Who Owns Social, Anyway?
Beats Me, but There Are a Ton of Things to
Figure Out Before We Settle on the Answer

By Pete Blackshaw

So who the heck owns social?
That’s a tricky question, not only because every business stakeholder — marketing, PR, IT, research, investor relations, media, consumer relations — seems to have a piece of social baked into their new DNA and delivery road map, but also because its definition and scope keep getting pulled in new, arguably more complicated, directions.

Indeed, take a gander at all the new terms being used to describe our new world order — social CRM, social commerce, earned media, CRM 2.0, enterprise social — and you’ll quickly find the social juggernaut becoming synonymous with that broader umbrella term known as “digital.”

Indeed, I just dug up some notes from a consulting initiative I led at Nielsen for a major marketer. Digital, I noted, “is a new enabling framework for business and marketing grounded in four related characteristics: on-demand, interactive, sensing and connected.”

Still, legitimate schizophrenia reigns around the ownership question. After all, as marketers we want leadership roles clearly defined (usually in our favor). We’re restlessly — and rhetorically — impatient with silos and the “lack of organizational integration” — even though our “what’s next” appetite inevitably feeds the frenetic front line of fragmentation.

The good news is that social media appears to be softening organizational silos, ostensibly laying a runway for that coveted yet elusive marketing goal of “integration.”

In my pre-call for the Ad Age Digital Conference panel I’m moderating — featuring NPR CEO Vivian Schiller, Dell CMO Erin Nelson and Combe VP-Director of Interactive Communications Tom Cunniff — the vexing “integration” came up repeatedly. Much of this owes the furious pace of “social innovation,” which Schiller reminded us is still in early innings. Put another way, we might need to turn over countless new rocks before we find our stride.

Nelson, who leads an impressive medley of activity from community platforms to service innovation, suggested that Dell’s biggest need is “where to place bets.” Digital and social media, she said, offers countless possibilities, but in the end you have to make choices. And boy, is she right. Combe’s Cunniff concurrently hit the integration need hard but also suggested new centers of gravity would emerge in our socially enabled world, like consumer relations.

Personally, I have a love-hate relationship with “integration,” calcified by 15 years of marketing experience, from “best practice”-heavy P&G to “start with a clean slate” web startups. Two conflicting rules reign supreme in my head: One, that which forces integration and coordination, or prematurely synthesizes, inevitably slows things down. Two, that which liberates, loosens, decentralizes and draws inspiration from external sources, or walks off the beaten path, speeds things up.

Alas, such is the dualism of social media. We want order, but we can’t stand order. Jefferson-Hamilton reincarnated.

I mean, it’s not that corporate stakeholder groups don’t trust one another. It’s just that the group typically holding the social flag most firmly thinks the other groups are too slow, have no business running the social-media show, and are putting the enterprise on the precipice of disaster through naïve embrace of social silliness like transparency and “be yourself” authenticity.

Meanwhile, agencies and supplier networks are all storming the “social media” center: PR firms see social as an extension of their birthright in influencer marketing; ad agencies see it as a new frontier of high-impact ad impressions (for example, earned media); the growing crop of word-of-mouth agencies and buzz-monitoring firms see this as birthright. It’s almost as though we have the “internal” version of Bob Garfield’s “Chaos Scenario.”

Two recent developments really up the ante for both the ownership and integration questions: social HR and social CRM. For all our hype about the wonders of managing influencers and blogger outreach, the folks scoring the biggest wins in social outreach are the HR teams leading recruiting. Indeed, for those struggling with “social ROI” look no further than the fertile fields of open-source, “all content’s a resume” web.

Then again, the HR dynamic can also muddle the marketing track, especially when the flow of a Facebook fan page quickly shifts gears from an on-equity brand message to a college recruiting pitch, or vice-versa.

The rise of “social CRM” further complicates the ownership question. Perhaps the IT or tech experts do have a legitimate claim to a space that’s increasingly ornamented with enterprise software, cloud computing, scary-sophisticated databases, and scary-high consumer expectations (mostly set by the “marketing guy” freelancing “social engagement”) regarding customer service. Social CRM is also introducing aspects of “business-process innovation” (cost-efficient crowd-sourcing, internal collaboration, integrated listening platform, and the like) that halos well above the marketing space.

