Almost a year ago, I had blogged about the challenges that Advertising Agencies face, while approaching Social Media. And one of the points that I shared at that time was the "campaign" oriented approach that agencies had, whereas Social Media demanded more of an ongoing management approach, rather than a burst of a campaign.
While a lot has changed in a year, including the level of understanding that Advertising Agencies have, about Social Media, the one thing that has perhaps only gone worse, is the increasing campaign-style approach, while making Social Media a part of the marketing mix, for brands.
I interacted with one such agency recently. It was heartening to hear that they had close to 20-25 Social Media activations for brands. Considering the type of brands, and assuming that these are all active at the time, I presumed that they had a large team managing Social Media, at their end. Or that they were outsourcing the execution to someone else.
First of all, they proudly mentioned that they did not outsource anything. Which was fine. But then they conveyed that their Social Media team was all of 6 persons. Which came as a surprise to me.
I did some digging around after the meeting, and I found that almost all of the brands that they had mentioned had had some good bursts when they went online for Social Media, but they were nearly inactive at this time. Except for the 4-5 which were currently active.
It so appeared that the brands did not care (or they did not realize what damage they were doing to their brands by creating a community and ignoring it later) and neither did the agency.
Many a significant FMCG brand in recent times, have gone on to television and in print, with their specific campaign oriented Facebook pages. Given that this visibility to Social Media is heartening, but if the page is left to die, when the campaign goes off air, it will be sad. And we have seen more cases of such abandonment for me to fear the same fate here as well!
And as against these approaches, consider the approaches of brands like Fastrack, Ching's Secret, Just Dial or Pantaloons, for example, and you will see that these brands have kept their Social Media activations central to the brand, and not to a campaign, and they have nurtured their communities, with good, ongoing engagements, not just when an offline campaign was running. And these are the more long lasting approaches, after all.
So what made that agency I was referring to earlier, to take a campaign approach? The reasons as I can see can be one or more of the following:
- The agency does not understand better. With a legacy of a campaign oriented approach, they continue to recommend the same thing, even in Social Media.
- The agency understands the difference for sure, but going the 'ongoing social media management' way would demand them to grow their team size, by leaps and bounds, for every new client that goes on to Social Media (like our company, Social Wavelength has done, in fact). And adding heads into the agency is not so easy for them. Sometimes they need to justify every new head to add to the rolls, all the way to Singapore or New York or Chicago or Paris. It is an elaborate process, and someone in the system needs to stick his head out, and take responsibility to bring in revenues to justify the addition. All these are easier said than done. It is easier then, to recommend campaigns to clients, and get done. And manage with the team size that the agency carries.
- The agency could of course, outsource to specialist social media outfits (like Social Wavelength or many others in the space now) and manage long term social media activities. However here again, there is a demand for effort and energy from the agency's end. The few agencies that have created some excellent ongoing working relationships with us have put in serious efforts from their end. Like having a few people dedicated to work with us and with the client, and ensure that the agency adds value in the chain. When they take a certain responsibility of delivery on behalf of the brand, they have to be involved. In real-time, when the outsourced social media outfit puts out updates on behalf of the client brand, the agency is still carrying the responsibility of there being no goof-ups. This does not happen without effort from the agency's end. Few agencies have the attitude or the commitment to social media, to invest that kind of time and effort on this. And so they do not outsource, they manage in-house, and with their small teams then, they end up doing only "short term social media campaigns" then!
- Many times, the constraint is from client's end. They are not willing to take long calls on Social Media, and want to experiment at a campaign level. And agencies agree to these suggestions (as they do, to a lot of client demands - after all, the client is signing the cheques!). And which is why we see the short bursts of campaign oriented social media. Unfortunately for the client too, this will not serve as good examples. When you think you are experimenting in social media, with such bursts, you are not really experimenting in social media, but rather you are using social media as one more media platform, to run your traditional marketing campaign. And these are NOT the same thing! What you learn - good or bad - about Social Media, from such an experiment, is not the right research for an ultimately, long term ongoing Social Media presence.
- The final reason is that of budgets. An ongoing Social Media presence demands commitments to resources say, for the next one year. A campaign may on the other hand, ask only for commitments for 1-2 months. The latter is an easier decision for the brand to take, and for an agency to sell. But it is happening at the cost of not utilizing Social Media, for what it really stands for. And it can often cause more harm to the brand, when social media platforms are abandoned. I have seen many in recent days, where fan updates on a Facebook page include marketing messages of Viagra like pharma offers, competitor offers, or other home business promotions. And no one from the brand or the agency has felt it necessary to go and clean up the page!!
Recently we have also got an assignment from an agency, for a brand that wants to do a campaign oriented social media presence. We advised against. We shared the pitfalls of the approach. The client was not convinced. We are doing the Social Media activity, only for the campaign, much against what we stand for. However, we disowned our responsibility on the ultimate benefit for the brand. And we reckoned that while executing this "campaign", we will make the case for an ongoing presence. So let's see how that part pans out.
But for us, this is a rare one. But it is also indicative of the way many brands and agencies continue to take the quick fix approach. It is important to understand that this Is not how a good Social Media presence should be established. We continue to put our efforts to educate clients and agencies that we work with.
What are your views on this? Do you face similar challenges with brands / agencies? Do you even agree to the campaign vs ongoing management approach for Social Media? I a keen to read your views on the subject.