Anyone knows the situation? It is Saturday evening and you go to a friend’s party. In Germany where I live they have stand-up parties where one stands the whole night in conversation holding oneself on a glass of beer. And then you meet a person talking only about one thing, about oneself. Difficult to escape and bad vibrations come.
What if the person talking about himself is a brand and the listener a consumer. This is what happens too often in the web. Back from the M2C Social Media conference in Paris here is my major take out: „Dear Brand, talk about the consumer, not about yourself!“
The M2C conference had great brands presenting their track record in the social web: Lego, IBM, Dell, HP, BBC, Disney, General Mill, P&G and General Motors with an impressive case of listening to customers in the middle of the GM crisis in 2009. Best practices show that talking about what matters to consumers is key in brand development online.
What a great job for our digital strategic planners at SinnerSchrader and for brand marketing: looking for consumer insights and develop ideas for platforms and social media campaigns. Developing online platforms where a consumer starts a conversation with a Brand is new for marketers. In fact this is our future.
The game has changed. Brand marketing online must change and behave. And the party will be a great success.
Laurent Burdin, Managing Director, SinnerSchrader
