Digital Interactivity: Unanticipated Consequences for Markets, Marketing, and Consumers
The last decade brought two related surprises: the rise of social media and the rise of search media, says a new study from the Harvard Business School. Marketing is struggling to find its place in these new communication pathways, says the report.
The new media are rewarding more participatory, more sincere, and less directive marketing styles than the old broadcast media rewarded.
The transformation is unfolding on a model of consumer collaboration, in which consumers use digital media that lie beyond the control of marketers to communicate among one another, responding to marketing’s intrusions by disseminating counterargument, information sharing, rebuttal, parody, reproach and, though more rarely, fandom
Key concepts in the report include:
- Successful interactive marketing may be less a matter of domination and control, and more a matter of fitting in.
- There is a human need to assert and present to the world a self-serving identity and to manage one’s personal reputation.
- The form of interactivity most attractive to marketing is one that facilitates people’s ability to construct their identity and contribute to the making of meaning.
.We are certainly seeing an increased interest in social media strategies. The first action to take is to listen to the conversations online. And you have to keep monitoring these conversations all the time.
So an online reputation monitoring tool like the new Brandseye from the UK, which can not only monitor what is being said about you and your competitors but can also evaluate the remarks and calculate a brand ‘score,’ is vital to the success of any social media marketing or PR strategy.
If you are interested in what it can do, drop me an email. sallyf at expansionplus dot com
