07/29/2007 08:08:32 PM 
(1) 
(1) Bruce Nussbaum in a post for Business Week, believes clients can longer trust big ad agencies, because they are pushing them “lemming like” into the 2.0 world, without first understanding consumer needs.
“I've been spending much time with ad agencies and focus groups lately and can only conclude that--with some exceptions--they are mostly clueless. Three years ago they had a traditional knowledge about consumers but didn't know much about social networking and web 2.0 technology. Today, most of them don't know about consumers and don't know much about social networking and web 2.0 technology either. Mainstream ad agencies have one refrain--one message to their corporate clients--do social networking, do social networking, do social networking.”
However, it’s not just agencies that are rushing, everyone is and agencies are being dragged along in the wake.
Here’s a sampling of some of the headlines from the last month.
Media:
The BBC files reports on YouTube for the recent elections in Turkey
Sony launches Crackle to pioneer a new studio model
Nokia purchases social networking site Twango
Brands:
Some efforts might be agency induced, but it looks like most of these were client driven.
Finish Line launches its own social networking site
HP launches a back to school campaign with ads on YouTube and 80 social networking and web sites
Jeep launches the Havefunoutthere.com social network
Although I agree with Bruce that agencies need to inform their clients about what’s going on before rushing into the fray, but this is hard to do, there’s an unstoppable force behind this “meme”.
As Bruce suggests, agencies should spend more time understanding the consumer and need to do more than focus groups to get there.
However, the challenge with all this is to gain enough insight to create content that's compelling enough to ATTRACT and KEEP people’s attention.
As always, this is a massive creative challenge that needs to be fuelled by insight, imagination and intuition and that’s why Bruce is right, compelling experiences won’t happen by simply re-creating what exist.
This is no easy task as the very nature of brands and brand communication is in a state of flux, it doesn’t matter if you are MySpace or Buick.
The acuteness of the problem is neatly expressed in this quote from an article published in the Times (London) on July 3rd.
“Social networks are spawning a generation of Internet tarts, research suggests: online consumers with little brand loyalty and no qualms about keeping several sites on the go at once.
Users of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook are “chronically unfaithful”, a survey by Parks Associates, the analysts, has found. Half of users regularly use more than one site, most of which are free. One in six actively uses three or more.
This phenomenon of “network promiscuity” extends across web commerce. Analysts say that it is symptomatic of a new consumer scepticism over traditional branding.”
How does an old-school brand change it's spots and adapt to the new environment?
It appears that many brand efforts are Web 2.0 in theory, but not in practice, because it's so hard for brands to get away from the "command and control" model.
Brands seem so enamored their own self importance and insist on building social network destinations, but is that what consumers want?
We should hire some ethnographers to find out.
Posted by Ed Cotton
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digital ethnography...opens up a whole new realm for researchers to dive into, but it is a necessity now with the state of flux digital communications has thrown the industry into. I can't count with two hands how many social networks I've joined online, and quite frankly, I don't know why I've joined so many. Maybe there is no rhyme or reason here...and that would be scary for traditionaly, forumulaic agencies to deal with, but as a budding strategist myself, I'm trying to put a finger on what drives me to do it. I'll let you know when I figure it out. But cheers to doing more research instead of spending money on the frontend to figure out in the backend that it wasn't the right digital solution.