share
Social Media and Consumption
Posted by william in blog October 7, 2011Social media shares a lot of the same values as sustainability: transparency, innovation, ethics and collaboration (hat tip to Mathew Yeomans). Social media has created a great opportunity to promote transparency, two-way dialogue and transform bland, turgid CSR reports in to real time reporting that actually involves stakeholders. And look at how successful Greenpeace’s recent direct action campaign against Mattel has been at changing a corporation’s behaviour.
But could the socialisation (I don’t like that word either) of the web also pose a great threat to sustainable development?
At the turn of this year Wired published an article entitled “Commerce gets social: How social networks are driving what you buy”. It explores how social commerce is tapping into psychological and sociological traits like social proof, ego, sharing, status and the power of social networks to drive commerce. Read it, it’s brilliant. One line in particular grabbed my attention
“Suddenly, Facebook starts looking like the world’s most efficient shopping mall, where half a billion people are led to goods they might want to buy.”
That shopping mall makes Westfield Stratford City look like a corner shop.
The web and social media present huge monetary opportunities to brands that understand social and the interface that shapes purchasing behaviours. And this is already happening, fast. Behavioural economics expert Rory Sutherland of Ogilvy says in his TED talk ‘marketing has done a very good job at creating opportunities for impulse buying’.
So will this new social layer that is going to be built into almost all of online commerce be a blow to sustainable development as we drive our already unsustainable consumption patterns even higher? Or can we use these already existing behaviours to sustainability’s advantage?
leave a comment
11:05
It will be interesting when a large commercial brand uses the Facebook mall & social media to say “buy less, less often”. Until then, any marketing system – whether conventional or social – that encourages us to buy more, more often, inherently flies in the face of sustainable development. The Greenpeace example suggests that social media can be used to persuade or force a change upon a large corporation, but such changes are nearly always reactive rather than driven by an underlying commitment to sustainability.
It looks like social media tools will help companies sell more, especially as they get the hang of it. In the short term, the best those interested in sustainability can hope for is that consumers are persuaded to switch to greener, more sustainable options. In the longer term, we need to find a way to convince people to buy less. That isn’t going to be easy, no matter how good we get at using social media.
14:05
Yes – and we have stopped talking about the [massive] carbon footprint of all this ‘green’ / socialist / cool alternative to cars and planes….
18:58
Well, yeah… Ogilvy being an ad agency will focus on opportunities to sell – pure and simple – but we ll know Facebook is a lot more than just a mall. It’s also a Roman forum. And a café. And a street corner. And a bulletin board. Someone looking to influence sustainable behaviour will be looking at lots of different opportunities.
Facebook is an absolutely great medium for getting discussions going about issues – look at the snowballing around Occupy Wall Street! Get people posting about something they care about. Then they won’t bother to look at the pesky ads in the sidebars. (Note: but if you DO want to use those sidebar ads, remember they’re just the medium; the message is up to you.)
And that’s before we even mention Twitter.
08:40
Good points Katy and I agree that Facebook is more than a mall, its also a Pizza Hut focus group…sorry I’m being facetious.Â
It is a great medium for organising and disseminating information, but there is a more subtle psychological game afoot. Its not simply a case of informing people and hoping/trusting they make rational decisions. Its about influencing and coercing users toward different behaviours.Â
09:08
Hi Wroisetter,
Absolutely, I never said coaxing and rational. But as various as people are, they are various in how they use social media. Just as two lovers can stand and kiss under a hoarding, oblivious to its message.
I’m writer. The writers are all over Facebook, networking,
debating new developments in the publishing industry, debating prize
results, debating new books, debating literary politics. Debate is an intensely social experience, with all the ups and downs and subtleties of a social experience, so that’s one thing.
I’ve made strong professional alliances on Facebook, as well as actual friends. I’ve bought books I wasn’t planning to. I’m sure Facebook influenced my purchase of a Kindle. It’s influenced my attendance at book launches and so on, which of course is an influence on both your networking and exposure to new work, and also your book purchasing, as once you’re at the launch you’re more likely to buy the book.
I’ve also commissioned writing off people via Facebook – which means that to some extent they acted as ads for themselves.
In a social marketing sense, and specifically a green sense, it’s harder: as Gavin says, it will be very interesting to see someone try to influence people to buy (i.e., to do) LESS. In a specifically green sense, I ran the blog and tweeted at the Energy Saving Trust for nearly a year – and the irony of the audience having to switch on in order to receive the message (and indeed of the fact that a single Google search uses as much energy as boiling a kettle) was not lost! I think social marketers in social media need to recognise this irony. We’re not sure yet quite how to do that.
And neither are we quite sure yet how you ‘negative-advertise’ back into NOT. We have to create the positive, YES, value, and – in Ogilvy terms – sell the sizzle back to them.
(As a coda, Ogilvy’s book is full of masterful long copy, which relies on facts and information. He sold his agency itself on its knowledge. Knowledge appeals to people in all kinds of subtle ways. For one thing, they feel flattered to have it. For another, it is power. I myself feel the power of knowledge every time I feel guilty for making a Google search. Someone should do something on Facebook to deepen this guilt, so I’ll start really wanting to avoid it. Or maybe innovate a less energy-intensive , crowdsourced way of getting information…)
09:23
Yes, yes and furthermore…yes.Â
Creating that ‘yes’ value and using the power of social networks is the sweet spot that communicators need to find.
09:28
Well, that was easy! Now. How best to do that…
12:07
There are also the international element to consider with
Facebook expanding into quickly developing nations.
Â
An example being Zuckerberg’s recent fascination with China:
a potential added 1.3 billion users not yet allowed entrance into the Facebook
realm.
Â
This could bring a whole new meaning to the ‘power’ of
social networks – with human rights activists already worrying about the kind
of soul-selling Facebook would need to engage in in exchange for access to millions
more users.
Â
Westerners openly debating corruptive forms of marketing and
developing more sustainable options using this platform is all good and well
when it’s in our Western nature/culture to express ourselves freely. But is
there such a thing as ‘too much free speech’ in the case of Facebook + China?
Even Facebook itself admits
so.
Â
In a country with an authoritarian government that is a) to
developing commercially at an unseemly pace and, b) keen to spy on its
citizens, this partnership could be counter-intuitively self-destructive to the
freedom of Chinese citizens.
Â
China’s fear of a domestic Arab Spring is already salient
according to the WSJ, with security forces imprisoning activist bloggers and
monitoring discussions online – apparently the worst harassment since Tiananmen
Square.
So, if Facebook fully entertains joining the Chinese market, the chances of it being forced into a soul-selling deal of
compromise for limitless information seem likely (similar to Google, who ultimately abandoned ship).
Â
“Among the concerns: Facebook’s requirement that members use
their real names, a ticket to jail for those who criticize the government.â€
Â
Some wonder if this is a train wreck waiting to happen.
07:55
A brand asking consumers to buy less? Well. it seems it’s just happened:
Patagonia Asks Its Customers To Buy Less
http://www.fastcompany.com/179…