Social Media ROI: the Return of Identity and the Hackett Story
We met with the good folks at Hackett London yesterday to discuss Social Media and Online PR plans for the coming months. Much of the conversation centred around creative ideas and the role of key people within the organisation in content production.
Thankfully, Hackett has always good content in spades and over the years has consistently invested in assets such as brilliant sponsorship, iconic front men and great, great advertising.
Think Hackett, think British – it’s like eggs and bacon.
As a customer, one of the things that sits well with me – aside from the quality of the product – is the story that’s been built around the brand. Take Jeremy Hackett’s book, ‘Mr Classic,’ for example.
If you want an insight into modern British tailoring and classic clothing then check it out – it’s a superb read. It was published a few years ago – before Social Media arrived – as a ‘best of’ compilation of his weekly column in the Independent on Sunday.
In it you’ll find little in the way of selling, but bags of tips, anecdotes, insights, humour and personality that provide a ringside view of the world of menswear, Mr Hackett and his company. I first read it before I had enough cash for a Hackett key ring. A few years on I’m wearing a Hackett shirt and jacket as I write (granted, both sale stock – but hey I’m getting there). In other words, I’m a customer now mainly because Jeremy Hackett took the time and effort to tell me a bunch of great stories about something I care about.
Our role with Hackett is to help them to deliver this story to the web using Social Media. I won’t dwell on what we’re doing here, but our work together is highlighting something rather important….
Outsourcing Your Communications
In the time between my reading his original weekly columns and buying the brand, corporate comms has changed a lot. Today we’re pondering abstract content ideas like Thought Leadership, Ghost Blogging (great post, btw – do read), Brand Advocacy and the like.
Brands have grown, directors and managers have gotten busier, agencies have been retained and the soul of it all has disappeared.
All of which is fine if you’re dealing with professionalised disciplines like Media Relations and Advertising because you, the brand, only need to dip into certain parts of the process on a part time basis. You can turn up for press briefings and video shoots, say your piece and let the system take care of the rest. Your agency support – by and large – takes the shape of an outsourced production effort and grand creative scheming…. rather than a series of day to day services. (Granted, there are exceptions to this – but only amongst mega-brands who have a multi-million pound, ‘buy the team’ attitude to communications.)
But this approach to content won’t work for Social Media…
The Return of Identity
The point of Social Media (and its value) is that it helps you to talk to people directly and build new kinds of relationships. The mass of supporting tools – Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc – allow you to do this extremely quickly and cost effectively. No real production effort is required… and the basis for communication changes. We’re dealing mainly in conversations and stories now, not ‘events.’
This makes total outsourcing difficult. Because communication is frequent (think Twitter), it’s expensive to pay for your content on a day rate basis. Also, as a conversation – a set of tips, anecdotes, insights, humour and personality – it only really works when delivered from the inside, via the people on your front lines who generate the chat – marketing, support, sales, etc.
Getting back to my Hackett / Mr Classic example, Social Media can only really work when you make a serious commitment to a certain type of content …You need to start telling a series of stories again as part of your day to day life, and, in doing so, you need to take back the ownership of your brand and identity.
Social Media (ROI) Return on Investment
So here’s another spin on the great Social Media ROI debate….
Stop pretending to infuse leaders with someone else’s personality. Stop trying to distill fleeting thoughts into ghosted Think Pieces. Stop gambling on barnstorming creative virals and microsites.
Stop wasting money.
A Social Media strategy isn’t a ‘Media’ strategy at all. It’s a content and communications strategy. You are now the media and all these Social widgets are your tools – you blog, Tweet, post, chat, etc. From the get-go ‘being the media’ in this way can save you money and enhance the value of your brand if you rewire the way you communicate and produce your content.
Like Hackett, this requires a senior commitment to developing a content legacy. Important people need to start telling the story, rather than outsourcing it. Your leaders (and/or your front line) should be blogging – on a weekly basis ….they can also be capturing their slideware, documents, photography and general discussions in a way that’s fit for versioning on Social platforms. This costs next to nothing and is easy to do. When this happens, your stock of ideas builds – quickly – and you open up a mass of opportunity for engaging with new people in new networks.
You should also consider hiring specialists into an Online PR/Social Media/Digital Marketing role. These folks will take the content, shape it properly and give it legs in new domains – Facebook, Twitter, etc. This can also save you money. Ditch some of your agency retainer and reinvest it in staff.
Neither of these ideas are radical. When your firm was young it was driven in exactly the same way – through conviction, ideas, stories, chartware and conversations ….not Thought Leadership papers and a bunch of flacks.
Social Media is an opportunity to start over and bin the Corporate communications junk.
Social Media Agencies…?
This may sound a little odd coming from an agency, but it’s not.
The lessons of the past year tell me that our clients need to own much of what they communicate, and that this is healthy. It’s also essential if our work is to be a success. When Social stuff is out on its own on a wing on a prayer – as a tactical offshoot of something else – its impact is very limited and there’s a high risk of failure.
The role of the agency today needs to be as consultant, enabler, trainer, planner ….and as creator and executor of bigger content pieces. We’re helping CEO’s to Tweet, Marketing Directors to use a Flip camera, and Product Developers to blog. In the process we’re helping them to understand their market again in very anti-marketing ways. No key messages, just keywords – based on optimisation techniques and public data.
This is helping them to regain their voice and their identity and save money. And, as any decent brand consultant will tell you, this is the really valuable part.
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Johnathan Lewis, Hackett Londo
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Danny Whatmough
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