Because it’s boring. Email is boring.
But more people use email than Facebook or Twitter. Combined. Every day. Still.
Email spans a wider demographic range than any other social technology application. We’re already seeing (in our own research and others) that age groups are defining social technologies…more on that later.
Email is ridiculously simple and it’s boring. Across many age groups, we’ve mastered email, whether that’s via a Web interface like Gmail or Hotmail or if we have an email client like Mail or Entourage or Thunderbird. Most of us already have our various “groups” that we send stuff to. We don’t think about it, we just “forward”, “reply” or create new, copy/paste or drag/drop and hit “send.” And we’re done. Boring. That’s when social change comes about from a technology; when it becomes boring.
Jody Williams won a nobel peace prize for land mine activism – mostly using email and faxes. Two boring technologies.
The phone eventually enabled the ability to have 911 service, of which a TV show was created. Because it was boring and we all knew how to dial a phone. In the 1930’s phones were pretty much banned in offices.
Facebook is not an email “killer” because it’s still complicated and not boring yet. Same thing with Twitter.
A new social media technology that is now pretty much boring is SMS/txt messaging and perhaps the first instance of txt messaging benefiting society was Haiti – that most of the money raised in the US, Canada and UK was through SMS donations. In the 2005 Orange Revolution in the Ukraine, it was txt messaging that played the key role in gathering people to protest the election results and promoted democracy. It’s getting boring.
So, what do you think? Is email still the number one social technology?
Media Analysis, Research•
on February 4th, 2010•
If you’re over 30 then I’m sorry to tell you that you’ve “read” your cultural future. If you’re under 30 then you’ve got the sheer delight of “authoring” your cultural future.
If you’re over 30 then you’re spending less than 20 hours, on average 12 hours, per week online; in Social Networks, on blogs, Twittering etc. But if you’re under 30 then that average starts to climb. Under 20? Research shows you’re spending more than 50 hours per week online.
Under 20? You’re creating content on a scale never before known to humanity. Video, photo’s, text. You’re writing the culture of the future. Suddenly, since I’m over 40, I feel rather ancient.
What an incredibly powerful concept; to have the opportunity to write your future culture. Those that succeed in the future, will be able to work in collaborative groups. You’ll come together on political and societal issues. Today, it’s all new and it’s about entertainment, silly simple things.
But then, you’re going to want to start changing things. If we think the Hippy Movement was something powerful, well, we ain’t seen nothing yet. Think anyone under 20 will listen to us 40+ folk? We see this in our ongoing research into Social Technology usage as well. Powerful.
Think about that: Youth is writing our cultural future.
What do you think? Are you helping to write our cultural future?
Thunking, Uncategorized•
on November 12th, 2009•
Before the advent of Social Media, even the Web as a whole, there was argument that Western television was destroying other cultures. Yet the most popular shows in Brazil (still are) are called Telenovela’s made in Brazil, by Brazilians and watched daily by more than 60 million Brazilians – more than ever watched American TV shows produced in the U.S.
Step forward to today. Internet access reaches over a billion people around the world. With the advent of Social Media, we can create content and distribute it globally in just seconds. Never before, in the history of mankind, have we been able to do that. read more
Best Practices, Reputation•
on October 13th, 2009•
In Western nations as we see the steady increase in immigrants, marketers will have to become increasingly cognizant of ethnographic marketing. Advertising messages will take more research and ads that were easily understood before, may reach less of an audience or cause community anger.
In Social Media, it means deeper considerations when engaging an audience. It’s one thing to provide a Cantonese or Mandarin translation on your static web pages. It’s another to engage a Chinese audience in Social Media. Or Punjabi, Hindu, Ghanaian etc.
We’ve seen the rise of Social Networking sites for Latino Americans already. East Indians in Toronto use the Indian Social Networking site Bigadda more than Facebook in Canada – such knowledge can result in a failed Facebook campaign when your market is using an originating-country social media service. As a recent client of ours found out the hard way.
For longer term engagement, it means retaining staff who speak the language – and ensuring they can adequately communicate issues within the organization. More to the point, ensuring some form of sustainability in Social Media marketing efforts is also critical; these segment markets tend to be very loyal to products they feel value their culture and beliefs.
While a significant amount of acculturation occurs with immigrants, the deeper cultural assimilation and nuanced understanding of the country that have taken up their new lives in doesn’t usually happen until the first generation is born and of an age to be receptive to marketing tactics. So the two considerations we’ve found to be consistent is generation targeted and ensuring inter-organizational support while targeting the right Social Media vehicle.
Stating the obvious: There has never been so many media channels in the history of mankind. This will signal a new challenge to marketers and communicators: ethnographic considerations.
