These are notes for a talk I am preparing for a 15 May talk in London, at the Somesso conference. I was asked to think about how business should think about their outreach to markets in the context of the social web.
My talk is going to be called 'UnMarketing and The Webful Brand'.
We need to move past the Cluetrain Manifesto, and acknowledge that what people are doing on the web is much, much more than conversing. It's not just a chat room: it's an entire culture under development, and the conversation is just the tip of the iceberg.
Why Unmarketing?
I think that the most powerful aspect of the new web is how it is shifting our sense of allegiance and belonging. As we have moved to web-based interactions, through social tools, our sense of belonging has shifted. It is moving away from membership or citizenship in large aggregate masses, like belonging to a world religion, an employee of a giant company, or as a consumer of mass manufactured goods. Mass identity is giving way to social identity, based on the individual creating social ties with other people, and through those connections to a socially-scaled context of involvement.
This has enormous economic implications.
As we have seen in the open source movement and the rise of activities like Wikipedia, people opt to becoming involved in projects like these -- and activities perhaps more personal, like blogging and twittering -- principally for extra-market motivations. In a nutshell: they aren't getting paid to do it. Some other 'calling' is involved.
This participation in open communities, defined by activities and aspirations, rather than financial motivations represents one aspect of a change in self-identity. Edglings are moving past consumerism and other mass market sorts of motivations.
So, companies are confronted with a very different context for involvement when they want to interact with Edglings.
What sort of approach makes sense when trying to market 'to' Edglings?
I think companies need to take several steps back, and rethink their own motivations, before attempting to grapple with the new motivations of an open web citizenry.
First to be reconsidered -- a la Cluetrain -- is that markets are not what they used to be, where relatively passive consumers were messaged 'to'. It has become an overused maxim that markets are conversations, which trivializes what is going on in the web, actually, and props up the notion of markets.
We need to move past the Cluetrain Manifesto, and acknowledge that what people are doing on the web is much, much more than conversing. It's not just a chat room: it's an entire culture under development, and the conversation is just the tip of the iceberg. And to a degree that is uncommon in the greater world in which web culture is embedded, much of what is going on in the web is driven by extra-market motivations.
The best comparison to most of what is going on in the web is religion, where people's motivations are not principally market-based, and perhaps are even anti-economic.
Hence, Unmarketing. Whatever it is that companies aspire to take place in their efforts with the web community, they will have to reflect the extra-market motivations going on. This means a direct appreciation of the fact that not decisions are not all rooted in pure economics, and that self-identity is less and less linked to consumerist mass identity.
Web culture is not a place where identity based on the brands of goods. Identity in this culture is about relationships, activities, and aspirations.
So, a facile answer to the question "How should a company market to Edglings?" would be "Don't even try." A more considered response would likely focus on supporting Edglings efforts to create meaningful relationships with others, taking some sort of role in the activities that they participate in online, and affiliating with the aspirations that they have. There is a lot of room in there to explore, but it is all pretty far away from advertising and promotion, which still seems to be the center of gravity for online marketing, at the moment.
If brands are to have any juice in this new online future, those that are advocating them will have to drop all the mass media shouting, and move past the "markets are conversations" trivialization of the web, too. Their representatives will have to roll up their sleeves and do something, shoulder to shoulder, aspiring to make something in the world, collectively with us, not just selling us the parts.
More specifically, it would be a sensible idea to look into how social network tools could be augmented in ways that would allow companies to remain close to those whose aspirations lie close to the use of any company's goods and services.
What does this mean for brands? What does brand mean in this context?
In recent times, a brand has been a promise -- some sort of claim about quality, style, and utility -- and a badge that consumers could use to highlight their mass identity in a mass culture. If members of the culture don't know what Oakley sunglasses or Hugo Boss suits 'say' about their owners, then brand-based self-identification wouldn't work.
When people retreat from mass belonging to social belonging, their motivations are less oriented toward self-identity based on affiliation with mass markers in mass markets. They shift toward social identity, where its most important that those that 'know me' in my social networks 'know me' based on what I am doing, what I care about, what I am trying to accomplish, and who I affiliate with in those efforts.
In this world, a company's name or product marks can't be just an industrial warranty, or a feather in your hair. For brands to be social, they have to seem more like people and less like a corporate artifact. Specifically, real people will have to front for the brand or company, and they -- and their actions -- will define the relevance and influence of that product line or company. Like tags, the company or product will become defined by what it is associated with, and those that are involved in the activities that they are linked to.
So those companies that work to understand this tectonic shift -- from mass markets to social unmarkets -- will rethink their marketing, and after that headshift will approach their interaction with Edglings very, very differently.
I call this webfulness, based loosely on the idea of mindfulness.
Mindfulness is about living in the present, and remaining aware of the actions at hand. The premise is that from mindfulness can arise a more enlightened state of mind, and perhaps a direct sort of wisdom.
Webfulness is about living in the web, and remaining aware of the cultural and social motivations and goals of Edglings, the people who form web culture. Companies and individuals can adopt a webful mindset -- one where the extramarket motivations of individuals and groups are seen as primary -- and then work to establish a reputation through affiliation and action, which is how individuals do it online, too.
When companies internalize these principles, it is inescapable that they -- the people within the companies and then the companies as a whole -- will themselves be changed by a shift to social identity and extra-market motivations. The most webful of companies will actually operate as if their true purpose is not just making a whopping return for their shareholders, but instead, helping people who use their products and services, in some specific and clear cut ways.
The messages that we have come to disbelieve, and that stand as parodies of the mindlessness of marketing -- the empty rhetoric of companies telling us how much they care for us while selling us junk or poisoning the oceans -- have no power over us now.
If brands are to have any juice in this new online future, those that are advocating them will have to drop all the mass media shouting, and move past the "markets are conversations" trivialization of the web, too. Their representatives will have to roll up their sleeves and do something, shoulder to shoulder, aspiring to make something in the world, collectively with us, not just selling us the parts.
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