Non-disclosure in the Internet Age is quickly perceived as a breach of trust. Government, corporations and each of us as individuals must recalibrate how we live and share our lives appropriate to the information now available and the expectations of others.
— Simon Mainwaring
Perhaps the most powerful lesson other brands can learn from Nike is the need to act in accordance with the reality of the world we live in. In a mutually dependant, intimately connected global community facing several major crises, brands need to operate with an expanded definition of self-interest that includes the greater good.
When something works for you or another brand, ask yourself, 'Why?' Then don't copy it but think about what you can do that's unique to you and better.
If a brand wants to build social communities, capital and influence, it must become the chief celebrant of its community, not its celebrity. This simple shift in approach unlocks enormous transformative potential for brands.
The currency of universal values make brands innately sharable.
Like all technology, social media is neutral but is best put to work in the service of building a better world.
There's an adage that is an apt description of the new dynamic at work between brands and consumers connected through social media: People support what they help to build. But now that many brands are launching community-driven cause marketing campaigns, the challenge becomes what to do next?
There is a growing awareness among brands that in order to participate in conversations that are taking place across social networks, they must join these discussions on the basis of something that is meaningful to their customers.
For a truly effective social campaign, a brand needs to embrace the first principles of marketing, which involves brand definition and consistent storytelling.
There is an overwhelming amount of information available to us all on the web each day, not to mention what is shared with us by our family, friends, fans, and followers. This necessitates the need to filter through all that information and to decide for ourselves where to put our attention.
Brands must be very specific in their choice of social media platforms through which to communicate their CSR or cause messaging.
Any institution faces two basic choices if they hope to spark new ideas. One is to leverage the brains trust within their organization by creating a special event dedicated to new thinking. The other is to look outside themselves to stimulate solutions.
Corporations, consumers, and citizens must begin acting in concert to create a powerful third pillar of social transformation if we hope to meet the social challenges we currently face with equal force. This begins with corporations that choose to alter how they practice capitalism in two ways to serve the greater good.
As a function of the easy access to information provided by the Internet, and the ease with which it can be shared thanks to social media, consumers are now better informed as to the behavior of brands and the multiple global crises we face.
Brands must become architects of community.
The companies that make meaningful contributions while also listening to the voices of others are the ones that will genuinely engage their community, who will then go to work for them.
Without question, CEOs, executives and employees in companies in the United States and around the world have rallied to face the challenge of a social media marketplace.
Radical transparency has an enormous impact on our personal lives. We can no longer share thoughts, quips, photos or personal opinions anywhere on the web without being mindful that they may turn up where we least expect it (notably job interviews, divorce proceedings or public media).
Effectively, change is almost impossible without industry-wide collaboration, cooperation and consensus.
As we all know, lasting relationships can't be rushed.
With the never-ending stream of new social technologies, apps and platforms rolling out every day, its easy to get lost in the minutiae of social media. Yet for there to be effective change, especially within large, top-down, hierarchical institutions, a company must have an over-arching understanding of the new role it has to play.
The most potentially transformative impact of social media is its ability to encourage brands to marry profit and purpose. The reason brands participate is that such outreach earns those companies social currency enabling them to start or participate in conversations that connect them to consumers in meaningful ways.
The role of social media is critical because it helps to spread cognitive dissonance by connecting thought leaders and activists to ordinary citizens rapidly expanding the network of people who become willing to take action.
The keys to brand success are self-definition, transparency, authenticity and accountability.
More brands are waking up to their social responsibility and doing good work through cause marketing campaigns. Yet too many still go about it the wrong way. I mean 'wrong' in two senses. Firstly, they are marketing ineffectively, and secondly, as a consequence their positive social impact is not maximized.
Business practices and how we treat the planet are also in desperate need of re-humanization.
In the social business marketplace, brands that hope to build loyal and growing communities do so most effectively when they demonstrate their core values and allow a community to build and engage around it.
As we approach each of the great social challenges of our time we must acknowledge that old thinking will not provide the new solutions we need. These solutions will be uncomfortable, hard to sell and risky to execute. But the cost of not doing so is even greater.
No one doubts the enormity of the social challenges we face around the world but one critical element of our response must be the generation of new thinking and ideas. Yet creating the conditions that make this possible is not simple.
Brands are faced with the daily challenge of massively scaling their outreach in order to build personal relationships. While this may seem like a contradiction in terms, it becomes much more possible when brands shift from push to pull dynamics in their marketing.
For decades, media companies have largely controlled the tools through which consumers were told what to buy, wear or think. Now consumers possess the same ability to produce, distribute and curate content and distribute it to their peers in real time across social media platforms.
The false separation between living and giving must end.
Consumers around the world are more aware of the multiple global crises we face than ever before, thanks to information found on the Internet.
Today's consumers are eager to become loyal fans of companies that respect purposeful capitalism. They are not opposed to companies making a profit; indeed, they may even be investors in these companies - but at the core, they want more empathic, enlightened corporations that seek a balance between profit and purpose.
What is sure is that technological change is accelerating in all directions and, like children playing in a fountain, consumers are reveling in the experience.
Find the human in the technology. The currency marketers trade in has not changed even if the methods have. Emotion is what we exchange.
Social media is not about the exploitation of technology but service to community.
Let's hope brands recognize that the true power of this technology is not its reach but its ability to communicate substance that adds meaning to our lives. Otherwise, brands will be investing in technology that consumers simply won't buy.
As more people use social media to tell the story of the future, the wants and needs of more people will be reflected.
Brands must empower their community to be change agents in their own right. To that end, they need to take on a mentoring role. This means the brand provides the tools, techniques and strategies for their customers to become more effective marketers in achieving their own goals.
If a brand genuinely wants to make a social contribution, it should start with who they are, not what they do. For only when a brand has defined itself and its core values can it identify causes or social responsibility initiatives that are in alignment with its authentic brand story.
Social media companies must combine their mastery of the latest in real-time, location based or augmented reality technologies in the service of clear and consistent storytelling.
When people align around shared political, social, economic or environmental values, and take collective action, thinking and behavior that compromises the lives of millions of people around the world can truly change.
It is a truly powerful phenomenon when a brand makes a stand for what it believes in.
When thinking through who to bring together to generate new ideas, it is more effective to combine specialists from very different and unrelated disciplines rather than a variety of people with different skills sets in the same field.
Companies and their brands need to reach out and speak directly to consumers, to honor their values, and to form meaningful relationships with them. They must become architects of community, consistently demonstrating the values that their customer community expects in exchange for their loyalty and purchases.
We now see numerous examples of brands working together to address issues such as environmental degradations, climate control, pollution, poverty and disease.
Technology is teaching us to be human again.
Consumers want a better world, not just better widgets.
Some critics have challenged what the return on investment is for engagement in social media. Others have complained that the metrics don't exist to demonstrate value.
