THOUGHT (aka Centric's Blog)

By the standards of the "social spaces and virtual places" communities, Centric is old. Really old.

How old? We were founded in 1994. We’ve been all the way through the first web 1.0 boom and bust. I still remember vividly the pronouncements of unlimited growth potential (pre-2001) and the gloating of the old-media types after it all went bang (post-2001). There was a period of time when selling "that web stuff" was a tough proposition. In 2002, the conventional agencies of the day breathed a sigh of relief, pronounced the interactive revolution "over," and went about their business as usual.

But we know what happened afterwards. Companies found value in selling online. In providing information online. In distributing media. In building communities.

Now look where we are. People from 18 to 80 rely on online commerce to bring a wider variety of goods to them for lower cost than physical commerce. The web is the de facto first response standard–the first place people turn to information. Google has become an extension of our minds, offering instantly accessible information. It only took YouTube 16 months to equal the reach and engagement of a major television network.

At the same time, we’re also in the midst of a social and virtual revolution. One that will change the ways we market even more dramatically than the Web 1.0 revolution.

But one of the most common first reactions we get, when we propose social or virtual initiatives, is, "You gotta be kidding! We haven’t even digested web marketing yet!"

And that’s something we have to pay attention to.

Because, one of the things age buys you is perspective. We’ve sat in thousands of marketing meetings with hundreds of companies. We’ve helped start-ups find their way, and we’ve helped Fortune 500s launch new initiatives. We’ve rebranded fallen giants. And we’ve led companies into new social and virtual spaces. And, in the process, we’ve heard a lot of common concerns. Here are a few:

• We need "real results." Now, these results may be nothing more than impressions that can’t be tracked back to sales. Or it might be full-on demand generation and analytics to optimize right to the point of sale. But marketers need numbers. Not feel-good hand-waving.
• We’re "spread too thin." Most marketing departments are resource-strapped. They may not have anyone who has time to vet the content of a blog, even if you can deliver them a turnkey solution. And most of them will not have customer support staff who can spend time in virtual worlds. Their billing department may not even have time to reconcile the bills for outsourced support! And, even if you deliver them an integrated dashboard that tracks activity across Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and the mobile space, they may not have time to look at it, understand it, or run a report!
• We’ll commit when "someone else is doing it." Just like you never got fired for buying IBM, you never get fired for countering a competitors’ marketing initiatives successfully. Being the first out there is a tough sell, and it will require a lot of justification if results don’t meet expectations.
• We don’t "get it." See resource-strapped. Most marketing people don’t have hours per day to keep up with trends in ecommerce, SEO/SEM, lead generation, rich media, display advertising, behavioral targeting, social media, social networks, virtual worlds, analytics, metrics, sponsorship, etc, etc. So they may not understand what you’re talking about, or have the time to get up to speed.
• That’s "too complicated." Marketers love large, easily deployed and monitored programs—not dozens of different tactics spread across the interactive space. Show them a matrix of programs that only you can put together, and only you can monitor and optimize, and you risk losing the chance for any engagement.

The reason for all this blather? In corporate-speak, a "key takeaway:" if you want to sell leading-edge programs, you have to keep the needs of marketers in mind. They may not want to hear about the latest social platform, or how the biggest social network just picked up 25 million new users, or how Google is triangulating cell towers to serve geotargeted ads.

Instead, ask about their goals. Their challenges. Their concerns. And then put together a simple, measurable program that answers their needs. This approach has served us well over more than a decade and for dozens of clients.

And it’s what’s going to be driving our focus in 2008: the creation of simple, measurable programs that make social spaces accessible. Virtual worlds understandable. And overall interactive campaigns effective. And yet, despite their simplicity and common dashboard, these programs are designed to reach people in every social space their might inhabit, and be easily extensible to virtual worlds.

You’ll be hearing more about these programs shortly. Or, if you’d like to get a head start, talk to us, and we’ll ask the right questions about your goals and needs—to see what might work for you.