It’s nothing to do so much with technology as it does with human nature and culture. During the heydays of broadcast media (TV, radio, print) we saw very little, comparatively, of specialized media channels for different cultural groups. What specialization there was (such as hispanic only radio stations in non-hispanic countries) were limited in scope due to the costs of the mediums being used.
Enter the digital media age and Social Media. These tools enable communications in a way that humans prefer to communicate – enabling groups to form, create, act and continue or cease. In the last 20 years we’ve also seen an increase in migrant populations to various countries. This means more varied cultures sprouting in within countries. Keeping an element of ones home culture is important as an identifier. Even in Canada and America, those originally of British, Irish, Scottish or Scandinavian descent are increasingly identifying with their originating roots.
This will present a whole new set of challenges to organizations reaching an audience – especially via digital media. I predict that the next trend for marketers will be understanding ethnography when doing their marketing research. It’s been hard enough for marketers to gather and incorporate demographic information and then we had to consider psychographic information in planning.
Because Western developed nations are seeing such a dramatic increase in immigrant populations who are gaining increasing purchase power, marketers and public relations pro’s will increasingly need to consider these factors. In Social Media we’re already seeing services like Hi5 develop dedicated Social Networks to hispanic and other cultures. NetLog (Facebook’s main European competitor) has language already figured out. If Facebook wants to be a serious global contender it’s going to have to improve it’s foreign language capacities.
While English may be the most spoken language outside China, it remains to be seen the impact this will have on businesses engaging in Social Media and digital marketing communications as a whole in the future.
Do you think cultural ethnographic considerations will become increasingly important to marketing communications professionals?
(Author: Giles Crouch, Managing Partner)
What makes our world so incredible is the mix of cultures on this little planet. This diversity is exemplified and amplified in Social Media applications. One might ponder that Social Media could be a way of uniting us, resulting in less wars, greater societal wealth and more. Coming back to earth for a moment, there are some serious implications in regards to marketing and communications in Social Media in cultural terms.
Failing to understand cultural issues is a key, yet often overlooked, factor in the success or failure of Social Media activities. Done right however, reaching and succeeding with cultural clusters in the U.S., UK and Canada can mean highly loyal customers and vital feedback on product development.
When looking to implement a Social Media marketing effort however, the considerations go beyond just language planning and resource allocations internally. Each cultural group has specific social rules, etiquette and behavioral issues that should be addressed. These can range from who is making the buying decisions and how those buying decisions are divided in the household. Different cultures have different traditions regarding the handling of finances. Then there’s “how” ethnic and cultural groups make decisions on sharing. There are many variables, failure to understand or plan for them can result in a failed effort. If you truly fail, the results can also be very long term.
Simply translating the creative and campaign elements when targeting an ethnic group will likely result in failure. As with language support, you need to have the back-end support and understanding in place. Not doing so can result in abject failure and long-term loss of potential customers. So while implementing a Social Media campaign or strategy that engages cultural groups can be very rewarding, take careful planning and consider you’re ability to commit to maintaining that relationship. Many non-Western cultures place extremely high value on familial and social relationships, so engaging needs commitment, research, resources and empathy.
Best Practices•
on October 16th, 2008•
Facing the issue of dealing with foreign languages in Social Media engagement as a business is going to come up at some point. In the U.S. it’s dealing with Spanish, in Canada with French and increasingly Mandarin, Hindi or other dialects. Dealing with other languages is something Europeans are very familiar with, often either French, German, Spanish or English are the default languages.
But what happens when you want to engage in Social Media for marketing, public relations or just stakeholder relations? In Canada and the U.S. it’s usually a default to go English, in Quebec you go with French. But we are seeing an significant growth in ethnic groups in North America; and they have buying power. They are also connected. Cultures like French, Spanish, Hindi, Philipino are all very socially oriented. They also have a very high propensity to use Social Media.
Working recently with a government client, we faced the language issue. We nearly failed miserably. What we learned, fortunately in the nick of time, is that the company or organization, must first be fully prepared to support an engagement with a minority group. This may seem obvious, but it goes deeper. It’s not about having just one or two people on staff who speak the language, it needs cross-organizational preparedness.
If you’re reaching out to a particular language group in Social Media, success comes over longer term engagement. With cultures that have strong community orientations, a quick dive-in campaign to “test the waters” or drive some quick sales will hurt more than help. The very core of many cultures is “community and family” and this does not weaken in Social Media applications. In fact it becomes more so.
If you’re going to engage with another language group outside your operating language, plan carefully and look beyond just “marketing” or “PR” best practices to conduct some sociology, socioeconomic and cultural issues. Most importantly, be sure you can support another language internally, over a longer time and that your product/service supports other languages. There’s more to consider, but that’s later.
