A fascinating article in the New York Times crystalized this for me. I had been thinking about this for a long time, but had yet to really have it hammered home with use cases.
Social networks have disrupted corporate communications in dramatic ways and could very well do to the advertising industry what free content on the internet has done to the newspaper publishing industry.
Follow along here for a bit before we get into the examples in the article.
My second job out of college after a stint as a single tier and two tier distributor sales rep was as a marketing specialist in their field service group. Direct mail marketing was one of my responsibilities. Write up a little ad copy into a tri-fold piece, find the right list, affix the address stickers, and off they went.
But that could take weeks. The GM had to wordsmith the copy. Then it had to go to corporate and, ultimately, to an ad agency. Lather, rinse, repeat.
All for a simple direct mail piece.
Today people track various news feeds. When something pops up, businesses have to respond instantaneously with blogs, tweets, Facebook responses and all the rest. Major events drive that at TBR and elsewhere. You know? Things like Google buying Motorola Mobility, or HP having some curious declarations as part of its earnings announcement, or Steve Jobs, sadly, announcing his retirement from Apple.
Within hours of events like that, hundreds of unfiltered blog communications hit the social networks.
News travels fast as they say. The velocity of commerce gets ratcheted up by more technology enablement in the business value chain.
Now jump back to the article I referenced about the rapid killing off of major development initiatives. HP’s announcement killing the TouchPad seven weeks after a massive launch campaign had me scratching my head. This article put the TouchPad in context. Here are some paraphrased examples:
- Microsoft shut down Kin mobile phones after 48 days on the market.
- Google launched Wave in May of last year and cancelled it 77 days later.
- Palm announced a tablet, the Foleo, at the end of May 2007 and killed it off around Labor Day of that year.
- In 2009 Cisco acquired Pure Digital, who made the Flip camcorder, and then shut down the unit one day prior to its major product launch
So what gives with all this? Where was the ability to get products to market, test them, improve them, and expand upon them. No more solid singles. Each product has to be a home run.
It goes to social networking. It goes to loss of control of the market message. Businesses have realized they must embrace social media to try to frame the message, but they certainly can no longer control it. Sure, they push tweets, they have executive communications writers ghost write blog posts for key officials. They put up Facebook pages.
And company lawyers reach for the digitalis to forestall coronaries, but business has no recourse. Businesses have to be where the image makers are, and today anyone with a cheap PC and an axe to grind can try to cut products off at the knees and hence create negative images businesses must counter.
So early product adopters set the pace. No more phased roll-outs in one geo or another as essentially live production beta test beds. Seeing how something “plays in Peoria” doesn’t cut it anymore, as Peoria is networked into the world.
I recall a dustup on the iPhone4 based on the antenna not working. It was determined through the social network of early adopters that it took place when people held the phone in their lefthands. Antenna placement, apparently. I also recall wincing after Steve Jobs’ off-the-cuff response of “Don’t hold it that way,” rocketed throughout the ether.
Now, that remark, quite obviously did not hurt Jobs, the iPhone 4, or Apple. But not many individuals, products, or companies have sufficient cache to get that kind of marketing mulligan anymore. To put this in context, I followed HP as a research analyst back when it was transitioning from a 16-bit minicomputer architecture to a 32-bit one and was fairly late based on difficulties with the backward compatibility of the operating systems. Its customer base remained unusually patient, causing me to gain incredible respect for their operation that built its customer loyalty. HP certainly did not receive that same latitude on the TouchPad, now did it?
While once companies could control market messaging, they are now truly at the mercy of the energized consumer. Jump with me now to politics in general and Iran specifically, but hold the thought of market messaging.
Iran had student uprisings explode across its country, and, being a totalitarian regime, it shut down news outlets and denied to the outside world that there was any turmoil or that there had been protestor fatalities.
But a single smartphone picture of a dead co-ed got out of the country, into the market of global public opinion and brought the regime to its knees.
If Iran can’t control its market messaging, then how are major commercial enterprises in a free market going to do that? How are they going to test products if those who accept the quick spiff to test it can then go out and tweet anonymously about the product being a dog?
Technology history in business illustrates time and again how technology enablement increases the velocity of commerce. It goes over in waves. High performance workstations shortened design cycles. Supply chain management (SCM) systems drove inventory turns. Electronic document interchange (EDI) drove payables and receivables and shortened the float waiting for funds to clear Federal Reserve Banks.
So it is a good thing that design cycles have been shortened, because now companies shovel against the tide of public opinion with multichannel marketing strategies in the domain of social networks over which business have precious little control. Social networks dictate product acceptance rates and product lifecycles in far quicker and less forgiving fashion than ever before.
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