Shawn Gold, Senior Vice President of marketing and content for MySpace.com gave the keynote speech at the OMMA Hollywood Conference & Expo this week in Los Angeles. Today’s edition of Online Media Daily (registration required) provides a summary of his remarks, which were something of a “state of the art” with regards to impacts of social networking on advertising and marketing.
Gold referred to the work of marketers on MySpace as “empowerment marketing”. He said that word-of-mouth has turned into citizen journalism as a trusted form of media among the Millenniall/GenX crowd. He reminded advertisers that people don’t come to sites to click on the ads. Social networking sites are a form of self-expression and discovery, and more than anything a way to build networks of like-minded people with common interests. An interesting point for the nonprofit world is that cause-related marketing on MySpace is growing. Bottom line: sites like MySpace reflect someone’s personality and not just their consumption habits and to be successful marketers need to credibly insert their messages in the context of social networking activity.
All great points for those of us trying to make the bridge from old think to consumer generated marketing. Brand managers need to let go of the concept of message control and hand it over to these creative, enthusiasts. Advertisers need to get beyond the “big is better” concept of media buys and learn how to think in terms of micro-segments and many-to-many instead. And don’t think this just affects the under-30 crowd. As more social networking sites like CollectiveX and MyFamily.com come along, Boomers will hop on this bandwagon as well. Success in the future will be measured in terms of consumer engagement instead of reach, frequency and click-through rates. And if the recent valuations of MySpace and Facebook are any indication, marketers can take that to the bank.
Technorati Tags:
Advertising,, CGM, Citizen Marketing, Marketing, MySpace, Social Networking, Web2.0
Comments