In my last Change Agent article on social media, I pointed out that the success of social media will not be a short term thing because its very essence is the same thing that makes us human. People are social creatures; we are animals who can only prosper in herds. It is for good reason that the worst punishments include solitary confinement; receiving the ‘silent treatment’; or grounding one’s errant child – hermits are abnormal, and sociable people are sought-after.

But accepting the longevity of social media is just the first baby-step. Follow many of the discussions on social media occurring within the marketing space and it quickly becomes apparent that many still fail to grasp the major mind-shift that is now required.

How best to identify those yet to truly understand? These are the marketers (and unfortunately, some researchers too), who can be heard using phrases such as  “sell to”; “communicate to”; or “market to” – all terms that convey an “us and them” mentality of the traditional marketer, a salesperson who deals with a mass audience via one-way communications.

Consider for a moment the best salespeople and what sets them apart – they listen closely to their customers, engaging them in active, two-way discussions.  As a result of this tit-for-tat conversation they are able to determine how to present their wares in such a way that not only wills their customers to buy, but allows them to enjoy the process and feel no regret about their purchase.  In contrast, marketers communicating to a mass audience using traditional mass-market media have been unable to conduct such high-quality two-way communications, hence the enormous investments made in advertising pre-testing.

But now the game is changing. The internet may have opened up an unparalleled amount of information to the world, but until social media evolved, a web browser was simply a combination library, shop, and entertainment zone (Web 1.0).  Most chat rooms were restricted to clunky linear conversation threads open to the public – like Speakers Corner in Hyde Park: social, yes; sociable, no.

What we are seeing at present is probably the biggest shift in culture since the Gutenberg Press. Until social media, media developments have only differed by technology. From cave paintings to Web 1.0, all that truly changed was cost, scale, timeliness and cosmetic enhancements. What we are now experiencing isn’t so much Web 2.0 but Society 2.0.  Issues of cost and physical access aside (and these barriers are falling exponentially), everything that makes us human is now independent of time and space. Traditionally separate media interfaces such as radio, television, and newspapers currently exist as they do only for historical and / or technical reasons, and these reasons are increasingly difficult to justify (witness the challenges faced by print newspapers, music CDs, bricks-and-mortar retailers). Led by the iPhone, convergence will continue until the point at which everything in our lives not conducted face-to-face will occur through a single two-way transmitting device (either with added interfaces to suit the physical need such as large screens for TV; Kindle-like devices for extended reading; or built-in projectors that will replace clunky screen hardware altogether). This also means that the separation of media source by sense will become outdated;  sense-specific media (e.g. listening for radio or podcasts; viewing for text; viewing and listening combined for TV) will reflect the consumer need being addressed, not the source. Traditional delineation between content providers, advertisers, consumers and businesses will blur into a flat hierarchy of equally-accessible interactions.

For marketers, this means two things.  Firstly, a business’s wares (be they services, products or something less tangible) will have to be accessible across all media formats to suit consumers’ needs. The question of which media devices or channels a business is to be accessible through will become redundant.

Secondly, it means that marketers have to truly accept and understand that they are a part of a society, not “a marketplace” where the sole business is financial transactions.  Consumers generally don’t think of themselves as belonging to a marketplace unless they feel a personal need to, typically through brand adulation (Apple, Ford, Google) or brand protest (often when FMCG manufacturers change a product formulation).  Instead, most consumers identify with social groups such as families, neighbourhoods, hobby or sports followers, alumni, workgroups etc – people who interact with each other because of shared, social interests.   No person could successfully integrate with any of these groups if s/he only spoke out in a self-promoting one-way monologue, and likewise brands cannot expect to continue doing the same via one-way mass market advertising. The custodians of great brands such as Harley Davidson, Coke, VW and Apple have long understood this (just check their Facebook pages to see what I mean!), which demonstrates how it is possible for a brand to transcend the shopfloor to become true cultural mainstays that consumers are happy to invite into their lives. This latter point is crucial – brands have to present themselves in a way that encourages consumers to invite them in, they cannot barge in uninvited as with old-school marketing unless the medium specifies this (e.g. advertising-funded media channels).

Thus marketers have to recognise that their brands are a part of the social culture. As such, they have to behave according to the standard rules of successful socialising – being attentive, considerate, consultative, humble, and channel-agnostic. For marketers struggling to change the ‘us and them’ mindsets that they, their colleagues or agencies may still cling to, try this approach for starters – think of (and talk about) your market as the real people that they are when they see your brand, not anonymous groups of consumers. We’re all people first, and consumers second.