60 People, 60 Stories

Letting real-time voices do the work

By Chris Reitermann (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-30 08:27

A recent announcement by Facebook in the United States said that more than 85 of the top 100 US advertisers advertise on its site. I would assume that the situation in China is similar.

Nearly every digital campaign these days has a component on one of the major social networks in China including Xiaonei (now RenRen), Kaixin or Tencent. These major players have seen astronomical increases in their user figures over the past 18 months and have severely shaken up the digital media landscape.

It is all in the numbers. With the massive rise in eyeballs, social networks have become a significant marketing channel that offers the ability to reach consumers at a very reasonable cost. They also enable brands to engage their audiences and to connect like-minded people. The power of social media is the amplification of consumer voices and the ability to spread news and content in ways that were never possible before.

We're now talking about real-time marketing.

Brands today are increasingly playing the role of conversation starters and then letting consumers do the rest.

Among all the news about the rapid rise in users of SNS sites, a more interesting observation is the fundamental change that social networks drive in the way consumers communicate, receive and share information. This in turn has a significant impact on brand marketing.

Brands now need to be social - and accept the fact that the balance of power has finally shifted entirely to consumers. Today's social consumers will not accept being bombarded with advertising messages. They have become much more vocal and involved with those brands that provide them with content and an association with a higher ideal that resonates with them. Brands today need to create advocates and supporters and can no longer see consumers as a pure demographic that can be marketed to.

Opening up to consumers certainly requires a leap of faith for many marketers, but it also offers huge opportunities for bringing a brand into people's lives and to be a part of their lives. Social networks allow brands to engage with consumers in ways that were never possible before. At the same time, consumers are making brands "their" brands and providing marketers with a near real-time sounding board for what consumers think and feel.