On bonfires and that
by asi
I’ve been meaning to write this post forever now but never found the time – it seems like a good follow up to my recent post about big statements in today’s marketing world.
You are all surely familiar by now with John’s really awesome idea of Fireworks (advertising) vs. Bonfires (social marketing) – it has rightly became one of the strongest memes in the community but one which we must scrutinise to avoid the danger of new-marketing (empty) truism.
The bonfires metaphor is so enormously seductive. It resonates so well with what we’re trying to do and with the sentiment of change that is needed, but it’s stickyness, just like Gladwell’s Tipping Point is also it’s crux since as usual, reality is just way more complex and difficult than a great meme.
I already posted some comments here and there but thought it’d be good to write a proper post…
When I think of bonfires in the context of marketing four important things immediately come to mind:
1. People don’t really need brands for bonfires. Bonfires have been put together by individuals and groups of people forever now – that is one of the key challenges of everything ’social’. We are being social very well, thank you without the help of brands and let’s admit it – so far 95% of the ‘branded’ bonfires were a complete sham because they were context-less marketing bonfires. Good old Goodall already discussed this one and he rightly pointed that brands are better looking for ways to support existing communities/bonfires than building new ones.
2. Bonfire is always an activity that starts as an intimate social group initiative so you need to have the minimal social context for it to happen. There is something very problematic with mixing the commercial context with genuinely social context – people will always be cynical towards the underlying motives of brands finding ways to participate. Sponsorship for example is very lazy kind of way to participate in existing bonfires. So finding and articulating a value transaction that works for everyone would prove very tricky…
3. Real people’s social bonfires are done in people leisure time simply for the sake of having great time with their friends. Building or participating in bonfires is not free – brands approaching the idea of bonfires will have brief and legals and limited resource and targets etc, which as we know is killing most social initiatives from brands. And while having a series of bonfires would still be far less expensive than some big budget fireworks, you’d still need a decent budget to start with in order to make something interesting and prove some success and as we know already from other digital stuff, scale is an issue. In short, we are already slowly sobering up fro the idea that social media is free…
4. It reminds me of ‘basking in reflected glory’ theory applied to brands and social marketing. The point I made there is that if you are cool, sexy, sociable person/brand people would invite you to their bonfires, parties and communities (or even build one for you!) and they will come if you throw one. If you are not one of these brands, you will have to work much harder to earn your social capital – if you’re boring, lame or just not nice people will ignore you and prefer you won’t be any near them.
So now what?
While I wholeheartedly believe in the sentiment of fireworks vs. bonfire I think it’s almost too simplistic in it’s current form. Perhaps we should think about something in between – like events, online or offline that are not as small and intimate as bonfires but not as hugely expensive as big TV advertising. I feel a bit déjà vu now as it reminds me of millions of conversations we had around digital marketing. If only marketing directors where brave enough to shift 10% or their media budget for smaller, much targeted, more interesting and useful initiatives we wold have had loads of lovely bonfires all over the place…
Yes, yes, we need a big shift in thinking. We need more marketing and brand directors thinking loooooonger term, and believing that brands should give as much as they take…. there are very few of them around at the moment.
Hey man… just come across here from Katy’s post which started you off on this I think?
You’ve made lots of great points around the marketing issues with social, and I’m increasingly a believer that the expectation of social doesn’t work wedded to a ‘firework’ style mass production model… or at least rarely works, and even then no-one can really work out why.
I do think the thing ‘in-between’ is actually bonfires that start around the production of the goods/services; change what is being sold to be social, not try and socialise what exists already. But as your final point rightly highlights, there’s a short-termism issue with a lot of clients on that.
Keynes said ‘in the long run we’re all dead’, meaning that it was too far off to worry about. In this age, if we don’t change things in the short run, then in the medium run we’re screwed…
Agree with the point about short-termism (http://is.gd/5f7iH) – yet it’s so hard to justify something that won’t see immediate returns, especially in this economy.
Also, people who work for Brands always want to build a nice big bonfire to show how productive they have been. I would love to do lots of smaller projects, each one adding value to a specific community (that’s the basis of what some of us at Nokia call Neighbourhood marketing: http://is.gd/5f7K0) but I find myself unable to argue against the need for at least a Digital/Engagement Hub; the alternative vision of value-adding projects feels a bit random and sparse when compared to the “guarantee” delivered by building a specific website, even if that website brings little additional value.
But, anyways, great post as always