Since even before Facebook and Twitter, back when YouTube and blogs were new on the scene, there’s been discussion and, at times, bickering about which marketing discipline should be responsible for the social media presence of a brand or organization. Should it fall under the purview of the marketing department, the PR department or an outside PR or advertising agency?
Keith Trivitt, associate director of PR at the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), wrote about the ongoing debate over ownership of social media recently over at the PR Breakfast Club blog. He says, in short, Enough fighting! “We must come to the realization that a concept that once seemed preposterous — collaboration with competitors — is fast becoming the norm for modern PR, marketing and advertising initiatives.” The different disciplines shouldn’t be fighting over territory, in other words.
I believe social media, in most cases, should be a shared effort. Parameters for messaging should be determined by the marketing folks, in close coordination with the ad and PR people, and possibly even top management. Day-to-day implementation should be handled, in most cases, by the PR people, because they are supposed to be the experts in communications. But all the marketing disciplines must have regular involvement.
It’s also essential to have good, clear lines of communication established among all the players, so all are able to have a voice if an issue, event, or online discussion goes beyond the predetermined parameters, whatever those might be for a particular brand or company.
Just as in so many other areas of business and organizational life, a lot of success in handling social media is based on planning ahead.
“Competition is indeed a great thing,” Keith Trivitt says, “but so is a collaborative sense that helps build many industries’ overall value to consumers and brands.”
Or, in the case of those of us in PR and advertising, collaboration can build value to our clients and/or bosses.
Tags: Social Media, Strategy and Tactics
[...] Your free Offer @ Wbcom Designs Follow this link: Who Owns Social Media? | MarketingProfs Daily Fix Blog Posted in Social Media – Tagged america, associate-director, breakfast, breakfast-club, [...]
Agree. It should not be about competition, but collaboration.
Yes! Great article! No one owns social media, with the exception of the customer. Just like you don’t own your website either, Google and your customer owns it. So, instead of bickering among us stakeholders, we must learn how to empower, embrace and extend social media into the fabric of our organization’s processes. We each use it differently, so coordination requires only a conductor. That conductor can be marketing. I’ve helped my clients establish their marketing teams as the conductor, and then build out orientation and training programs for the rest of the company. They become the hub or the support center, empowering the rest of the organization to succeed.
I agree that social media should be a shared effort. You can’t just outsource it to an outside agency, because as many people note, they’re not the company. Although they are experts in communications, they may not be able to answer questions, know the inner workings of the company, or be updated on the latest news coming from the company. There needs to be good communication between the company and the social media agency to ensure that a social program is successful. The agency can’t do everything on it’s own.
Ergh – the politics of departmental ownership. Drives me to drink bourbon sometimes and I’m hate bourbon. I agree with the other commenter’s and your wonderful article – it’s a shared effort. No territory fights, please.
In terms of a company, the social media LEAD (no owners here) should come from the department or person that’s willing to innovate, stay fresh and be social! Engage people! The departments who want to control social media and fight over ownership should go and read a Dummies Guide To Social Media.
Thought-provoking, David. If we delve into the deeper issue here, we should probably ask ourselves which discipline is the overarching one – marketing, PR, communications, or branding? And then decide where social media falls.
In my opinion, marketing is where the strategy should begin, with communications, PR, social media, etc. being subsets of that overall plan. Branding can be overseen by marketing and woven throughout the entire organization, with everyone taking responsibility for it.
I think you (and most of the commentors here) have it backwards. You’re trying to take an assortment of tools that various people may use for various purposes and then–without regard to the intended purpose–trying to assign it to one person or one function.
Imagine going to a construction site and asking who should be in charge of a tape measure. Maybe the carpenter. He/she sure could use it. But I’m sure the plumber needs to measure distances, too. As does the electrician. As does the floor or carpet installer. Pronouncing the carpenter “the keeper of the tape measure” is just plain silly.
In the case of a construction site–as with a corporation–the first question is: What needs to be done? And then: What tools will best accomplish those tasks? Company A, for instance, may have an entirely different focus and intent with social media than Company B. Maybe Company A is intent on selling to the consumer–daily specials are its focus. Maybe Company B is B-to-B. Or even if its focus is on the consumer, maybe its goal is different–branding, for instance. And maybe Company C is concerned with public policy debates, and really wants people to express their views.
So it might not make sense to turn Company A’s social media efforts (sell, sell, sell) over to PR. Nor might it make sense to turn Company C’s efforts (public policy) over to advertising.
And if your response is: “Well, we’re trying to do all those things. And we need someone in charge,” my response is: If you have the same department trying to shape your public policy message and your daily sales message, then you’ve got some serious problems. And if you use the same Twitter channel or Facebook page to promote sales and public policy, both are likely doomed to failure.
Sure. Someone ultimately has to be in charge. And coordination among the various departments is desirable. But that’s not the issue. The issue is giving each function within a company the tools it needs.
Adam, I believe actually outside agencies can handle social media. The key, however,is that they must be given clear direction and clear limits, and there must be frequent dialogllbe in case they need to deal with an issue that could arise, whatever it might be.
