Facebook, Blackberry and Social Media - At Play and Work!

Last week I was Moderator of an Insights session for the European Sponsorship Association entitled, 'The New Era of Sponsorship'. We were fortunate to be joined by Vijay Solanki from Blackberry, Trevor Johnson from facebook, Thomas Godfrey from Sport England and Kieron Kilbride from Football League Interactive. It was a fascinating session which focused on the growing adoption of social and new media in sposnorship. What was clear throughout was, in the Vijay’s words,

‘social media is word of mouth on steroids’

It is also the future of marketing and sponsorship as we know it.
It has been relatively easy this far for those of us who are slightly long in the tooth in our roles to ignore the phenomenons of facebook, myspace, bebo and the like in our lives and our business. But did you know Starbucks now has 6.2m facebook fans in the world, and that it can effectively now engage with them on a personal level for free? Could you imagine how frustrating it might be for the Football Association that there are now more football clubs set up on facebook than there are registered with the Association itself? Can any of us really understand how powerful it is that British Gas can market their British Swimming Championships in Manchester to 98,000 fans of swimming in the local area at the touch of a button?

As Thomas Godfrey from Sport England shared, the majority of sport in this country is now played outside of traditional clubs. Just like the majority of music is bought outside record shops, the majority of voting decisions made without watching an official Party Political Broadcast and the majority of our news consumed outside of the 10pm broadcast and the morning paper. We no longer live a boxed-in existence.

The great irony, of course, is that for some reason in a corporate setting we somehow forget all of this. We tend to assume that mass communication without two way dialogue is appropriate, and even effective. We grumble when we see an employee on facebook at work, ignoring the fact they will likely be on e-mail in the evening. We tut when we see our employees with their ipods on while they work – ignoring the fact classical music helps them focus. We consider it a hindrance not a help.

Social media helps create tailored communication with individual audiences. It supports dialogue and debate rather than formal dictat. We could all use a little bit in our lives – at work and play.

MTV, Gen Y and the UK Election

I am very interested in the area of generational shift in the workplace. By chance my career has effectively followed a generation from teenage years (interested in urban music, fashion and, occasionally, basketball) through to young adulthood (music, parties, technology and MTV). I now find myself at Lane4 as we support businesses in the process of understanding how to assess, engage and develop their newest and youngest group of employees. This is the population we call Gen Y.

We often find perplexing. They join law firms – but do not necessarily want to be Partners in ten years time. They turn down Graduate roles at McKinsey for the equivalent Cancer Research scheme. They ask for promotions and pay rises before they have any track record of achievement. And they are never, ever, afraid to challenge.

When I was at MTV, we spent a lot of time talking with brands looking to target Gen Y. We talked with them about the power of ‘’experiences’’ and the internet to position their brand . We ran focus groups to demonstrate the importance of nurturing word of mouth among influential populations to drive trend leadership. We showed them videos of teenagers talking about poster advertising (‘’I never look at it’, ‘’It’s just brands paying to target me’’, ‘’Talk with me, not at me’’). We talked about how the internet would change the rules of the game. Often this was anathema to a marketing industry which revolved around making expensive thirty second adverts.
 It is interesting to reflect on where we stand today, six years on. Those eighteen year olds who we talked to in focus groups are today’s high potential talent. They are saying exactly the same things as they were when in the focus groups, just now they are saying it to their employers. ‘’Talk with me, not at me’’. The biggest change has been the coming of age of the technology which now facilitates this. We might not like it, but facebook, linked in and the like are now part of our working lives. This is a generation who will send an e-mail to the CEO. Not only that, they will expect a reply.

I was at an excellent session yesterday morning run by Communications Management. It looked at the potential impact of a Conservative government on British business. What I found interesting was the extent to which the Conservative Party, like Obama before them, are aiming to embrace technology as a means of engaging this population. The Conservative Strategy Director has apparently spent an awful lot of time at Google HQ in the last year understanding how technology can be used to engage its users and influence decision making. Generation Y is going to be a hotly contested area of the election. It strikes me as a fascinating battleground. For Gen Y effective communication is bespoke, two way and authentic. It is not top down, manufactured and impersonal. It will be fascinating to see to what extent the Main Parties’ campaigns genuinely pick that up in the next few weeks and months. My advice to British industry would be to watch closely. The next few weeks might offer some useful learning to those corporate organisations struggling to understand how to engage, influence and retain their future corporate leaders.