Social media’s ‘fad’ tag is looking tatty
The social media debate tends to put marketing people into two camps, the devotees who think that anybody who isn’t on Twitter “doesn’t get it’, and those who think that most of the digerati are unbearable wankers.
At the extremes, both groups of people can be pretty unedifying. You tend to hear from one end of the debate polemics about dinosaurs, and from the other the question”Why would I be interested in what someone had for lunch?”
(To which I’d now state I’m not interested in reading any more pieces by print journalists about why they’re not interested in what someone had for lunch.)
A couple of weeks back, I was at a debate organised by Klick PR. Organiser Kim McKay made a great point aimed at those working in marketing who don’t intend to waste their time getting their head around the likes of Twitter because they think it’s a fad. She argued that this might be the case, but that it could also be the transition to something that sticks around – and without being familiar with Twitter it would be harder to get up to speed with whatever comes next.
I think the argument has just got a lot stronger though, with this fact-filled video on social media’s staying power. It’s an updated version of a simialr piece of work from about 12 months ago. It’s amazing how much has already changed:
(Sept 2 Update: My thanks to Ben Shepherd, for an excellent link in the comments thread, suggesting that some of the most dramatic numbers in this video aren’t just misinterpreted but potentially manipulated. Based on that article, I’m not sure I’d recommend using the above video in any future presentations.)
Tim Burrowes
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large. He returned to Mumbrella as Publisher in January 2025
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Nice little opinion piece and lead up to watching the video….
But I made it through about 3 seconds before hitting stop.
It’s only got bloody ‘Right here right now’ as the soundtrack… as If we hadn’t all heard that enough on a million creds presentations in the 1990s.
(have started watching again now – with sound off!)
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much of it is utter nonsense.
80% of companies use linkedin as their primary source for recruiting?
wikipedia has 13 million articles?
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Hi Steve,
Good point on LinkedIn. I was somewhat dubious about that one…
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
The video is painfully cliched and no different from the monthly ‘revolution’ sizzle reels that have been being served up for the past 10 years,
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Shonky-stats-r-us
With regard to 80% of businesses using linked in as their primary source for recruiting:
“Source: Jobvite Social Recruitment Survey Note: 80% will use social networks in their assessment. 95% will use LinkedIn in their assessment. When we revise the Video needs to be updated changing “their” to “a” primary tool need to see if we bump 80% to 95%”
So, firstly, businesses are using it as A tool, not THE PRIMARY tool. Secondly, 80% of businesses use A social network, 95% use linked-in? How is that possible, when linked-in IS a social network???
I think what they mean to say is of the 80% that use social networks, 95% of them use linked-in. So 76% of businesses give at least a cursory glance to linked-in (most likely referenced from the applicant’s resume), less impressive than 80% using it as their PRIMARY tool.
Makes me doubt the rest of the “big numbers” in the presentation
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It’s a proven fact that 79% of all quoted statistics are made up.
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It was the Amazon one that got me. “35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle”??? Total misrepresentation. The actual statistic is that 35% of sales for books that have a Kindle edition are sold in that format… not 35% of all sales. (Source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/.....m-the-few/) Kinda made me doubt the rest of it.
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@Kris – Also, what does the Kindle have to do with “Social Media”? Quite a few of the stats are “Lets throw unrelated big numbers at the viewer to bammoozle them”
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like the american education stat, relevance = 0%
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all in all then, a shining example of how social / user-generated media can often be highly suspect, and then gets propagated across the internet.
and, tim, it has to be said, probably a good example of checking things more thoroughly before whacking things up as “fact-filled” proof of the glories of social media.
cheers
steve
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In 1996 I resigned from PBL (After 7 years at NewsLimited and PBL), to the then sales director to go and start a digital agency, and to complete my postgrad studies in eCommerce. He said to me ” You know the internet is just a fad”.
I said in response, thanks for your thoughts, but I’ll back myself on this one, and have never turned back.
