No Man’s Blog

This is my long overdue contribution to the IPA social CIP (conversation in progress).

For the purpose of simplifying a debate that by now can be written into a 500 pages book, I will try to delineate the core challenges. Oh wait, someone rather clever have already done it, albeit in a different context :

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

(Albert Einstein)

How easy life was before the (social) interweb, hey? Creative agencies created. Media agencies distributed. All based on clear briefs, targets and budget. Job done. But with the emergence of ‘digital’ first and now ’social’, the explosion of sharing tools and the oh so alluring concept of ‘viral’, the balance of responsibility has shifted:

Clients are increasingly asking us to deliver large volumes of traffic/interactions at zero or little (media) cost.
Targets for traffic volumes are typically based purely on guesswork.
The VALUE of traffic, interactions, friends etc. are founded on guesswork.
Numbers are being benchmarked against the wrong things.

This is not a good state of affairs for anyone.

But reality is just too complex and social media is still at it’s infancy bubble. Unlike traditional media (TV is TV etc) every digital / social project is different in shape, form and colour so there is hardly anything to compare to and benchmark against - a company blog is not a campaign microsite is not a community outreach is not a facebook fan page is not a radio spot is not a meerkat is not….

Besides - all too often the debate around social media measurement is centered around the current darling platform. Personally, I see the biggest challenge in understanding (and convincing clients) that eyeballs are not relationships and the urge to measure ‘being nice and participate in a conversation’ against ‘intent to purchase’ will only lead to disappointment. As long as social media is perceived as just another marketing channel and social initiatives will be benchmarked against other marketing spends, we will be chasing our own tails with limited success. Moreover, as long as budgets will come straight out of marketing budgets we are bound for the same futile arguments.

Richard from Dell, someone who knows one or two things about social, perhaps epitomises the challenge best:

I personally believe social media is contributing to a significant change that take us from what I call the “traditional, rational, objective, institutional” perspective to a more “subjective, emotive, personalized and human” perspective

As I see it, there are two camps evolving out of this debate:

In the blue corner we have the empiricists, like the nice measurement camp people that will keep debating, refining and defining metrics and KPIs etc. They won’t rest until they will nail a formula that will become an ‘industry standard’ and everyone will be on the same page. They believe that if only we had a benchmarking archive we would have find the holy grail of social media measurement.

In the red corner, the ‘humanists’. They argue that any attempt to attach clear measurable values to social initiatives is futile, meaningless and missing the point. In a personal context, do you ask yourself how do you measure the value of inviting your friends to a dinner party? Do you set KPIs when you meet a new friend? Or, in a commercial context, do you measure the ROI on the flower vase and candies you put in the reception? How do you measure the ROI on your initiatives to create a positive and friendly work environment? The answer to all these questions is - you don’t. You just know it’s the right thing to do in a social context.

Which camp are you, the red or blue? Or do you see a different camp evolving?

Discuss.

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