just sharing my views on how corporates fail to get their SM strategy together, many marketers and agencies fall into the trap of “selling a product”. To me, thats a superficial way of selling in today’s world.

Why? Because to me, products are manifestations of a company’s solution in solving consumer needs/ problems. If marketers think more deeply into what a product was built for, and delve into its “purpose of existence”, then they can relate to the core of the “consumer/ customer problem”. Once that is identified, i think it will free up their thinking beyond ROIs/ KPIs towards crafting ways to benefit consumers in non-salesy fashion.

The savvier companies do it well, and I always like to bring up Canon as an example. Canon sells cameras, but they know cameras’ real need was to help normal people document the fun parts of their life. On Facebook, this was narrowed to dorm rooms. Hence a contest was created to ask students to submit their best photos for a “Best-Decorated Dorm”. The prize: Canon digicams, latest model too.

I like to see how this idea could be expanded for Canon to create say, facebook apps, that provide true utility to users in sharing comments, auto-tagging their friends in photos, or editing their photos in wicked, quirky fashions that generate fun with their friends.

Photos are catalysts for fun experiences, cameras is a product that is boring if marketed alone as such. Hence, my advice to corporate marketers in any industry will be: find the original consumer need that justified the building of your product. =)

Yup, i did an extreme view of how the blogosphere might turn out if no guidelines are set on a post called “Will the blogosphere becoming the next tabloid?” at http://oldskoolmark.wordpress.com/2008/09/22/the-blogosphere-to-be-the-next-tabloid/

But u might be interested in a post by Jason Falls on a book review titled One nation under blog at http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/2008/09/24/new-book-on-blogging-pushing-ethical-standards-for-bloggers/

It’s a pretty good read in addition to the concerns we both share.

And yes, i’m gonna be heading for podcamp! Tim Young’s group is organizing it.. haha…

What I don’t like is those agendas which smell of “Oh hey this $500 food sponsorship is our “buy in” with the “hip” “in” early adopters”. Or “Oh coming here for two and a half hours means I’m part of the community and hence able to spam my message on the Facebook Group”.

@Daphne: Thanks, should talk to you more about it!

@Dorothy: You’re putting it across even better than I did. I am exactly frustrated by the corporates being “curious spectators”. The logic of that defies me.

And exactly right about the sharing. Don’t come to SMB and give me a spiel on your product/service/brand. I know all that already. Tell me about YOU. Something different. I want to see you as a human.

Maybe we shouldn’t expect them to take a lead. I just feel somewhere with the amount of people from these corporates spending training budget on Ad:tech which you and I were at, they could definitely spend money more effectively and have something to show for it.

@Oldskoolmark: I think a lot of people are concerned about losing objectivity over the ad dollar. I have thoughts on that coming up. Have you written anything about that which I can link to? Btw, although you missed SMB, don’t miss Podcamp Singapore!

@Walter: Interesting thoughts about cultural differences and competition. Are we truly more competitive than the companies overseas? But I definitely feel the size of the market has a part to play. No doubt we can’t all cooperate and expect things to be dandy, but that said, the extreme lack of effort is despairing. Also agreed with the digital divide (a fact I know all too well). Again, my “calling out” is not necessarily to the decision makers because rarely are they here (unlike you), but to those who are always “talking” about social media but either not selling it upwards, or doing a pretty poor job of doing it.

@Claudia: Haha I look forward to many more emails! Yes the possibility of breakout sessions is there for the right reasons, like overwhelming attendance, as you mentioned, but not for the wrong ones.

@Jo: Thanks for the comment and as always, widening my reading field! I can’t speak for people in Singapore, but here in school in Canada, people are pretty worried about finding jobs, or if they just got one, keeping jobs. I joke about it, but I suppose it’s pretty scary to have worked your ass off for 4 years in school for something that you think will pay the bills, and graduate to a world that is vastly different from what you thought it would be.

Here people are hysterical. There is a real possibility of everyday ordinary firms losing their line of credit for very little reason, not making payroll, etc.

You might like to the follow up The Economist’s blast on management education asking managers to take a ‘Hippocratic oath’ – for context.

Then follow up @amcafee to his Harvard blog and call for ideas they can test empirically.

And maybe put some ideas forward to Google for backing. I think the secret is to “not wait” for the corporates.

and yes, its not going to happen for the corporate and blogger split. but if the group does grow, i don’t eliminate the possibilities of having breakout sessions.

as for the sharing, i guess it really depends on individual. personally although i may not be as vocal as many others, and may not have gained enough experiences yet in SM, but i’m always willing to share, online or face to face. just like you, you’re always sharing ideas and concepts on ur blog. i see more people coming out of their shell too and will share if you ask. especially those in gen-y.

Interesting post and appreciate your honest views on this.

I think that there is a fundamental problem in Singapore compared to the US or other countries where social media has taken off. And that has to do very much with our culture.

We are not open to sharing or collaborating with others, preferring to view each other as competitors rather than co-opetitors.

Why is that so? Why can’t we be as generous or open in sharing our own corporate journeys using social media as a conduit?

Well, a key reason is the size of our market. We ain’t huge, and our neighbouring countries aren’t exactly that open to social media either (except perhaps for political blogging or activism). We are also very crowded (and I’ll share more of this with you when we next meet face to face).

The other challenge is the digital divide between the decision makers (who are largely baby boomers and some Gen X-ers) and the rest of the working population. Almost all of my friends – folks who are CEOs, MDs, VPs, Directors of marketing and comms or equivalents in large organisations – are in their late 30s, 40s or older. While some are digitally savvy, most prefer to deal with somebody face to face.