So,I offer this. Its a case of the innovative adopters that are sick of trying to help the laggards ‘get it’. The issue is though, that the smartest innovators don’t bother trying to teach old dogs new tricks, they simply take advantage of the laggards market ignorance. So the problem is more about the digerati getting frustrated and what they should do. ANd the problem is the approach to the words “Get it”
But you see, ‘Get it’ doesn’t mean… ‘have an opinion about whether it will survive or not’ because frankly, you’re a lagagrd. Your oppinion is unlikely to yield any useful information, other than to help estimate the time to full adoption across the community.
Mind you, the reason you are frustrating the innovators is largely the innovators fault. They can’t seem to commuincate in any other way than to create stupid terms like Social Media, Web 2.0 instead of providing more praactical analysis of the opportunities. Such as, we can reduce recruitment costs in this way. We can reduce service costs this way. We can increase brand penetration this way. We can accumulate behavioural research in this manor. Or, we can re-position our brand and generate advocacy this way – all using this thing we innovators call social media!
“Get it’ is about strategy. Not about laggards who argue with digerati about who is smarter.
So Digerati, put on a commercial head, pitch it to the old dogs, and if they don’t buy it after 3 goes, its time to find a new agency, or new business to fit into!
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Putting myself in between the two camps that Tim outlines very aptly above, it is so easy to see why one lot think the other are complete wankers and vice versa.
Bucket loads of marketers, some very senior, are trying to deal with a landscape that is changing so fast they feel they don’t even know the lingo any more. The problem that many are facing is a very basic one – they don’t know what they don’t know. I therefore feel that any attempt to address this need, be it to understand what brands/sites/communities are referred to as ‘social media’ should be applauded.
I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the figures in the video, but based on other comments some of them may be inaccurate. However, for a video that contains what looks like over 100 stats and various trend statements, surely the key messages are that change is happening, happening fast, and that facebook, twitter, myspace etc are the ones driving that change.
Now, I bow at the altar of people who know this and every related figure inside out, but if you take yourselves out of your ivory towers you will understand that there are still a large number of people that don’t know even the basic facts. However, if your reaction to any attempt to de-mystify or give context to a big area of change (and concern) is to scoff at it, pull it apart and criticise it, then many marketers (and agency folk) who need to know this stuff better will probably be either scared off or decide that sticking their heads in the sand is an easier option.
For sure this kind of thing has been done before, be it with the arrival of cable TV, or the internet itself, but in my experience this helps open the door to accepting and understanding what is such a new world to so many people. If anything it is the first step in a long, indeed never-ending, learning process.
Based on comments it can be improved, perhaps alot. Fair enough, but at least a stake is in the ground and a frame of reference is beginning to be created.
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In my opinion, sizzle reels like this do little to communicate the many benefits of using social media. In fact, it does exactly the opposite and that pisses me off no end.
There are literally thousands of these reels all engaged in “stats-turbation” , using spurious numbers to some dodgy soundtrack. It’s lazy and it’s cliched.
And isn’t it obvious that some one using “Right here, Right now” as an audio piece is squarely in the “wanker” camp.
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I think we call this what it is – a business development tool which has a purpose of emphasising the points of a sales person who calls themselves a strategist (ie the ones who can’t use excel but are good at powerpoint heh)
You notice the people that bring these sorts of funky dance background music with a whole heap of claims from completely different data sources are generally trying to sell you something … let’s not confuse a revolution with commercial opportunism.
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Double fist pumps of excitement from me on this sizzle reel.
Hell, I’m foaming at the mouth right now to go buy some digital social media seeding..
..my only question is what does “Biggest shift since industrial revolution” actually mean?. Shift in what? Steam production??
I’m sure I’d have more questions, but I turned it off. You know, if you turn off a sizzle reel midway through you get kudos for being all knowin’ and wise.
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Hehehehe
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I shizzled that sizzle.
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Still, the transition effect were cool
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Agree with most comments above, some O.K. stats in there, but lots of buzz, cliches & wank.
What’s needed is example and example. If 20 gazillion people use twit-book-space-digg-licious that’s all well and good, but how does a marketer sell more products?
The reason for the continued buzz & hype around social media is because nobody knows what they’re doing.
