The question about the future of social networking should remind us how dependent marketing has become on insights from the social sciences over the past half century.
Without a sophisticated concept of society and an understanding of its workings, there could be no grasp of the power of the newly identified 'social media'.
Looking ahead to the next 50 years, the emergence of such phenomena emphasises marketing's need to continue to embrace new learning in order to reinvigorate itself and stay in touch with the reality of consumer lives in the future.
It could be argued, perhaps, that marketing would benefit from framing itself more as an applied social science – but more pertinently (as I contend in my forthcoming book, The Future Unwrapped) an investment in understanding changing social values can also provide a basis for better anticipating the future. Especially in times of uncertainty and dramatic technological change such understanding must become a central part of marketing practice.
Taking a futures perspective also forces a more forensic evaluation of the past. Social networking, like so many supposedly new phenomena, has been developing over decades – it is the added impetus provided by the internet that has propelled it to the forefront of the discussion about the future of marketing.
MARKETING'S DEBT TO PSYCHOLOGY
Before networks came the individual. In his highly provocative BBC documentary series The Century of the Self, in 2002, Adam Curtis argued that marketing (and advertising) in the post-war era was successful precisely because it spoke to and exploited the unconscious desires of the masses that had been identified and described by Sigmund Freud's earlier detective work with the psyche. Certainly, market research and planning have become integral to a consumer-orientated marketing process fuelled by an ever-increasing stream of psychology graduates.
It seems every marketer is aware of the results of humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow's work in the 1940s. His influential 'hierarchy of needs' – a powerful predictive model of human behaviour – has informed the development of marketing and brand strategies over decades, as well as creating a theoretical basis for the self-exploration and awareness movements of the West Coast of America that fanned the 1960s revolution and the subsequent decades of exploration into individual self-expression spreading the liberal values that have, literally, changed our world through a focus on individual identity.
SOCIOLOGICAL INSIGHTS WILL BE MORE RELEVANT THAN EVER
While psychology was the dominant discipline in shaping this preoccupation, the need to understand new forms of collective action and community as they evolve, means that it is sociology's turn to take the lead in explaining the phenomena of the modern world in ways helpful to marketing.
Rather neatly, given the anniversary celebrated in this publication, it is also some 50 years since the publication of Peter Willmott and Michael Young's seminal study Family and Kinship in East London – which first identified the importance of social networks between and outside family members, showing the degree of interdependence and interaction between people in the community for a wide range of purposes.
Their ground-breaking description illustrates two relevant aspects of the history of ideas: first, that the seeds of the future are always apparent in the present if you know where and how to look for them using rigorous methods of study (Willmott and Young later described this as 'the principle' in a subsequent work, The Symmetrical Family) and, second, it demonstrates how long it really takes for new social structures and attitudes to become mainstream.
It was precisely this shift from more fixed, hierarchical institutional forms to a looser, more networked basis of human relations that led Margaret Thatcher – mistakenly – to assert 'There is no such thing as society' in the late 1980s – arguably sociology's darkest hour.
However, at exactly that time a brilliant Catalan sociologist undertaking international fieldwork for the University of California, Berkeley – Manuel Castells1 – started to describe the new, subtler forms of social ties that Thatcher was blind to, and identified the importance of social networking as the basis of modern society, providing the means by which the newly empowered individual could actively create their own social environment.
From 1996, his three-volume treatise, The Information Age, articulated the way in which the emerging electronic communications facilitated and accelerated the networking process, providing the means by which individuals participate remotely in all-important family, social and economic networks alongside face-to-face and more traditional means.
SOCIAL NETWORKING CREATES A NEW SUBSTRATE FOR MARKETING
Castells provided the tools to describe the intertwined social and technological revolution that is changing the world – creating, as a byproduct, a new 'space of flows' or invisible substrate for the spread of new forms of marketing communications.
The new IPA report, Social Media Futures,2 explores the future impact of social networking on the advertising industry, concluding that this area has the potential to provide agencies with new forms of services and importantly fees – sufficient to substitute for the revenues that are being lost to new informal approaches. It points out that in this predominantly social world, brands can't take their presence for granted and have to earn the right to be there through appropriate communications, emphasising that advertiser responsibility will be key to future success. The fact that the latest IPA TouchPoints research shows that 80% of 15–24 year olds – inexperienced and possibly naive consumers – have participated in social network sites (such as Facebook) reinforces this point.
A corollary of the rise of the network society has been a decline in trust of institutions and preference for more personal sources of authority. Recent research by The Communications Agency showed that 76% of consumers don't know who to trust for information about what is really going on in the current economic climate – further highlighting the need for the utmost probity and transparency in brand communications whatever channel is used, and the importance of engaging with trusted intermediaries where possible.
