The Social Integration Imperative

What’s the biggest challenge for agencies? Can they make money off social media?
For agencies in one way our brief is the same: outcomes. That can be more leads, more acquisitions, more people that like a brand. The challenge is that  you now need to think of a broader array of tools to get to that same outcome. You can’t forecast in the same way. It’s like a twist on the metrics challenge. How do you build marketing plans that are really going to have impact? How do you understand the right investments of owned and earned and how they interact with other forms of marketing?

Is social still primarily an earned media play versus paid media?
There’s going to be a spectrum. There will be communities formed around passions. But a lot of these social platforms will create opportunities to take those communities and monetize them. Today they’re great places where you can set up dialog and engage with consumers. I don’t think we’ve seen everything that’s going to come [on the paid side]. But I go back to consumer behavior and how authentic you have to be. It’s hard to imagine you could buy something without having underlying real value for people. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a role for paid media from the platforms.

What’s your take on Google+? Do advertisers need another big social platform to blunt the growing force of Facebook?
There’s going to be room for lots of kinds. There’s a lot written about Google+ as a different kind of place to congregate. There’s going to be room for multiple platforms. I don’t think we’ve seen it shake out. It’s not done because we have Twitter and Facebook. People will have very different ways of using their social circles. Some are broader and some are more specialized. We’re moving to this place where you want to curate your own communities.