The Importance of Being Informal

For the last (almost 10 years), a group of marketing and social media enthusiasts have been meeting for coffee. We arrive around 8am each Friday at Sydney’s Single O cafe in Surry Hills for coffee and conversation. Some of us work in social or digital media as a profession. Some of us are involved as part of an interest. And a few are only in it for the coffee.

Over the years, we have seen regulars become friends. There have been weddings and children. There have been breakups and tragedies, visitors and ring-ins. And it has been the most brilliant way to spend a Friday morning ever conceived.

Last week, John Kerrison could not make it to Surry Hills but he beamed in via Facebook Live. Here’s what he had to say (and why he’ll be back more regularly).

Why Serious Marketers Aren’t Taking Snapchat Seriously, Yet

In my first “official” marketing job, I dealt a lot with branding. And print. We did brochures and collateral. There were events to host, conferences to attend and exhibition booths to use for conversion. And there was this largely irrelevant thing called “the website”.

But I had an inkling that there might be something to this internet lark, so I kept at it. I created campaigns that would start with an envelope delivered to a desk, would follow it up with an email message, exclusive code, some marketing information and an invitation to an exclusive event. Then the event itself was pure “money can’t buy” access to the best talent at our firm, thought leadership and good food and drink. I didn’t realise it at the time, but I was designing omni-channel experiences. And they were extraordinarily successful.

In fact, they blew everything else out of the water.

One of the reasons these program worked was because we could track marketing activation. We knew when invitations were delivered in person and via email. We knew when something was ignored. We followed up religiously. And we adjusted the program as we went. It was agile before “agile”. There was no name for this kind of marketing, because it was simply about paying attention. I was doing my job.

These days, marketers have forgotten what their job is. They seem to think it’s about content. Or about technology.

It’s neither of these things.

It is about paying attention – to your customers and to your business. You have to balance doing what’s right for your customers and doing what’s right for your business. Sometimes it is a fine line. Sometimes it’s obvious. And walking this fine line will help you make decisions about everything else – about the content you develop or amplify and the technology you use. After all, it’s no use having the best YouTube channel if your audience all live on Facebook. And you won’t have a job long if you spend all your budget on Snapchat ads when your buyers are all middle aged men in suits.

It’s the balance that’s importance – one eye on your boss, one eye on your customer. Respect for the company that pays you and respect for the person who pays your company.

And is with this simple focus that I can confidently look to Snapchat and know that there’s not much value there for most marketers, right now. As this infographic (via MarketingProfs) shows, there are some astounding “engagement” figures and certainly plenty of stickiness. But a decade of social media use has made us wary of the big numbers that sound as hollow as “reach and frequency”. And there is no reliable analytics platform that can provide anything more detailed than a “like” here or a message there.

That doesn’t mean that Snap won’t improve. But it’s a long way away from being a sophisticated digital platform for marketers. And while that one glad eye might be turned towards your audience, marketers will need to keep that serious eye on the stormy CEO who holds the marketing budget.