So what’s a CMO to do amid all this? We’ll set some of these questions in tomorrow’s panel, but in the meantime, don’t naively assume you’ll solve the social-media “ownership” and digital “integration” questions overnight. Your best bet right now is to manage the flow, sandbag unruly currents here and there, and do everything you can to “path the passion.”

Moreover, we all need to become better internal curators and “community managers.” Not unlike a devoted greenie, we need to work really hard to manage our social “ecosystem.” This is probably less about command-and-control than in establishing thoughtful guide rails, tempered by experience, good judgment, and even the lessons of a few legal hard knocks.

We can also get a few things going that will cultivate more meaningful ownership or cooperation in the enterprise. In my experience, the leader who gets the best (and most inclusive) listening dashboard or radar in place quickly accrues the most organizational legitimacy. Listening pipes, after all, feed many mouths and can drive unity around a common purpose. (I see this all the time — especially in crisis situations, where everyone has a stake in the outcome.)

Related, credible ownership also accrues to those who start making sense of the madness through smarter metrics. I’m particularly fond of the “paid/earned” model (even in my dialogue with in Nielsen) because it lowers access barriers to social media and speaks a language others in the organization can easily understand versus “shiny new object” gobbledygook.

Lastly, CMOs can make a world of difference rethinking incentive models. We have silos because we’re all fighting for a limited budget, often at cross purposes.

So who owns social media? Beats me, but there are a ton of things we can figure out before we settle on the “silver bullet” answer.

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For Big-Spending Consumer Brands, Has Scale Lost Its Power?

Small Players Like Method Leverage Digital, Social Media in Quest to Gain Share

BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) — Have digital and social media leveled the marketing playing field so much that scale is losing its power? …read more

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Check out Coke’s Expedition206! Wow!

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Why Digital Agencies Are Indeed Ready to Lead

They Understand the Technology, the Speed of Iteration and Analytics
By Jacques-Herve Roubert on 11.12.09 @ 10:14 AM at AdAge

Over the past 18 months, a great debate has consumed our industry: Are digital agencies poised to sit at the head of the advertising table? Depending on whom you ask and what you read, the answer seems to flip flop — with a majority of people still having reservations and making claims that digital agencies aren’t ready to lead.

So why does the debate continue? Does offline or online really matter to an oblivious consumer who’s only interested in “no-line” communications? Are we spending too much time focusing on who should lead and not enough asking: What’s next?

Ana Andjelic’s DigitalNext post, provocatively titled “Why Digital Agencies Aren’t Ready to Lead,” mentions several reasons why digital agencies aren’t ready to lead, one of which was their lack of experience in the business (as compared with the “decades of experience” that traditional agencies are known for). I’m sure there are instances where decades of experience can directly translate into success, but there are certainly instances (uh, Lehman Brothers?) where deep roots had no bearing on their ability to produce — and produce well. Furthermore, a certain percentage of the individuals now working and thriving in digital agencies came from traditional agencies.

Additionally, most of the world’s most ingenious inventions were not created overnight, but took years of hard work, research, observation, trial and error, and collaboration to fine tune. The digital ecosystem has required much of the same exploration — and, in most cases, into technologies that are new to all of us. As James March himself said, “Exploration involves being an amateur for a while, but only as a step on the way to being a professional.”

And while the structure of an interactive agency may often mimic “one big crazy family” (by the way: Whose family isn’t crazy?), how could making sure everyone’s opinion is heard be a bad thing? Most interactive agencies subscribe to the notion that you never know where the big idea or concept will come from. Sometimes the big idea can come from the exploration of a new technology or method that enhances consumer connection.

Here’s why:

That was then, this is now. Like it or not, the days of the ingenious, 30-second TV spot are over. Today’s creative ingenuity lies within the idea, the technology, the concept, the innovation and, perhaps most important, the Holy Grail: consumer connection. Word of mouth is more prevalent than ever and interactive communities have an increasingly louder and more influential voice and are stronger (and sometimes the only) sources of breaking news stories. No one understands this better — nor is better equipped to handle the swift demands required — than the digital agency.

