Social Ads Not Cutting the Mustard?
Here is the single favorite quote I read from EconAds in New York yesterday, from NeoAtOgilvy COO Greg Smith.
“No one wants a relationship with their mustard.”
Well, exactly. (Unless, it is Col. Mustard, of course, who is endlessly fascinating!)
This odd but spot-on observation was about why big packaged-goods advertisers–who are the really big spenders of the ad business–might be less than interested in leveraging social-media advertising and its promise of deep engagement with consumers.
No one wants to interact over mustard or mayo or ketchup or most products that pay the rent up and down Madison Avenue.
That has not stopped all sorts of social-media companies, from the big ones like Facebook to smaller apps makers, from touting a new and seemingly miraculous kind of advertising attached to their various widgets and interactive products.
To be fair, I do get it on a macro level and also can see the possibilities of the medium, as the idea of truly engaging with consumers has been the holy grail of many marketers.
The problem is, to my mind, that most of the solutions I have seen so far are much more gimmicky and lightweight than innovative and deep.
Whether it be giving out virtual products as gifts or letting users throw them at each other or getting folks to participate in some poll or silly game, none of it feels new and a whole lot of it feels faddish and eventually tiresome.
What is required–because ad agencies and marketers don’t seem to be doing it or, more precisely, doing it well–is for these social-networking companies to come up with either a dead-effective ad solution (as Google (GOOG) has done with its essentially direct-marketing nuclear weapon) or one that leads to an actual purchase or, most of all, one that truly is groundbreaking.
Now, I am not smart enough to think these things up, but it is clear someone has to, as the impact of social ads is still minimal.
Consider the stats from an article (also see the graph below) in The Wall Street Journal today: “In 2007, U.S. marketers spent $600 million advertising on social media, a sliver of the $18 billion spent on interactive advertising that year, according to Forrester Research. The number is forecast to spike to $6.9 billion by 2012.”
This small market is simply not as impressive as the super-sized valuations many of these social-media companies enjoy.
Looking back at a post I did almost a year ago, it feels as if little has changed in a significant enough way.
As I wrote, mocking the notion raised by one widgetmaker that consumers wanted to become “brand ambassadors”:
It seems, though, that the old canard about getting audiences to carry water for brands and loving it has found new life, as social networks and the widgets that live off them search for business models…
But to insist that audiences like to do this, for example, since they seem to enjoy wearing and showing off brands in their clothing and consumer lives, is a story that only a marketer could spin to big-product companies in need of a little love.”
I was debating this very notion of how social-media ads become successful with one social-media entrepreneur by email late last night–yes, this is what passes for fun in my life–who noted correctly that his hugely popular apps “might have enough cultural footprint now to have some staying power, assuming I manage to add depth to it fast enough.”
Now, it seems, we’re on the right track.
Speaking of how to get consumers to have a relationship with their mustard, here is a video of the classic Grey Poupon commercial that could teach Web 2.0 a thing or two or three about marketing:
Comments
Hey Kara,
I agree that social ads to date aren’t fairing to well. But the truth is that they will have to come around at some point.
In social media, people are media. While it’s great to imagine that a brand can insert itself into a conversation, it doesn’t actually work that way. Not to be overly naive, but brands have to be invited in.
Imagine a person watching television as a conversation between a person and a publisher. In this case the publisher invites in the advertisement, so the person watching can accept this. Imagine a using a search engine as a conversation between a person and Google. In this case Google invites into the conversation the appropriate advertiser, so the person searching can accept this. Now, imagine social media as a conversation between two people. How does advertising exist without being brought in by one of the parties?
Advertising used to be simply about how many people you could get to see your message, now with social media advertising is about how many people you can get to share your message. Achieving this doesn’t mean getting in bed with Colonel Mustard, although I am sure he is right for some lucky lady, but it does mean finding a reason why people would chose to bring mustard with them to the party.
Here’s the good news; you might not need as much reach in social media as you did in traditional media, because with social media you have the opportunity to cut down on waste and increase the overall efficacy of your marketing efforts. Although, as I wrote (http://blogs.mediapost.com/spin/?p=1313) marketers seem to love waste. Big product companies can get the love they need, think Soap Operas, but the social media version. Producing content, or widgets, that people enjoy to get their message out there. Better yet, having their agencies tasked with building content people will want to share. It really makes everything better (and social media advertising starts to make sense) when people start to think of advertising as a benefit instead of a necessary evil.
