"There is no social media"
I love it when people are bold. Bold and correct. And Norwegian marketing supremo Helge Tennø said something absolutely brilliant last night. Like a free lunch, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, "There is no Social Media".
Cue the sound of a million self-appointed gurus imploding.
Poof!
To be fair to Helge, he provides some superb and balanced context to his wonderfully bold statement, citing leading professors, journals and institutions who all agree we're about to undergo an industrial-revolution-style sea-change in retail, where mass consumerism (one size fits all) gives way to individual demand and tailored production. Participation and dialogue (that'll be your social media, folks) can be one of the answers, but it has to be implemented at the business level, rather than shouldering it off to a marketing team and hoping for the best.
The upshot? Over to Helge...
This is not about one single tool entertaining customers or allowing the creative brains to experiment as the business itself is doing “business as usual”.
He nailed it. Social media, if it does exist, is meaningless. Social Commerce is everything.
Here's a sidenote: we just ran a Social Commerce campaign with Pepsi Max in Helge's homeland of Norway which