“They should just put them all in a field and let them duke it out” was often an English man’s solution to the political problems in Northern Ireland in the ‘90s. “Just kick the Brits out” would have been the rhetoric from a New Yorker when sharing a drink in a Manhattan bar.
The problem was much more complex. To understand Northern Ireland, you just had to live here and as a native, you knew that the outsiders just didn’t understand the culture and complexity of the solution needed.
There is a sculpture in Northern Ireland’s second city, Derry. It is called ‘Hands Across The Divide’ and it illustrates the change in Northern Ireland’s culture. It symbolises how politics has moved from a shouting monologue to an engaging dialogue. The sculpture shows the need to reach out and understand the differences in culture.
Deploying an online marketing strategy for an organisation is a lot like ‘The Divide’. There is a temptation to use monologue techniques and try and advertise your thoughts, opinions and prices. This technique fails as it did in the old politics in Northern Ireland. There is a temptation to think your message is all that counts and that everyone should listen. There is a temptation to use traditional marketing speak and convince others that your products or services are worth their attention. This is not the culture of new marketing.
New marketing, like the statue depicts is about understanding, listening and engaging. It is about talking to your followers in their language and convincing them that you are worth engaging with, by respecting the culture of online marketing and showing some understanding. This cultural understanding can’t be taught. To truly understand the online conversation you need to get immersed in it and live it!
Hands Across the Divide in Derry.
Right. Understanding is the key to good communication. We should always learn how to lend an ear and heart.
That is one hell of an analogy you have put up there. I can’t fault it but I wonder if it says more about politics than it does about digital marketing.
How do you expand on that and talk about relating strategy to it and from there to getting results?
I wonder if the image is actually too strong for the application, after all I don’t think anyone is going to start slapping themselves on the back and saying well done, problems in Ireland over, never to return, where as digital marketing , once you do immerse yourself in it, does have a goal in understanding that is a lot easier than solving decades upon decades of problems.
Aaron
Interactive Mix Limited
http://www.interactive-mix.com
Good point Aaron. The analogy may be a little imbalanced.
What I was trying to express is that many orginisations use online marketing as if they were sending direct mail or creating an ad. Simply educating the customer in best practice isn’t enough. The customer needs to understand the culture themselves and to do that they need to experience blogs, twitter, facebook etc.
Many orginisations I visit place the responsibility of online marketing in the hands of a junior member of staff that gets the technology but doesn’t have the experience to create good communications. They are only interested in signing off the final ‘designs’ of a campaign and in most online marketing exchanges, design is not a consideration so they don’t feel they have a role to play.
I feel that it is senior managements’ responsibility to understand the culture (but not necessarily the tools used) to create a good online engagement with their customers and advocates. To do that, they need to get hands on experience.
Thanks for your contribution.
Niall