13 Mar SXSW Session Recap: Slaying the Four Horsemen of the Social Media Apocalypse

Posted at 22:09h in Conferences by

I’ve attended quite a few panels, conversations and industry parties over the past few days and I have to hand it to Greg Matthews (Group Director at WCG & former Director of Social Media & Consumer Innovations at Humana) and Jaime Punishill (Global Head of Wealth Online, Thomas Reuters) for putting on a most impressive show.  This core conversation was held for marketers, IT folks, HR reps and really anyone who believes in the power of social media but is having trouble getting the rest of the company on board.  As an account person, I was particularly interested in this panel as I was looking for insight into how I can help my clients, who also believe in social media (otherwise why would they hire us?), get internal buy-in and support for campaigns.

Greg and Jaime started the conversation by asking the audience for examples of the roadblocks we were facing and the conversation began…

Social Media Law?

If you work in marketing, you know there’s a black cloud that swoops in any time someone says “we’ll need to run this by legal.”  The trouble with social media is that it’s evolving so quickly and no precedent has been set so you could make an argument for running pretty much everything by legal. I wouldn’t recommend it, but I’ve seen it happen.  And if you’ve ever tried to explain your social media campaign to a lawyer you know they just don’t get why you can’t add a 5 paragraph disclaimer to a tweet.  As Greg put it – “You can’t talk about flying with someone who’s never seen a plane.”

Lesson #1: It’s okay to invite lawyers to the party — You just have to speak their language.

So, how do you do this? Understand  what the lawyer is up against. There’s no win column for the lawyer.  Instead, their days are spent evaluating risks and rewards, and we need to remember that they are experts in law (not social media) and for that reason they can’t be expected to define & evaluate the risks/rewards on their own.  The way to get through to them is to present the risks and rewards to them. We can’t expect the lawyers to do this on their own because you don’t know what you don’t know.

Instead, the lawyer’s role is to take our proposal and evaluate for any further risks based on legal precedent.  The difficulty here, of course, lies in the fact that no clear legal precedent has been set when it comes to most social media issues. Greg’s recommendation: Don’t push your lawyers (or the legal system) to draw a line in the sand, because once precedent has been set, it’s nearly impossible to change.  Instead, focus on the risk vs. reward analysis to help guide strategic decisions made in partnership with your legal team. And that leads me to the next lesson of the day:

Lesson #2: Make friends with your legal team. Together, you can shape the social media world.

But mom, everyone else is doing it!

This conversation was brief but the speakers made a great point in how you can get through roadblocks with certain types of people.  Know a VP who’s always watching your competitor?  A product developer who’s in constant competition to innovate faster than his nemesis?  In order to get through to these people, keep in mind the day’s 3rd lesson:

Lesson #3: Find the envy project.

If you’re Pepsi and you just can’t get your VP of marketing on board with a blogger outreach program, show him all the bloggers Coke is working with and it shouldn’t take much more convincing.

Who cares if you have 10 million fans?

For me, this was one of the most insightful discussions. Jaime and Greg reminded us that the boardroom at any major corporation is filled with people who have been in the business since the Mad Men era.  That said, us “new age” marketers need to keep a couple things in mind when reporting back to them on our successes:

  1. We’re speaking to people who don’t use Facebook (shocking…I know!)
  2. We’re speaking to people who look at business metrics

Lesson #4: Get rid of social media metrics. They mean nothing to your boss.

So, unless you’re working for Tony Hsieh, consider focusing your reports to 1 or 2 key metrics that your boss will understand.  And keep in mind that those should be business metrics (like perception or sales.)  Figure out what your boss cares about and find a way to equate fan growth to that specific KPI.

“You lost them with ‘replace'”

As the session was wrapping up (SXSW volunteers were actually kicking us out) the final audience question came up. The question was related to not being able to get a very smart co-worker to understand that a particular social media monitoring platform would be able to replace their current antiquated listening system, bringing down costs.  Seems like a sound argument. Let’s be honest, we’re all in business to make money so the less money that goes out the door unnecessarily the better, right?  Greg’s response was priceless: “You lost them with replace.”

He went on to explain that everyone is on the defensive, and in comes the final lesson:

Lesson #5: Position social media as an extension, amplifier or complement, not a replacement.

Let’s face it, traditional advertising is not dead.  Traditional PR is not dead. SEO, web development, etc. not dead.  They are all evolving (whether they want to or not) thanks to social media, and that can be scary for people who have been in marketing for a long time. Helping these folks understand how social media can make what they do better, rather than suggesting it replace a system that you may think is antiquated, is the only way to successfully work together.