Facebook

Face-to-Face Book: a welcome reality check

Face-to-Face Book: a welcome reality check

For those of us who started working in marketing BZ (that is, Before Zuckerberg), it is striking to see how social influence has grown to become so important an issue for marketers and their research and comms partners. In barely a decade, it has gone from being a marginal and category-specific issue – peer-pressure in children’s markets or status signals in luxury goods categories, for example – to being one that pervades each and every category. Social influence and how to harness it has indeed become one of marketing’s central issues.

Part of the reason for this is, of course, the rise in popularity and newsworthiness of social technologies such as Facebook. But equally, a big part has been played by a handful of social advocates championing the importance of the social in shaping human behaviour and suggesting practical ways in which marketers can measure, understand and harness it.

Few advocates have done as much to shift the industry’s focus on to social influence as Ed Keller. His previous book (with Jon Berry), The Influentials: One American in Ten Tells the Other Nine How to Vote, Where to Eat, and What to Buy, provided the intellectual engine for much of the Word of Mouth Association’s incredible evangelising of what is now widely accepted as best practice in this space.

Unlike Malcolm Gladwell’s more populist Tipping Point, which brought the idea of social influence and networks to a non-marketing audience, Influentials provided a much more grounded and useful model of how word-of-mouth and influence might work (to my knowledge, few marketers have ever got close to reflecting or reconstructing Gladwell’s seven consumer typologies). It helps a great deal that Keller is a top-class market researcher, who works from well-collected and analysed data brought to life by anecdote, rather than a journalist interested in anecdote alone.

The sequel to Influentials has been some time coming but is well worth the wait: it contains the same clear, insightful prose; the same useful and practical pointers and, above all, a similarly insightful and provocative central premise. As the title suggests, Keller’s new Face-to-Face Book, written with business partner Brad Fay, suggests that in thinking about and trying to create social influence, we shift our focus from the online worlds of Facebook and Twitter, for example, to the real world of real relationships.

This is clear from the very first words of the introduction: “When the history of the early 21st century is written, will textbooks observe that internet users spent billions of dollars on ‘virtual’ animated online farm creatures during the worst economic slump since the Great Depression?”

As was the case with Influentials, the argument is made well by the use of empirical findings, rather than mere anecdote. At a general level, we learn that 90% of consumer conversations around brands are held off- rather than online and that, pound for pound, these also count for more than online ones. At the same time, specific examples make this kind of marketing rule of thumb tangible and useful.

But this is no Jeremiad against the evils of social media of the sort that seems to be so popular with mainstream news editors at the moment. As Keller and Fay point out, this is “neither a book against Facebook nor against social media in general” – nor one that underestimates the significance of social media. Rather, they see social media as part of a much bigger picture that we ignore at our peril.

“The most successful businesses in the future will be the ones that embrace a model that puts people – rather than technology – at the center (sic)…[in particular] they will recognize that people have a far greater impact on each other than we previously realized, and that consumers are not just a collection of individuals.”

Amen, say I. This paragraph summarises neatly the work I’ve been doing for the past decade.

That said, you may not agree with everything Keller and Fay have to say. For example, I still find it frustrating that social influence is conceptualised here largely in terms of what people do and say to one another, rather than what they take from each other: ie as a push, rather than a pull force.

There’s an insightful literature described in our latest book, running across different academic disciplines (biologist Kevin Laland and economist Paul Ormerod being two leading proponents) which sees social learning or copying as central to our decision-making. Rethinking social influence from the perspective of the influenced (not the influencer) could make a huge difference to the way we seek to shape consumer behaviour through social influence, on- or offline.

But Face-to-Face Book remains an essential read for every marketer, no matter how digitally dedicated, not only because it forces us to separate our overexcitement about what social media can reveal about how people do what they do from where we choose to influence them, but also because of its calm, practical and engaging style.

Mark Earls is the author of Welcome to the Creative Age and Herd, and co-author of I’ll Have What She’s Having – Mapping Social Behaviour (2011) [email protected]

Newsletter

Enjoy this? Get more.

Our monthly newsletter, The Edit, curates the very best of our latest content including articles, podcasts, video.

CAPTCHA
4 + 0 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

Become a member

Not a member yet?

Now it's time for you and your team to get involved. Get access to world-class events, exclusive publications, professional development, partner discounts and the chance to grow your network.