Bizzle ma nizzle.
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I really enjoyed the video, I understand that some of the stats not as accurate as could be but overall message is this is big.
Yes this is big, is there money in it . well so far not for the really big players, but this is driving behavior and people are adapting their norms to a new way of communicating not only with their friends but the world in general.
The point is that no one really knows is where this is going?, but I was reminded the other day the world did not warm to E=MC 2 straight away either but as we all know now the world was persuaded.
Social media is just a buzz word for people exploring new worlds and I would recommend any company that they make sure that they have a presence in this world of discovery
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Wow, thanks for that insight Rory, always good to see someone take 4 paragraphs to say nothing at all.
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wow wory, thanks for that insight, I really enjoy when it takes someone 4 paragraphs to say nothing at all.
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Raise your standards, folks. The “message” of the video comes from its use of stats. If they’re wrong, dubious, or poorly interpreted, then so is the message.
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And that’s the problem here – bad stats blow the credibility of those trying to convince the sceptics. My boss is now waving this page at me as proof I’m on the wrong side – all because I was as trusting as Tim on first viewing and threw him the link only for all the above comments to appear by the time he clicked through. (Yes, yes, shoot me now).
The sad thing is that Kim McKay’s great point quoted by Tim, of getting to grips with this stuff now cause it will evolve into the next thing, is now lost under the weight of the video.
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Well the PowerPoint has certainly provoked an interesting and entertaining exchange. Social media has always been with us and it is only with the application of technology that we can see and indeed measure its power and potential for people in marketing, advertising and PR. The power of referral has been fundamental to influencing strategies yet now we can watch it happen and understand better its dynamic. More power to it and the transparency it will provide to business and consumer alike.
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it’s a shame the stat’s had to over shadow the debate.
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It is meaningless unless backed up by genuine cultural change. Social media is a veneer unless its supported by true customer centricity, actual listening, meaningful engagement and change. That ethos needs to extend beyond the marketing department. Maybe social media will force this to occur – maybe it won’t. I think the jury is still out on that one.
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Read the above comments with much mirth – seems like there’s a lot of sensitive people out there jumping to quickly rubbish the video – wonder how many of those are Gen X?
Sure, some of the stats are most likely spurious, but we still can’t negate the power of social media. In fact ,a quick glance at that video shows 107,283 views alone – fully trackable and having engaged with over a hundred thousand people. With just a simple click.
Even if most of the content is false, it sure got my “distracted Gen Y” attention and that’s the beauty of engagement. Meanwhile, what fantastic (or “talkable”) virals have been based on real things? Droga’s tagging of Air Force One? Fake. The Man In the Jacket? Fake. The Naked Mum Pics from NZ? Fake.
But they all got our attention nontheless. Social media is definitely a force to be reckoned with, and now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to tweet to my 800+ followers that I’ve posted this video – and stats show, at least 50% of them will click the link and read this post on Mumbrella.
Enjoy.
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cool story adam
The stats may or may not be accurate. Regardless open your eyes, look around. Sites like this one have only proliferated in the past few years, and once Gen Y and Z start to make their presence felt, watch out. As a communications professional we have two choices, embrace or take a very real risk of becoming a dinosaur .
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This is better, it tells the story with pictures and it doesn’t have a cheesy soundtrack
http://www.slideshare.net/mzka.....year-later
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This is a great post for the fact that it provoked the debate / peer review above.
The filtering of the facts ends up in a less substantial story, but the filtering itself proves the point about social media accuracy – put something up in public that’s dodgy / over-claiming and you are liable to get the backlash / challenge.
Regardless, to the right “exec audience” the presentation will have the desired effect and is sharp.
To the point of peer review, the Wikipedia model is probably one of the best around and most sustainable whilst still not-for-profit in principle (interesting as the whole debate is on commercialization of social media).
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I don’t mind myspace because I’ve established contacts with a lot of cool creative people – Twitter and Facebook, not so much.
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Several interesting points:
Sully: absolutely right – I almost never read an article without also reading the comments – there are tons of bright people out there with wonderfully diverse opinions and perspectives – keeping the publishers honest.
