The New Business Dingo

Based on Publicis Groupe SA's agreement to acquire Microsoft Corp.'s digital ad firm, Razorfish announced in today's Wall Street Journal, I thought it might be interesting to look at their perspective on how Social Media is changing the marketing landscape.

David Deal, Vice President of Marketing for Razorfish, recently posted a report to help marketers understand how to employ Social Influence Marketing more effectively. Some solid reading and points to consider.

D. Deal - Fluent: The Razorfish Social Influence Marketing Report.

We believe Fluent dispels some common myths about social media and influencers, such as:

Myth 1: Companies are finally figuring out how to build their brands through social media and influencers.

In fact, consumers surveyed by Razorfish reveal widespread indifference to brands in the social world. Six out of 10 consumers don’t bother to seek out opinions of brands via social media. We believe the problem is that marketers still treat social like any other channel for spreading their messages when in fact they should be taking advantage of its participatory nature.

 Myth 2: Television is dead. Our survey shows that consumers view TV ads as more trustworthy than ads on social networks when purchasing decisions are made.

Our take: Social Influence Marketing complements, but does not replace, television. Moreover, marketers can increase levels of trust in social by developing a credible social voice and engaging with consumers instead of treating social like a one-way broadcast mechanism.

Myth 3: you cannot correlate consumer perceptions of your brand in the online and offline worlds. 

With the help of TNS Cymfony and The Keller Group, Razorfish has created a mechanism – the SIM Score – that can help brands understand the relationship between what consumers say about you across the online and offline social worlds. The SIM Score (introduced in Fluent) measures how much consumers talk about your brand and how positive or negative those discussions are.

We’ve found that a brand’s online share of voice corresponds closely to offline. The correlation is important because offline friends remain the single most trustworthy sources that influence consumer purchasing decisions.

As Social Influence Marketing touches every part of marketing and every dimension of an organization, we need to examine it more strategically. You’ll see this at work in every one of the sections that make up this report. 

The entire report is available here: http://fluent.razorfish.com 

Interview with David Deal: Digital Agency Uses Social Media for New Business - hosted on Fuel Lines by Michael Gass

Connect with David through:

·     His blog: superhypeblog.com 

·     Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/davidjdeal

·     Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/davidjdeal