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DIGITAL WORLD
Martin Thomas
while social media has had a huge impact as a change driver, tune the press release. You’ve got hours at best. But it’s amaz-
the companies that are succeeding in the new landscape are ing how many companies are so slow still at responding.”
those that understand good marketing rather than purely being He said that every business is struggling to come to terms
up to speed with the latest technology. with this because it’s so new and it’s so fresh. “I think the busi-
nesses that see this as a great opportunity are the ones that are
Silos and social media
going to do well. We can use this as an opportunity to restruc-
According to Thomas, there now exists a sizeable gap between
ture ourselves around the needs of our customers.”
hyper-connected consumers and, in many cases, very discon-
nected organisations. “Companies are woefully silo driven
“Now I get it”
because that’s the way it always worked. Silos have grown up Following his presentation, Thomas tells Marketing Age about
probably for the right reasons but they now don’t make sense. the changed audience response to his topic and Crowd Surfing
Customers don’t care about silos, they don’t care about labels, in the previous six months. “I’ve been talking about this for the
they just want you to support them.” last two or three years and people having been nodding. Now
A number of companies have made a conscious effort to they’re saying ‘I get this now’. I’ve had more interest in the book
change their approach, he told the audience, including HP, in the last six weeks than in the previous 18 months because
which has made a concerted effort to organise itself around the people are going, ‘You know what? Now I get it’. Previously, it
consumer; Unilever, which has removed whole streams of dupli- was an interesting piece of thinking, now it’s actually big, it’s
cation; and P&G, which has progressed from having a range of quite fundamental.”
separate marketing functions, such as PR, brand management In writing the book, which has the subtitle ‘Surviving and thriving
and research, to ensuring that everyone is now aligned with in the age of consumer empowerment’, he says he and Brain
brand building. “They’ve broken down some of the silos that did deliberately chose to highlight some very large corporations.
not make sense any more,” he said. “It’s painful, but if the two “There’s always a tendency in marketing to celebrate the small
biggest marketing-led organisations in the world can do it, your entrepreneur-led businesses and it’s always an excuse for every-
companies can do it as well. one else to say, ‘That’s okay for them – they’re small and trendy and
“Social media really dramatises silos,” he continued. “Who the boss owns the business. I work for a big, boring corporate’.”
owns social media in the organisation – is it the PR department, To address this, he says, they focused on big businesses with
brand department, customer marketing, sales? Every company huge structural challenges – Unilever, P&G, Microsoft and Dell,
is going through this kind of challenge. It’s forcing companies to for example – to demonstrate how those organisations are mov-
address major structural weaknesses. ing along and innovating to bring fresh thinking through. Thomas
“To my mind this is the most important piece of social media. also talks about the Pope in his presentations. “To me it’s actu-
It’s less actually about the exciting bells and whistles. It’s more ally quite interesting to see how the Pope is using social media
about the philosophical point of how as an organisation you and how the people around him are using it and having to
cope with it. It highlights some interesting weaknesses. It shows embrace this new thinking in quite an interesting way. He’s got
how poor decision making is. It shows how slow companies are quite a big consumer base and he still manages to do it.”
to respond. Mobs can form in a flash these days. You do not Thomas also believes the UK Central Office of Information
have five or six days to fine tune the corporate response, to fine (COI) has been particularly innovative in its thinking. “They’ve
26 Marketing Age Volume 4 Issue 1 2010
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