My Heavy Chef Interview on Social Advertising Spend
Wendy Tayler, the Heavy Chef Editor, interviewed me during the week to find out my thoughts on whether or not we are spending too much on social media advertising. The interview then also touches on marketing analytics and the use of big data to understand and come to grips with how and where marketers can make a difference to their campaigns.
The full interview can be found on the Heavy Chef website; but here is a short excerpt from one of the questions Wendy asked me:
You recently wrote an interesting piece on how we follow people and not brands. Why do you think this is?
It is an interesting question, and one I don’t think there is a cut and dried right or wrong answer for. A major contributing factor could be that we identify with people and not with brands. We can empathise with what they say and relate to particular situations. It might be a throw-back to the advertising age where companies were, whenever we heard from them, always trying to sell us something, so we subconsciously move away from companies and closer to those who we feel are there for conversation and information.
Ultimately though I think it has a lot to do with the perceived value that the account we are following has to offer. There is not much ‘cool’ value from following Apple, but there is a lot in owning an apple. There is also a lot of cool value that can be had from being the first to retweet a ‘pearl’ from a local celebrity and being among the first to know of something that they deem worthy of mentioning. A company can’t really offer that same level of information so they fall behind in the race for followers.
Would love to hear your thoughts on some of the other points that were raised.