Social Strategy

The medium is the message. ~ Marshall McLuhan (1911 – 1980)

Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar—a professor of English literature who famously once said, “The medium is the message.”

What he meant was this ~

The ‘message’ of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.

Today, the meaning *is* the message. And the “message” of the Internet’s social revolution is more meaningful work, economics, politics, society, and organisation.

Hopefully.

It promises radically more meaning ~ to make stuff matter again, in human terms, not just financial ones.

And that has never mattered more.

Industrial era business was “meaningless” because it was antisocial. Here’s how the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition, defines antisocial personality disorder:

“…a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood.”

Now this fits most organisations to a “T” — from Canary Wharf to Coventry to Big Pharma to Big Food to Big Energy.

Research suggests that 95% of organisations are unable to offer socially useful stuff that creates meaningful value for people, communities and tomorrow’s generations.

Think about that for a moment. Let it sink in.

No wonder traditional, interrupt driven marketing isn’t working any more. That translates to ~ 95% of organisations don’t give a rat’s about what YOU want. Only what they want you to buy.

95% of organisations don’t give a rat’s about what YOU want. Only what they want you to buy.

Likewise, most “social media” strategies I’ve come across have one or more of three goals: to “push product,” “build buzz,” or “engage consumers.”

None of these lives up to the Internet’s promise of meaning. They’re just slightly cleverer ways to sell more of the same old stuff.

The great challenge of the 21st century is making stuff radically better in the first place — socially useful stuff that creates meaningful value for people, communities, and tomorrow’s generations.

Yes, THAT kind of stuff. The stuff that’s actually worth something

Organisations don’t need “social media” strategy. They need “social” strategy: strategy which turn antisocial behaviour on its head to maximize meaning, authority, social influence and reach.

Here are seven social strategies which are turning yesterday’s industrial era economy upside-down. They’re what I look for when evaluating budgets, innovation and ideas across social media and alternative strategies.

Character

Most organisations have no character, in the traditional sense of the word. They’ll never stand up for what’s right, noble, or true. If they were a Dickens character, they’d be Ebenezer Scrooge, only on crack.

The character strategy utilises social tools to help an organisation develop a moral compass, often via ethical accelerators.

Whatever they are.

One of my all time favourite examples is the Gwilym Davies’ disloyalty card, which rewards coffee-drinkers for trying out other local cafés.

Now that’s a coffee shop with character!

Control

Most organisations are run by bosses, who in-turn are run by an even bigger-boss. By contrast, an organisation with a social control strategy radically decentralises decision-making, giving control that was formerly vested in echelons upon echelons of managers directly to people, communities, and society.

Think retailer “Threadless” ~ whose corporate anarchy is upsetting the tired, and increasingly profitless US clothing market.

They do both paid and unpaid marketing (mostly unpaid), which means reaching Threadless fans primarily through online social media. The company has a Facebook page (currently 95,000 fans) and a branded Twitter account (1.4 million followers), of course.

Not bad for a 47 employee business.

I wonder ~ what it would take to get me to tattoo their company logo on MY arm?

These aspirational brands always make me think of the mummy and daddy of them all ~ Apple and Harley Davidson.

And I wonder ~ what it would take to get me to tattoo their company logo on MY arm?

Or any other company logo, or any other arm, for that matter.

Creativity

Most organisations are, from an economic stand-point, brain-dead; they are unable to come up with newer, better ideas consistently and reliably.

The result is that they defend old ones tooth and nail: a formidable source of antisocial behaviour.

The creativity strategy hinges on utilising social tools to explode how imaginative organisations are.

Lego’s new social strategy approach to toy production and consumption, for example — textbook Greenpeace — has turned the table on its rivals, by giving Lego the capacity to be more imaginative than they can be.

Culture

Or “cultcha”, as it’s pronounced ‘darn sarf’, is how an organisation makes sense of the world ~ a set of assumptions internalised by all its members.

Most organisations are the cultural equivalent of stone-age tribes: focused on “the hunt,” “the kill,” and what’s for dinner today? Like stone age tribes, they’re fractious, unproductive, and easily broken.

In the culture strategy, social tools are used to help an organisation make better sense of the world. Accountability, roles, tasks, processes, incentives — that’s what shapes culture, and in the culture strategy, social tools are utilised to re-conceive and measure them.

For example, Wal-Mart’s ‘Sustainability Index’ is a radical example of a culture-changer, altering all of the above, helping Wal-Mart’s entire ecosystem make sense of the world anew.

Clarity

The clarity strategy is perhaps the simplest.

Most organisations are flying blind: they have limited visibility about changes in the marketplace.

Most organisations are flying blind: they have limited visibility about changes in the marketplace.

Social tools are a powerful way to gain clarity: better, faster information about what’s happening not just in the boardroom, but in the real world.

My favourite example of clarity is Google’s rapid, frequent, consistent experimentation. Because of it, Google always has more clarity about what really creates meaningful value — and what really doesn’t — than rivals. Here’s a tiny example of Google helping searchers gain clarity on hotel pricing using Google Maps.

Cohesion

Relationship inflation is the most visible sign of social media decay.

The cohesion strategy says: in relationships, seek quality, not quantity. One of my favourite recent examples of cohesion is “Tummling” — the art of social engagement. It’s a form of moderation pioneered by Heather Gold, Deb Schultz, and Kevin Marks at Tummelvision.tv.

The Tummler’s job is “setting the tone and establishing the norm,” deciding who speaks where and when, summarising and synthesizing. The goal of Tummling is to help dialogue happen — and make relationships not merely inflate, but cohere, blossom and mature.

Choreography

Most organisations seek “high performance.” Today, performance is no longer enough: excelling in yesterday’s terms is excelling at the wrong things.

In fact this is downright self-destructive.

Today’s radical innovators aren’t merely mute performers, precisely executing the empty steps of a meaningless dance: they’re more like choreographers.

Choreographers define the steps of a better dance — they lay down better rules for interactions between supply and demand to take place.

Yelp, for example, is getting its choreography completely wrong; failing to build a better dialogue between buyers and sellers (instead of just isolated, drive-by “reviews”).

Etsy is still on the brink of greatness, pioneering highly productive relationships between buyers and sellers.

My favorite example (the World Bank’s too) is M-Pesa, which lays down a new choreography for finance: from person to person, instead of bank to bank.

It’s the least productive and most disheartening use of a formidably powerful tool.

Using social marketing to “build buzz” and “push product” is about as smart as using warp drive to visit your local corner-shop.

Social tools today are used mostly as a new “channel” to push the same old useless stuff of the industrial era at hapless “consumers.”

That’s meaninglessness at its finest.

It’s the least productive and most disheartening use of a formidably powerful tool.

Conclusion

Social media strategy fits inside a marketing (business, corporate) strategy, and is shaped by it. Social strategy fits outside business and corporate strategies, and shapes them. Social strategies are about rewriting the logic of the industrial era entirely, shifting gears in how we think, envisioning a broader, more powerful, more challenging use of social tools.

They are about developing the capacity to understand an organisation’s role in society, and how to play a more constructive one, wielding sociality as a source of advantage — by acting radically more meaningfully than rivals.

Social strategies are about reinventing tomorrow. Their goal is nothing less than changing the DNA of an organisation, ecosystem, or industry.

Stop applying 20th century principles (“product,” “buzz,” “loyalty”) to 21st century media.

The fundamental change of scale and pace that social tools introduce into human affairs — their great tectonic shift — is the promise of more meaningful work, stuff and organisation.

Start with “the meaning is the message” instead.

From an idea by Umair Haque at Harvard Business Review.