Nick Della Riva: again agree – smart business people will always seize an opportunity to be more efficient – but they don’t tend to throw the profitable baby out with the bath water.
This video has racked up 150K views in less than a week – it clearly met a need. A not particularly connected CEO friend actually emailed it to me – that says a lot. It’s been a terrific marketing vehicle for Socialnomics – good on them for bringing together a bunch of stats in an interesting (if not completely accurate) way.
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it seems weird to me some people above are complimenting the video on its effectiveness (ie views/distro) even though the stats are basically made up/massaged etc.
never let the truth get in the way of a good sales pitch eh
While I can agree with a lot of what Adam Cubito said (above), it’s worth bearing in mind, Adam, that many of us have to persuade not just Gen X’rs but even Baby Boomers that Social Media engagement isn’t just a fad and this kind of marketing approach (the “fist-pumping” to overused sound tracks with spurious stats – yes, I stand by my original comment!) actually makes this harder to accomplish.
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Think the person who pulled this together should really have eased up slightly on the figures… If you’re going to make shit up at least make it semi plausable… 80% of businesses use Linked In as their primary tool my arse…. I would be surprised if 80% of businesses really knew what linked in was…
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The socialnomics author has a post on the statistics. http://socialnomics.net/2009/0.....you-think/ – I find articles much deeper and enriching if they link to background stuff, no?
The one everyone is pointing to, the Jobvite survey, they acknowledge needs to be changed from “their” primary recruitment tool to a “a”. I also suspect it’s very US-centric as job classifieds fell 43% 2nd Quarter of 2008 (Nat Assoc of Newspapers, USA) and open outsourcing sites such as Odesk (social network recruitment) rose 105%. If you are interested in recruitment, I’m keynoting at RecruitTech on September 17th, specifically talking about social recruitment, open outsourcing and the change to the H.R. industry… if there is anyone who reads this blog that is not in marketing or PR, come along! 😛
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Good point Joel and probably very true! I do think though that LinkedIn usage is far more widespread in the US than here but that 80 per cent figure is possibly a little far fetched.
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For all the people that fell for this nice piece of sales collateral – here’s a post that picks it apart incorrect stat by incorrect stat.
http://www.rockcheetah.com/blo.....economics/
A few of you out there have missed the point of this – there are billions of people out there who want to talk about ‘something’ to their friends, share experiences and post their favourite images – would n’t you want it to be your product/brand they were talking about?
Treat it as a kick up the backside to marketing departments worldwide – if you want to get a message out there, there is a new way to do it!
Dont get hung up in the technicalities of how to do it – employ a Geek or someone who can do it for you quickly and effectively.
And as for the music critics – what tune would you put to it?
Tatters
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Thanks for that link, Ben.
It’s a demolition of the stats in the above video. I’ve updated the original piece to give a health warning. Based on that, I don’t think I’ll be linking to the video again.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Social Media/Marketing meets Product Development
I think we are all pretty much in agreement about all the issues here and anyone who has been in the industry for some time has probably spent most of their career dealing with this type of opposition.
So, maybe we should just step around the problem, innovate and do it on our own terms. Marketing; we rely upon product development and service industries to create products so that we can then sell them to service our own businesses. Maybe we should stop focusing on those that aren’t listening and look at partnering with progressive product development firms to out develop and out market the big guys.
The tools are all there, the smart companies are already using crowd sourced iterative product development and some are using social media and intelligent marketing to shift their product.
IDEO are a great example of a multidisciplinary approach, add the marketing element for a winning formula?
A big wake up call to the slow moving corporates and multinationals would be new products designed by the people for the people and then marketed by them. Take a step back and we could just use our tools to allow the people to architect a product or solution, outsource the development to the big corporates and then sell it. There is considerable power and competitive advantage to be had in this early adopter knowledge, so maybe our efforts would be better served by turning the relationship on its head and making the client the client.
Al least then there would be no one offering the “it will never catch on” phrase to dampen our enthusiasm.
Nathan
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