With thoughts on what this means for offline media and planning
I wonder how many of today’s online marketers, and particularly the evangelists in Social, have read Permission Marketing by Seth Godin (1999) or The Engaged Customer by Hans Peter Brondmo (2002). Why? Because these two books tell you why Interactive is different, explain how it is different, and provide the background you need to be successful at it. For example, they explain how Social works before Social even existed in its current form.
How could these books predict the current climate? Because “Social” - the Interactive behavior and psychology that drives it - is what happens when you create Interactivity. These ideas are fundamental to Interactivity, they exist regardless of the tools to enable them.
Social, the tools and applications, are simply software iterations around these fundamentals. Software continues to morph and evolve. But the emotions and behavior driving today’s Social activity are fundamentally no different from the emotions and behavior that drove the proper use of interactivity for Marketing in CompuServe or discussion boards or e-mail discussion lists. Community. Sharing. The rules and etiquette of good Interactive relationships.
What I’ve come to realize after a lot of discussions and thought is this:
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