Clearly, I’m in agreement with you and admire what you’re doing there, as it’s so similar to what we’re doing a bit south of you. Congrats on the affiliation with Geoff. Nice move. He’s very smart.

~Jim

Interesting discussion but isn’t who different to what? I support your ‘full service’ concept having seen the early days of e-recruitment software (early adopters for SaaS [in theory!]) ignore real implementation. What I mean by that in today’s terms would be to implement a social network for a client and then move onto the next customer leaving the previous customer to make it will work. This may of course be a typical software project i.e. sell and run but with social media more technology vendors ‘appear’ to be wanting to take a full service approach.

We get pulled into e-recruitment scenarios to fix the problems and there are way too many to make it fun so with social media we are instead leading from the front and retaining client ownership throughout. Some of the tech vendors don’t like this approach i.e. we want to own the customer not you (which I understand but won’t support) whereas vendors such as Awareness seem more open in their view.

Bottom line: Assuming strategy etc is clearly defined (dangerous assumption) the key person to a network is the community manager; and they have to be part of the customer infrastructure (not necessarily employed).

I’ll be looking out for you in the UK!

Peter

I agree with Martin: the “media buy” debate is squarely targeted at our friends in the ad biz.

The jockeying going on right now, both within corporations as well as in the consulting world, is which marketing discipline takes ownership of social media. Most of the marketing disciplines have tidy little silos that they’ve practiced under for years. But where does this fit? Ad guys want a piece because their discipline has been more advanced on the technical side of engaging with the web (websites, microsites, etc.). But the PR guys see social media at its core as unpaid-for communications and creating conversations, which is their specialty. In the consulting world, there’s not even an established category yet, as you point out, for social media specialists.

I think one of the primary issues is in branding: Is the industry called social media? New media? Online communications? Heck, there’s a Society for New Communications Research. How come the lack of consensus?

The flip side is, you don’t want to over-administrate a burgeoning discipline/industry, especially while it’s at its formative stage. But some clarity will help minimize confusion among potential buyers of social media services, including establishing that discipline internally within corporate marketing departments. And maybe somewhere down the road, establishing an industry association — not unlike the advertising or PR disciplines — will bring further clarity and credibility.

Maybe Mark, Matt and our friends at Mesh might consider “industry branding” among the topics of discussion at next month’s conference.

The agency model you put forward doesn’t really describe PR agencies. Your agency model seems to focus more on an ad agencies. Most PR agencies are the hybrid “best-of-both-worlds” type that you describe (at least they are trying to be, not saying that all actually are. High Road is).

I think the key differentiator is, as you describe it, that you “don’t have an old-media business model to prop up”. Many PR agencies, like ad agencies, are trying to adapt to new realities or re-invent themselves. Some are more successful than others.

In a way, this reminds me a little bit of the old business software discussions, when it was all about “best-of-breed” vs. “one integrated platform” (or “one throat to choke”), and then all of a sudden the rise of software-as-a-service is starting to change the whole approach to business models in the industry. Marketing is going through a similar change, and “social media” is kind of what SaaS is to the old software model. Exciting and fun times indeed.

– Martin

cheers
cr