Social Media is a Compliment

The TV did not eliminate the radio, the internet did not eliminate TV, and Social Media will not eliminate traditional Media Marketing. Different forms of media are not replaced, they always complement each other.

A few days ago I attended a conference on Social Media. Among the attendees were executives, students, designers, programmers, new professionals and a couple of others who would have fit in well on the set of The Big Bang Theory. There are many things I could comment on, but I was particularly struck by how passionately people claimed that social media was taking over all other media routes. This doesn't just include Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, but other networks such as LinkedIn, Quora, Tumblr, Impulse, and many more. 

You may think I am quite sceptical, but I am actually quite the opposite. However, when I talk about these people, I mean that they blindly believe social media is the new and only channels of communication with society. In fact, the organisers of the event were proud because they had not used traditional advertising to announce their event (everything had been done through social networks).

All these tools have been born, grown and exploited within the last decade and, although it is true that they are causing a revolution, it is true that the various media routes 'add up'; they are not replaced, they complement each other. The TV did not eliminate the radio, the internet did not eliminate TV and Social Media will not eliminate traditional Media Marketing.

The best campaigns today are those that manage to integrate online media with offline media. A good example of this has been done by Central Beheer, who have often combined traditional advertising, Below-The-Line marketing and marketing 2.0. Another good example is Starbucks, who  bet heavily on Social Media with 'My Starbucks Idea.com' where they ask customers to collaborate with the chain and make suggestions, questions and even vent frustrations. Within a short time, the site had hundreds of thousands of registered users, more than 100,000 ideas have been received and Starbucks has already implemented many of these. 

It is true that we live in times of change; it is true that tweets and updating our Facebook status have become part of everyday life; it is also clear that measuring the impacts of our web presence is becoming essential. However, it is also very true that these new types of media will not replace existing marketing, they will only complement it; it is an evolution of the media discipline and new tools are simply added to the Marketing mix.

We continue playing the same game, we are only integrating new toys. The marketing concepts of segmentation, consumer studies, price, promotions, points of sale and market positioning are still there. Recall that, strategically, as IBM would say, the goal of the virtual world is to generate value in the real world.