The Rise of Collaboration Marketing

Last week I sat in on an interesting panel session at the Mixx Conference. Dave Couture, Benjamin Hill, David Rosenberg, and Barbara Ward Thall discussed how personal publishing and social media tools have altered the way customers learn about, engage with and make decisions about products. The power has shifted from traditional marketing departments towards trusted peer networks and other influencers.

So what is your average marketing department to do? Obviously, everyone wants to engage in the discussion and take advantage of this whole “social media” thing, however, not all companies have the stomach for it. Benjamin Hill mentioned that, “You aren’t going to be successful in the social space unless you come with the intent to listen, read, react, and respond.“ People get tripped up by the half-hearted attempts to “listen” and “participate.”

A particularly egregious example that came up is the Johnson & Johnson blog. Here’s a quick excerpt of their comment policy, “All comments will be reviewed before posting. Since this blog is about Johnson & Johnson, comments that don’t directly relate to the Company or to topics covered on this blog won’t be posted." It continues, "We generally won’t post comments about products that are sold by the Johnson & Johnson operating companies.” So what exactly can I comment about?

Of course it’s fine to have rules about what you post to your site, but the net result of this draconian comments policy is that nobody comments. It would be better if J&J just disabled comments all together.

The basic problem for a corporation is that it is setup to be systematic and to speak with one voice, but participating in online conversations is chaotic and distinctly not systematic. It’s not always going to be pretty when you go online and start participating in conversations about your company. These are real conversations, so people will not always have great things to say about the company. Some will be fans, others will be legitimately ticked off customers, and then you will have your share of hopeless trolls who are just looking to draw you into a fight.

Naturally, you have to be flexible and ready to role with the punches, because sometimes you won’t get the result you want. Sometimes your carefully orchestrated plan won’t work. So how can you explain to brand managers, corporate execs, and the fretting legal department that it might not be pretty, but they have to participate anyway?

You have to help them see how rampant the conversation is around their brand and explain to them that they can either participate or let the conversation happen without them. Sometimes it really is better to just observe a conversation and not sully the waters with an interjection from corporate that could very likely sound stilted an out of place.

Even if a company has no plans to participate, they should at the very least be listening. My suggestion to J&J would be that they kill their blog and put themselves in listening mode and invent more traditional TV, Banner, and search campaigns around the insights.