Thanks for the great post Kara! I am a huge fan.
Best,
Posted by Joe Marchese at June 5th, 2008 at 12:04 pmJoe
You hit the nail on the head. The race to widgetize = FAIL. Widgets must prove functionality or they will become obsolete.
Posted by annie heckenberger at June 5th, 2008 at 1:17 pmSocial ads work… if you design the ads correctly.
The problem for traditional media is that they sell the same “proven” interruptive ad design concepts to their clients and the campaigns flop so they write off social network advertising.
That model is dead. People don’t go on to social media sites to be interrupted.
I agree that sheep tossing and vampire biting is so ‘07.
A few social media savvy marketers have figured it out and are making a killing via apps and regular social ads. (Ref: FacebookPayday.com)
Posted by Peter Koning at June 6th, 2008 at 10:25 amThanks for the thoughts Kara. Very likely, this topic will need deeper thinking and reflection over time, with an eye towards whether the innovation in ad delivery, consumption and efficacy is picking up.
The conversational and personalized nature of social media argues strongly that it will grow in importance as media. Eyeballs and content will continue to migrate there. Advertisers will need to innovate.
While I agree that not much innovation around advertising via social media has occurred yet, there are examples and there are likely opportunities worth short-term exploration.
It will be an interesting discussion and development to watch how this innovation takes place. My own thoughts on how this might work are here: http://jeremiahsjamison.wordpr.....l-mustard/
Posted by Jeremiah Jamison at June 6th, 2008 at 12:33 pmThat ad exec comment you quote at the beginning is a real red herring. He frames “mustard” as a pure commodity, but as we all know–and as you rightly point out–consumers relate to “mustard” through brands, and brands are all about relationships. If we don’t “like” a brand, or if we don’t “trust” it, we won’t buy it.
Consumers have deep and abiding relationships with products, thanks to the brands that bring those products to market. The producers of mustards certainly want relationships with consumers, starting with “brand loyalty.”
Why the red herring? Perhaps because he has no idea how to make products relevant beyond a 30 sec spot. Besides, he certainly understands that free online widgets are not going to pay the bills ad agencies on Madison Ave. From that perspective it’s better to dis the whole concept of widgets lest producers discover that widgets might be far more cost-effective than ads at building relationships.
Is the current crop of widgets the answer? Not really. They’re too shallow. But as they evolve they can become significantly richer. Eventually, they’ll exist as personal brand applications running on one’s iPhone or equivalent, a personal, portable and persistent means of sustaining brand relationships. Col. Mustard will be there, as will Grey Poupon.
Posted by brian phipps at June 11th, 2008 at 9:03 amKara–I couldn’t agree with you more that social media models will succeed with brand advertisers only after they can accomplish “depth” on two fronts.
One, depth of engagement with audiences. “Poke” applications, for example, are lots of fun; but I suspect the fun lasts for about an afternoon before the user moves on to something new, never forming a meaningful relationship with the application. If I’m right, these applications will remain widgets, not publications, in the eyes of marketers.
Two, depth of connection between consumers of social media and the brands that want to advertise to them. The ad format must evolve to match these new environments. Radio ads don’t work on TV, and ads designed for news websites aren’t working in social-content environments. The recent campaigns in Facebook’s Graffiti by BMW, Intel, Dell and Jones Soda are examples — in my highly biased opinion, FM sells sponsorships for Graffiti — of high-value social-media advertising. They are high-value to the Graffiti community because both the concepts *and* the formats are relevant to them, and high levels of participation prove the relevance is real. They’re also high-value to the sponsors, given the CPMs they are paying and the rate at which they are renewing.
Could I ever set you up for an interview with Graffiti’s Mark Kantor?
Posted by Chas Edwards at June 12th, 2008 at 12:41 pmThe gist of the argument here is off. Mustard shouldn’t be the poster boy for social advertising. Super Poke, Vampires, and the like do not exemplify its potential.
This industry (yes, industry) is just getting started. It may not be fully walking upright yet, but it’s addressing some pretty big issues such as how to effectively reach an audience that has migrated from destination sites and is numb to traditional advertising.
I certainly wouldn’t have judged the potential of website publishing based on the first “brochure ware” sites that were rolled out.
Stay tuned.
Posted by Tom Turnbull at June 25th, 2008 at 9:36 am