This is a LONG web cast, but worth every moment. Thanks to Jeremiah Owyang and the Altimeter Group.

Reading articles from today’s Economist report really brought home the extent to which not matter what the ’social media echo chamber’ on Twitter likes to say about the effectiveness of web  2.0 approaches in comms, the fact is that most of the rest of the business is in no way prepared for interaction. We have moved from a ‘tell me’ society to a ’show/speak with me’ society; requiring greater proof of companies’ brand  ’proof points’,  more consideration of their services’ relevance to customers’ daily lives. What’s more, new competitors are entering the market constantly who do ’show me’ really well.

Marshall MacLuhan’s refrain, “The medium is the message” has never been truer – ’social media’ is indicative of this show me culture.

Therefore our real role as consultants is not just to execute campaigns that impress the central marketing function, but also to coach and strategically guide the business as a whole to become more social, that is:  empathetic, authentic, responsive, conversational… like a group of humans committed to a common goal rather than relying seemingly entirely on the communication of  a ‘brand’ or USP to its stakeholder communities.  We need to teach a man to fish, that is, to get people in HR, R&D, customer service listening and interacting (regardless of whether that is on or off-line) on their own, rather than being their ’social media arms and legs’, which regardless of rhetoric, is often still the case. Like ‘digital management consultancy’ if you will.

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