Social networking: the good, the bad and the presumptuous
There's a full-fledged backlash against social media marketing emerging, with commentary from places you'd expect and from some you might not.
This is tough on those with a solid foundation in market messaging; those doing good things with modern technologies around the age old concepts of market "conversations" or word of mouth.
Ten years ago the book, The ClueTrain Manifesto put forward ninety- five theses, essentially expanding on the following:
A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter — and getting smarter faster than most companies.
The ClueTrain Manifesto was written in the era of email and mailing lists, news groups, chat/instant messaging and, of course, Web pages; it was conceived during the height of the dot-com-boom.
Ten years later, Burger King launched a clever, though cynical, application on Facebook called "Whopper Sacrifice."
As Word of Mouth Marketing associ-ation member and Brand Communications Agency President Michael Diccicco described, "It promised a free Whopper hamburger to anyone in the U.S. on Facebook who would ‘sacrifice' (ditch, dump, de-friend) 10 Facebook friends."
All you had to do, via Facebook, was tell Burger King which ten friends you were dumping, and you
