For the past nine weeks or so, I’ve been blogging and studying the role social (and other emerging) media plays in the integrated marketing communication (IMC) process.
So I was shocked and stunned to read Forbes contributor and social guru Gretchen Fox had suggested that it was time for “social” to move out of the purview of “marketing.”
Getting Out From Under The Marketing Department: The Case For The ‘Chief Of Social’
Here’s part of what she said:
The only way we are going to get to the full vision of social is if it becomes its own department — with a Chief of Social title reporting directly to the CEO. This is the only way social will have the ability to impact: brand and product reputation; consumer happiness; data generation (purchase/interest/social graph); lead generation (email addresses, mobile numbers, Facebook likes, Twitter followers, etc.); product; marketing and sales; business development, PR, HR and operations — truly all aspects of the organization.
The name of the course I’m taking is Emerging Media and the Market. From my seat in the student’s chair, the concepts of marketing and emerging media are inextricably entwined and the idea of removing social from marketing seems crazy.
Except it doesn’t.
I’m in the eighth week of a nine-week long course, and it seems that the stealthy underlying message of the curriculum is that emerging media’s role in the market is not constrained solely to marketing.
This example, given by Ms. Fox in her article for Forbes drove it home for me:
For example, the COS guidance would create the strategy, guidelines and tools necessary to empower employees to engage on behalf of the company online; define the kind of social data required to enable a customer service associate to know if a caller is a nice person (who should be given leeway) or a jerk who complains incessantly on the internet; and identify the system, process and keywords for the PR team to receive immediate alerts when there is an uptick in negative brand mentions on Twitter.
These example social initiatives are typically beyond the marketing team’s purview–and metrics. Marketing is usually measured by traffic and sales goals, and as any executive knows, if something isn’t part of how your success is being measured, it isn’t going to be prioritized. Social affects the entire infrastructure of the way a company could and should do business, and a COS is the only way social will have the impact (and metrics) necessary to affect change across the entire organization.
This sounded a bit familiar to me, so I looked back on a classroom discussion I had in this class’s first week, reposted here in boldface:
Consider “ScuffGate,” the scandal that marred the release of the iPhone 5, which included a video demonstration of a two-year-old girl showing how easily the metallic case of the new model could be damaged by a fistful of car keys.
The official response from Apple’s SVP of Marketing follows:
The email went viral and was shared not just by social media between users, but also by a few slick-looking blogs that took Schiller to task for being so dismissive in his response–and remember, this was their MARKETING guy.
The email is very short (17 words!), so we’re loathe to read too much into it — but it does seem to give off a feeling of condescension, or perhaps nonchalance. The original email also asks Schiller if there is any plan to fix the scuffing issue, but Schiller ignores that in his response, which could well mean that Apple doesn’t plan to replace or recall damaged iPhone 5s.It’s possible that Schiller, being a marketing guy, doesn’t understand the interplay of aluminium and anodization on the iPhone 5′s back and sides — but really, if that’s the case, should he really be replying to scuff-related emails in an official capacity? (Anthony, 2012).
Schiller’s response seems, in hindsight, both tone-deaf and ill-advised–especially considering that it was immediately shared and judged to be condescending by online influentials.
I hope someone at Apple was savvy enough to tell Mr. Schiller that, in this day and age, “move along, nothing to see here” is a foolhardy response.
Better responses (from your armchair quarterback of IMC): Explain why they used anodized aluminum:
“Dear Alex. Sorry your new iPhone is already scratched. The good thing about using aluminum in our cases is that it’s light, durable and will protect the delicate electronics inside your iPhone from serious damage under normal daily use. Our R and D guys experimented with dozens of other alloys but everything else was either too heavy (imagine carrying a lead brick in your pocket) or was light, but way too soft (one alloy actually melted under the heat of the backlight inside the phone). Right now, we have no plans to replace the iPhone 5, but we are constantly looking for ways to improve it. I’m hanging on to your email address and if there are any major developments in the types of metals we use to make the case, trust me: as a loyal Apple customer, you’ll be among the first to know about it.
What do you think? Am I way off-base here? Obviously, this sort of response isn’t going to satisfy every customer (or maybe any customer), but it seems a heck of a lot better than just shrugging it off and saying “sorry about your luck, but that’s metallurgy for you.”
I think the lesson here is that it’s not enough to just listen to and offer some sort of response to a customer concern. You’ve got to really think about it. I don’t know the Alex that wrote this email from Adam. But he seems like a reasonable guy. He’s not swearing or threatening me. He’s not slamming me or my company. He’s bummed out that his new phone is scuffed. Empathize with the guy. He obviously is enough of an Apple loyalist to care enough to write the company. He’s earned the right to a little engagement.
Back to your regularly-scheduled blog here–I acknowledge there’s a bit of a leap between my first-week observations and what Ms. Fox is suggesting (and a massive leap between my observations and her expertise), but there seems to be a parallel–and it’s surprised me that a forward-leaning company like Apple could have allowed this to happen.
A Chief of Social would have been able to look at this picture across marketing, CS and PR functions and perhaps have foreseen a problem with this sort of response.
And just like that, her suggestion to move social out from under marketing makes complete sense.
I’d also suggest reading her more recent Forbes article, which is something of a sequel to the one to which I referred earlier. It assumes that the reader has already built a social business and shows the potential emerging technologies and the next wave of emerging media has for B2C communications.
And it’ll scare you right into speeding things up a bit.
Move it or lose it.
ericminorimc 
Great post! I completely agree that their should be a separation between marketing and social. They truly are two separate things that obviously work well together but are handled differently.
It almost reminds me of a silo organization where one department is calling the shots and it could end up hindering the rest. Social can definitely lead to sells but their focus should be on engagement and marketing work on sales and then the two combine. By creating a collaborative atmosphere the two can work seamlessly together.
You defiantly have given me something to think about. In today’s business world, it is hard to see any process of an organization not being intertwined with the other, but how do we know when it is an entity on it’s own?
Social has become such as huge part of our lives that maybe it is time to take a greater look at it. Like you mentioned in your post, social media isn’t just utilized for marketing purposes. We have customer service, PR, HR, fulfillment, and the list goes on. There should be employees that handle the different aspects so why not make social a section of its own. Have a social PR person, HR person, etc. to handle each individual issues based on the protocol of the division.
Great topic and you have given me something to look deeper into!
Kaitlin
Visit my blog at ktlnrose.wordpress.com
Your post brings my thoughts full circle as to where social lands in a company — Which department should manage it and how? Not in marketing? It is a concept that is a bit hard to grasp at first, but after really thinking about, makes perfect sense.
At my previous employer, we struggled with whether the marketing, corporate communications or consumer relations departments should manage social media, and we ended up with a separate team comprised of members of all of those departments and then some. Social media is a type of marketing all its own that needs specialists to interpret pieces of all of the above listed departments in a way that ultimately makes it engaging to consumers. I think that companys and brands staggered at how quickly social picked up and took over business, but now have had enough time to understand how to react.
Something that has such an effect on a business, company or brand certainly deserves undevoted attention… a separate “Social Media Department” is ideal for anyone that can accomplish it.