Jimmy Wales: Social Web Marketing - Good for Some, Not for All
According to Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, there are too many Indians and not enough Chiefs in the world of Web 2.0 marketing today. "There is a lot of advice about how brands should be interacting [online]," he said in a keynote presentation at Ad:Tech San Francisco today. "But, unless your brand is information dense, this highly interactive marketing is both expensive and useless."
The good news however, is that communities offer the best bang for your buck in this miserable economy and Wales sees return on investment (ROI) as an "incredible steal right now," when it comes to consumer generated media.
The Benefits of Community During a Recession
Wales, who led the user generated content movement three years before the term Web 2.0 was coined, today told a standing room only audience that people fail to get their corporations off the ground because they don't focus on community. And in a recession, your community could be your saving grace.
"Wikipedia was really born in the depths of the dot com crash," Wales said. "With no investment money available, we had to figure out our own solutions as a community." "If there had been [funds], when problems arose I would likely have hired people to try and solve them," he explained. And according to Wales, this led to innovations in social rules and social institutions.
Wikipedia, the largest encyclopedia in the world with over 2 billion+ words, is the fourth most popular Web site in the world, with 301 million unique visitors monthly according to comScore. Its success is largely due to its passionate community and the content it produces.
Wales pointed to the Marvel community as another great example of a growing consumer generated content phenomenon, with the Marvel Database Project consisting of 49,864 articles and 50,427 images (as of today). Much like Wikipedia, this community of volunteers is passionate and focused on building very high quality content.
Contrary to Popular Belief, Consumer Media is a Great Place for Brand Advertising
Although most brands have been afraid to get involved with user generated content in the past, Wales sees this as a thing of the past because sites like Wikia, Flickr, YouTube etc. are becoming more dominant.
"The modern Web 2.0 space is not about funny cat videos any more or about angry ranting blogs," Wales explained. "If you look at what is happening, you'll see quality content - equal to magazines and television."
But with the plethora of advice being dispensed on the Web it is no wonder brand marketers are confused. "'You need to interact, to blog, to Twitter' is the general advice given today," said Wales. "And for some brands this is absolutely the right thing to do."
The caveat of course, is having a brand that is information dense.
Using Doritos as an example of a brand that won't make it in the consumer generated world (due to the nature of its brand), Wales explained "I don't believe there is ever going to be 50,000 [user generated] articles [written about Doritos]."
Another brand Wales points to is Skittles and its recent campaign, and explains that while it's a good gimmick, it's certainly not the future of Skittles marketing. "Interacting with customers [for brands which are not information dense] is not helpful," Wales explained. "But, if you have a brand that's being talked about online, you need to understand that although you cannot control what is being said, you do need to be there."
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Trx suspension training is another uprising star brand with fast growing community following: yes we do watch and participate
Interesting piece, but it makes me think how easy it is to miss the obvious. Telephone marketing doesn't work for all companies; neither does leaflet dropping; or e-mail marketing. Why should social media be the Silver Bullet?
First taks for any company in marketing is to determine who and where their market is; and how you can best engage with them. No point trying to interact through Facebook if your market is C-level people in B2B organisation; nor using Twitter if your market is slow adopters.
Put common sense before any expectation of results.
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
Its sounds good, the information is very productive and informative. Marketing firms are now offering few of the services like creative design, consumer data, printing, fulfillment, analytics and website solutions. Good to see these kinds of services.
Just before Jimmy Wales went on stage for his ad:tech keynote address yesterday, I caught him for a one on one interview on camera. Here it is.
http://bit.ly/YEarW
And here's another video of Jimmy just after he walked off stage.
http://bit.ly/pUQKB
Tons more video coverage of ad:tech here: http://bit.ly/DhG8f
As a community manager, my job is to understand what people need and address the need with tools and solutions. I really appreciate the focus of your article pointing folks toward strategic community. What we are seeing is the need of business to do more with less. We are in the software development business so where we innovate is to study the corporate culture of our clients and apply a prudent mix of software engineering and project management best practices to deliver their application better, faster, cheaper.
One of our products that you might find to be of interest is http://www.dynamicalsoftware.com/cogenuity which is a challenge based collective intelligence app geared to help organizations tap the collective brainpower of those on the Internet to solve their compelling problems.
While I absolutely agree with Jimmy that communities offer brands the opportunity to reach users in a very different way than traditional advertising, I have a slightly different take on creating content. Content doesn't have to be long blog posts or articles. For consumer brands, like Doritos, content can be comprised of a variety of things from discussion posts, comments, photos, videos, etc. The key is to integrate the brand into the community in such a way that it adds to the user experience which in turn facilitates natural conversation.
So I think consumer brands of all kinds can have an impact using social media. Look at the Burger King Whopper Sacrifice campaign. BK may not be content dense, but it certainly made a splah with the campaign on Facebook. Whatever the case, every brand has different objectives, so the first step is making sure social media is really the right way to accomplish those.
Bryan Bennett
Sr. Director of Marketing
Watercooler
I think there is tremendous insight in Jimmy Wales presentation but I do think that brand marketers have a lot more work to do before they get this communities right.
Having served on the marketing agency side for almost 14 years, I see first-hand that it is still very hard to convince a client that there is a greater benefit to their brand building efforts and their business overall, if they allow communities to form and flourish. The lose of control is terrifying.
Also, I think getting it right will mean solving for, not ignoring brands like Doritos and Skittles from this space. Maybe we need new ideas of how brands should engage communities.
I really think user generated content is great. I came across this video for Aquafina and I think it really has potential. Check it out-- http://vimeo.com/3989641
Back in late 2007, a question raised by someone suddenly (and quite sadly) turned into an acrimonious debate, which in turn evolved into a turbulent discourse that is more relevant today that it was then:
"Who really benefits from social media?
The top 1% of businesses on Earth; like Apple, Jaguar, IBM, Nike, British Petroleum, Gap, Sky, Ford…
The reason that these businesses succeed with social media where the likes of the average butcher, or baker or candlestick maker fails is that they typically have one or more of the following: colossal brand recognition; global market penetration; very inventive marketing teams; something very unique about their product and / or service.
The bottom line is that social media & social networking are totally meaningless to 99% of the businesses out there right now. For some businesses, that may change, but for most businesses, there will be no material benefit."
Wayne,
You make a good point. But you're not mentioning what social media does for the 99% of us who do have something good to contribute. Social media gives us meaningful exposure... and with very little cost. Supposing we actually have something relevant to offer.
There's still a huge number of b2b companies that stand to gain just about nothing by trying their hand at social media... You're a bolt manufacturing company; i'm not following you on twitter... unless you link to killer videos of the manufacturing process that are interesting in their own way; or employees dipping things in zinc.
ROI is the big checksum in the end. And maybe there are some small companies in your 99% who benefit significantly more than the big companies in 1%.
Interesting!
I feel like there is a scarcity of good marketing today. Good marketing means which can convert the leads into sales. The only marketing that has moved me in the last couple of years is Search Engine Optimization.