Teaching an old dog new tricks. The “new trick” is immediacy. It’s about faster response times and the concept of immediacy. E-mail, IM, Twitter, Facebook, cellphones — all of these technologies set the stage for consumers wanting and expecting immediate responses, not to mention, immediate access to products and services. Traditional advertising agencies are not adapting to this mentality because they are still working with processes and organizational structures that were developed in a time when the internet and the concept of immediacy simply did not exist.

Digital agencies understand that brands are being held to higher-than-ever consumer expectations. The plethora of data we can garner from a $50,000 media buy can leave traditional agencies’ heads spinning with insight and analysis. The truth of the matter is: Interactive agencies are forcing traditional agencies to integrate with digital media to better track and measure campaign results through custom URLs, short codes, etc.

Kickin’ it old school. Not only are the days of the 30-second TV spot gone, so too are the traditional advertising agency gurus like David Ogilvy and Bill Bernbach. Today, those figures have been replaced, instead, by financially backed entities. Rather than exploration and exploitation, digital agencies need their own gurus and legends that can lead by example.

Five or 10 years ago, I might agree with the argument that digital agencies weren’t ready to lead, but after sitting at the table with other agencies for the past decade — traditional, branding, public relations, marketing — it’s clear that digital agencies have proven their value, not to mention their ability to innovate, inspire, and create the big idea.

Perhaps the synergy and balance between exploitation and exploration is off kilter for digital agencies, but more and more we’re starting to see the agency structure itself change with new hires in technology and social media. And marketers are noticing:

According to Media magazine, AKQA was named the lead agency for Nike India earlier this year.

Precor named Ascentium its agency of record in October 2009. According to Forrester’s Q2 2009 Interactive Agency Wave, Ascentium “received the highest client satisfaction scores in this year’s review.” The assignment with Precor includes strategic planning and execution of all offline and online campaigns.

McAfee hiring Tribal DDB as its agency of record in 2008. This assignment included all TV, print, outdoor, and digital.

The balance may not be there today, tomorrow or next month. The truth of the matter is digital agencies have earned their right to sit at the head of the table because they’ve brought what consumers and marketers are looking for: new innovations in measurement; flexibility and nimbleness; and, most importantly, ideas that bring what a magazine spread or 30-second TV spot cannot.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Now president-CEO of Nurun, a global interactive marketing agency, Jacques-Hervé Roubert began his career in advertising at Havas Conseil and subsequently held senior executive positions with BDDP and Young & Rubicam.

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Facebook’s Big Changes: Action Items for Marketers
Social-Media Site Streamlines Apps Before Fanning Across the Web

Facebook’s latest round of updates announced this week will affect everyone: marketers, developers, publishers, consumers and anyone else remotely connected to their site and platform. And some of the changes will especially impact marketers.

In a rare move for any company, Facebook not only announced what changes will take place, but it publicly offered a timeline for when it will happen. Of course, the timeline may shift, and some specifics have yet to be ironed out — I’ve found in consulting both with Facebook executives and analysts covering the announcements that, many of the details aren’t yet known and a number of important questions cannot yet be fully answered. However, marketers should still appreciate the wealth of information Facebook has provided on these changes, including a gallery of screen shots. …Read more

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AdvertisingAge has been exploring how various agencies are integrating social media services into their operations. Some like Edelmen have hired inhouse social media teams; others, like BBDO are using young mentors to teach all their executives how to Facebook, Blog, twitter, and otherwise function and think like authentic socail media players.

Doug Checkeris, CEO of MediaCom North America, how they are handling integrating social media services.”There are lots of ways for us to get the individual components done by specialists. We don’t necessarily need to bring all of those resources into the building and make them into a socail media team. What we need to do is have a clear idea of what we want to do and get the best people in the business to work on it. In terms of bloggers we can find them. Every situation will require different blogging specialists. We can search that and source that. We want to concentrate on understanding the inside driven strategy and how it relates to choosing social media and how we apply it to an integrated campaign.”
(http://tinyurl.com/yqmnbg)

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