CAREER ENHANCEMENT AND NEW BUSINESS
As the IPA report asserts, it is essential for marketers to create tools through which the new social media can become part of their day-today armoury, using research, analysis, case studies and proper evaluation. There is an urgent need for greater investment in empirical research into the full range of types of social networking that take place to identify the real business potential of these in the modern organisation.
Professional networking, for example, has become central to the success of senior executives, and those who excel at it tend to rise to the top of their fields due to the added influence and problem-solving ability effective networking can confer. Networking clubs and industry forums are currently highly popular and proliferating – The Marketing Society being one established example.
But it seems that few, if any, firms have yet analysed how such activities really contribute to their success and how they can be made more effective, both at an individual and organisational level. Recent research by YouGovStone found that while senior executives acknowledge the importance of such networking, a more objective approach can identify new avenues and opportunities for making useful contacts – vigorous networking should certainly be one planned response to the straitened circumstances of the current downturn.
WINNING THE BATTLE FOR THE MIND OF THE MARKETER
If it has taken 50 years for social networks to move from being a newly defined social phenomenon to being the predominant force in society and a new medium for marketers to wrestle with, it is not easy to predict what the next 50 will hold. Most social forecasters are wary of claiming prescience over such a long period – although more research will undoubtedly help answer this question.
In today's constrained circumstances this won't happen until advertisers and their suppliers are convinced that there is real money to be made and, as yet, social media are relatively small beer compared to established channels – the IPA report estimates that fewer than 5% of budgets are spent in this area. On the whole, we are still wedded to old models of planning and implementing marketing communications, and the significance of social media, is a fast-growing but, as yet, not dominant idea.
Central to business success in the marketing services community is the ability to both predict and seed the ideas that will win out. As Castells has said the new engine of change in the network society comes from 'movements to seize the power of mind' and perhaps this is what we need to transform the shape of marketing so it is really fit for purpose in the reality of the networked society.
THREE EXCITING POINTERS FOR THE FUTURE
There is no doubt in my mind that in 50 years' time the total dominance of social networking will be one of the reasons why marketing will be virtually unrecognisable. Part of this will be manifest in committed partnerships between brands and content creators, communications companies and other potential message carriers as 'paid for' advertising spaces shrink and disappear.
Marketing will be subtler, more intertwined in cultural artefacts and more about meaning. There are already ways in which we can begin to see how transformative marketing through social networks is going to be, and how integrated marketing must be into the day-to-day social fabric if it is to succeed. Three areas stand out.
1. Social Marketing
One of the most vibrant and interesting applications of marketing today aims to influence positive behaviour change across society, either to support government objectives in areas such as health, recycling and energy consumption, or as part of a charitable or other campaign. Already programmes such as smoking cessation and sexual health for the NHS are using networking communications through GPs, teachers and local authorities to promote their messages to individuals more effectively. The next stage will be the harnessing of social networks to reinforce and embed change, as Jamie Oliver's recent Ministry of Food series on Channel 4 has shown is possible through getting people to teach each other to cook.
2. Networks for Product, Service and Idea Innovation
Building on books such as Jeff Howe's Crowdsourcing3 and Charles Leadbeater's WE-THINK4, another application provides a powerful route for generating new ideas and solving problems – both societal and organisational. Some organisations are beginning to experiment with this approach – for example the RSA's Governors Network is attempting to bring school governors together using new technology to share experience and develop best practice. Camelot, the national lottery operator, is already taking this to the next level by creating a bespoke networking forum, in conjunction with YouGovStone, to help design its programme of stake-holder communication for the third licence period. We can expect many firms to follow suit, both in addressing big issues but also as forums for engaging customers in brand and product development.
3. Networked Creativity
New ways of keeping brand messages alive are also proliferating. As Nicolas Bourriaud, a leading French cultural analyst has observed, networks not only change society, they change the nature of culture, too. In his view, the ubiquitous chains of communication mean everything can now be passed on or added to in some way, and that 'art' can no longer be considered finished – it will always be subject to further interpretation and use.
Similarly, advertising and marketing communications should embrace the fact that they can continue to be transformed as they are spread through networks. The smart campaigns are those that welcome this opportunity for a new kind of audience engagement – both in the 'pass it on' mode of YouTube ad hits such as the Cadbury's Gorilla or Barack Obama's campaign song, but more cleverly the 'add your bit' to the story – such as for Channel 4's Skins series.
These three are just for starters – potential marketing applications will continue to proliferate as the true extent of the effect of social networks unfolds over the years to come.
References
1. Castells, M. (1996, second edition 2000) The Rise of the Network Society, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Vol. I. Cambridge, MA/Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
2. Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (2009) Social Media Futures – The future of advertising and agencies in a networked society. London: IPA.
3. Howe, J. (2008) Crowdsourcing: How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business. New York and London: Random House.
4. Leadbeater, C. (2008) WE-THINK. London: Profile Books.