Design A Product & System…now social media will work.

David Armano talks about the delicate relationship between, design, social media, and business…great stuff here.

The nugget is this, there is a huge difference between social media as a communications channel v. a well designed product (iPhone) and system (iTunes) architecture. Right now all marketers are guilty of reactive and fragmented approaches to these ‘new channels of communication’ and not thinking about planning, designing and relating all these parts to a larger system that will yield long term results.

“It may be time to approach social business by design. This means moving beyond our current definition of “social media” as a PR (and marketing) tool and thinking of it as something that can evolve the way we work, communicate, interact and collaborate at a core business level.” D. Armano.

When someone can figure out how to design a system and product that uses social media without looking like a DB, call me…because it will be a beautiful thing.

[ source: HarvardBusiness ]

Consumer Product Opnion v. Social Media Buzz

So the big nut is this…whoever can figure out how to interpret consumer opinion (and relate that information to product development and messaging) is going to make a shitload of money. Today, social media data looks more like a dump than an idea. Combine that mess with some real product reviews / consumer sentiment and at least you have a lens on where you could begin making better things.

“We use tools to track buzz, track mentions of products and brands and there’s a method to the madness but I can’t say anyone’s discovered it,” he said. But “reviews are more structured, we quite often know specifically what products they own and that provides so much more transparency for us in terms of consumer opinion vs. tracking the tremendous volume of buzz.” Kris Narayanan, director-marketing at Samsung Electronics

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[ Source: AdAge ]

Brand As A System

Today the Duncan Watts theroy of the tipping point being toast came up in conversation, and reminded me of how much I believe in the concept. Good old mass marketing to a system v. targeted viral stuff Gladwell speaks of in his Tipping Point.

There is no longer one point [or person] of entry. Marketers need to understand the system and every mechanism used within that system to start a conversation. There is no more hipster bohemian trendsetter to talk to, get over it.

“A rare bunch of cool people just don’t have that power. And when you test the way marketers say the world works, it falls apart. There’s no there there.” -Duncan Watts