Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

As social media continues to grow, most businesses are investing is some sort of social media outreach. Take Pepsi - they strayed away from the traditional TV Superbowl ad and invested their money and time on the "Pepsi Refresh" social media campaign. The general thought is that the more messages you put into cyberspace, the more viral they become, right?

Well - don't be fooled that social media is the only place to invest your marketing dollars. According to the 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer, trust in peers (those strangers congregating online) is down almost half from 2008 - 45% to 25%. We owe the diminishing trust to the economy, but also to the growing number of social media outlets and "friends" that we acquire. Let's be honest. How many of your online "friends" are actually people you'd call up for advice or trusted information? People are becoming skeptical in what they hear because it's like a game of telephone - information being passed from one user to another via social media networks. Who knows where it started? The message can become misinterpreted, leading to false information and increasing distrust, no matter what the channel.

I'm not advocating against social media or peer networks, but just be smart about it. It's never a single-source solution. When developing campaigns, make sure you do some research on your target audience. Are they online? Will they trust what they hear through the online grapevine? How else can you reach them? Do what you can to keep messages from the source intact. Advocate your network to spread messages to their REAL friends, not just strangers or acquaintances online. Word of mouth still has a lot of clout.

This panel at SXSW09 opened with the etymology of the word "gossip" – which stems from "God" and "kin" in Old English.  Apparently, back in the day, the "gossips" were the women who attended other women's childbirths or who stood by at baptisms.  They considered themselves kin because they attended "the birth of new things."  Gossip only morphed into a negative term in Elizabethan times.  

Now, where does social media come into play with gossip?

This panel made the inference that social media has its roots in gossip and being connected.  It was suggested that social media has become a more formalized version of what women have always done, formed social networks.

This was one of the more theoretical panels I visited at SXSW, but some interesting questions related to social media did come out of it.

1. Do you need to feel safe before you can be yourself on the web?  Or is the act of being yourself what makes the web feel safe to you?
2. Through the use of social media and increased transparency, are we starting to accept our imperfections more? 

When we ask clients if design for PDAs is a concern, the common answer is no. Stateside most users don't even know you can access the internet via mobile phone and mostly use it to just call home.

However, with each new iPhone and gadget that comes out the need is increasing and the limitations are endless. Imagine a phone that is your credit card, public transportation tickets, photo editing software and live TV? This isn't happening in other galaxies, but just a hop skip and a jump across either pond. Thinking outside the box when it comes to phone technology has been happening in Europe and Asia for the last 10 - 15 years.

Thanks to a head start on broadband mobile wireless, dependency on cell phone internet use and unified system networks, users demand their providers innovate...and their Web designs too. In the states providers are working with multiple networks, lots of laptops and poor network quality, the need isn't there.

However, in just a few years I could use my phone to: take me to work, watch a live TV show where I see an actor wearing a t-shirt that I can click on and go to the designers site, then find their local sellers, get directions from my final metro stop and then pay for it...without ever setting down the phone. Oh and find out what the restaurant across the shop is having for lunch just with a point of the phone and click. Who needs a laptop when you have a phone?

I am guessing that might change our clients and our answer on designing for PDAs. When your primary tool for accessing the internet has a screen smaller than a deck of cards it changes the playing field. Our designs will have to get smarter and development will have to evolve as well.