what we can learn from it, how we can change our techniques to address the issues and take advantage of the things that do work in order to be better at our jobs, we dismiss it because we don’t like the findings. That’s partly understandable because it’s a marketeers to job to also market marketing. I understand you’re not going to start calling clients and saying “you know what, forget it, it’s all bollocks, here’s your money back”. And that’s not to say there isn’t a place for Social Media Marketing. But the marketing industry seems oblivious to the effects of the Marketing Blitzkrieg is has unleashed on consumers which appears to be doing more harm than good. I could go on all day about it, but it’s sunny outside and I want to go play in the pool.

-t

You may be interested in the post I did earlier today: Nobody Goes To Facebook To Shop, Therefore Social Media Marketing Is A Failure