Social Networking and the End of Advertising

Psychologist G.D. Wiebe in 1951 asked of the American Psychology Association, "Why can't you sell brotherhood... like you sell soap?" While Wiebe's question arguably planted the seeds that saw the birth of social marketing, it also contained prophetic underpinnings for the end of advertising as we know it. Advertising, for decades the loud hawking of wares through one-upmanship and manipulation, is failing in the universe of new media. A recent study released by Nielsen (Global Faces and Networked Places, March 2009) notes that "advertising has typically performed poorly in chat and e-mail because of social media's communications role." What is that role?

Collaboration, information sharing and group forming - these are the pillars of social networking. Social networking is growing at record paces. The Nielsen study shows that active reach in online member communities has surpassed email usage, with the largest growth coming from 35 - 49 year olds. Facebook is not just something the kids dragged home. The reason for this popularity is that human beings are, at their core, social - the same pillars of social networking are the same ones which drive us as individuals to create communities, societies and even businesses: collaboration, information sharing and group forming. Understanding and working with these principles will dramatically change your business and the way you think about advertising.

Advertising is failing because one-way communication is gone: no one wants to be told anything, anymore. And no one has to - the internet has opened the door for us to research our own interests, answer our own questions, start our own revolutions. Marketing, advertising's step-sister, was really advertising in sheep's clothing - event sponsorship is still a one-way, in-your-face reminder of an overall ad campaign. Today's successful businesses have to be two-way communicators. This means being part of a larger dialogue, with a community that may or may not support every part of that dialogue - but they will reward the integrity. And if the business is really smart, they'll not only listen to the community, they will respond.

The old business model of having a product and devising a clever campaign to create a need for that product is gone. The future of business is active participation in communal conversation - hearing needs and developing products and services to meet those existent needs. It's from this premise that businesses can work successfully with social networking. Business that is responsive, and advertising that is a collective: this is the new business model, this is social networking.