Hey Chris… have a drink for me, too.
Thanks for weighing in here.
Elaine, I agree that marketing is where strategy should begin. But PR needs to be involved in the mix early on, since they are the ones who are supposed to be the experts in communicating.
Don, I read and re-read your comment a few times. In theory, you may be correct, but marketing and a company/brand’s communications isn’t can’t quite be compared to constructing a building. Your example of having a “keeper of the tape measure” is, of course, taking specialization to the extreme. But to keep with the construction analogy, I’d say in most cases marketing should be the general contractor or the construction manager. They develop the strategy, set the tone and determine the work rules and boundaries. But they certainly bring in the steel specialist in the planning stages, or in the case of social marketing, the marketing folks need to bring in the communications experts — the PR people. Since all public communications can impact a company’s status, it’s wise to have input from others whose functions impact the company’s public status — advertising and, depending on the specifics, customer relations, investor relations, etc.
It’s a group process, although the actual day-to-day implementation should be while I agree that it’s not necessarily best to mix public policy or investor relations or sales communications messages onto the same SM platforms, they’re all public and what’s said on one can impact the other audiences.
Of course, there will always be exceptions.
David, I don’t disagree with you. The marketing plan comes first with PR/communications tactics as part of it.
[...] Reich asks, “Who Owns Social Media?” Indeed, a fantastic exploration into a topic that often suffers from unnecessary political [...]
David,
I agree with Shelly. The relationship should be collaborative, not just about social media, but regarding all aspects of a client’s marketing objectives.
The idea is to have a client that prospers, not to knock out other specialists from the playground so as to have a better fee for a short time.
[...] working closely with Advertising and PR, should set up parameters for its social messaging. read more MarketingProfs Daily Fix Blog read [...]
Interesting. We’ve had some discussions like this at our place and the consensus is that marketing should lead the charge in the planning stage, but the PR people should execute it on a basis. In the planning stage, we are involving a cross-section of departments including advertising, PR and legal. As suggested in the article, we are making sure the lines of communications between all the departments are kept wide open.
That’s the key… establishing and keeping open good lines of communication.
Unfortunately way too many people (and sadly most of it is being driven by agencies) think too narrowly in this space. For the record, online reputation management is only one very small aspect of Social Influence Marketing.
Strangely (or not!) it seems the biggest debates and conversations about who owns Social Influence Marketing is coming from, and being driven by PR agencies.
I’ve been involved in defining, developing, operationalising and executing Social Influence Marketing globally as one element of my role since 2007 whilst at Microsoft, then IBM and now in my new role. I cannot ever remember having any conversations or debates around PR owning this tactic. Further, my peers and I don’t understand or agree with the logic that PR practitioners use to justify their ‘ownership’. I don’t know any organisations who execute integrated marketing with a social influence marketing element well, who have PR owning this function or have it outsourced to agencies. Yes, agencies can assist with strategy development and scaling up for execution where more resources are required, ie. product launches etc but your resourcing model will depend upon your engagement model and of course your budget and resources.
If you want more insight into the real world of corporate / business Social Influence Marketing you can check out my strategy framework on SlideShare – http://slidesha.re/hNHbao I finally put this online out of frustration to simply try and educate more people in this area and to try and correct much of the very poor advice being dolled out by agencies and the media.
Social Influence Marketing is absolutely a group process but this tactic is no different to any other marketing or digital marketing tactic in that it only works when it is part of a 360 degree integrated marketing strategy and program. Social Influence Marketing is a commitment, not a campaign and Social Networking is not Social Media Marketing.
Every tactic has its own unique attributes, do’s and don’ts whether that is Social Influence Marketing, Advertising, Lead Nurturing, Mobile, PR etc. Because of this it usually involves specialists from all aspects of the marketing discipline as well as other stakeholders like sales, HR, product development, customer service and more depending on the goals, objectives and purpose of the program. Like any program it needs a leader / manager and the best person for this is a marketing manager or marketing lead to develop the goals, objectives, strategy and program and to own and be accountable for execution. As someone has already pointed out marketing is the conductor.
I could go on and on but this unnecessary debate continues to exhaust me!
Thanks for your very thoughtful comment, Martin. I’m not sure if it’s just PR agencies who are propelling this dialogue, as you say. I’ve seen the subject covered in a variety of advertising trades as well. And yes, some of it certainly comes down to a turf war, since it can mean added billings for the agency, whether they’re a PR agency or an advertising agency.
But I do think the idea of who should be responsible for communications via social media is a viable question, no matter what the eventual answer.
I took a look at the slide show you developed, and while I haven’t had time to get through all 430 pages, I made it to about page 60. Martin, I do agree with some things you say, such as on slide #3: Social Networking is NOT social media marketing. And social media marketing is a commitment, not a campaign. Yes. And yes, it’s not about the tools but about the relationship you establish with your audience. (slide #58)
I’m sorry if you’re exhausted by the ongoing discussion, but there are many who have not yet thought about it. And the answers are not cut & dried — what works best for one organization might not for another, for many reasons including strengths or weaknesses of their own personnel and agencies, their own corporate culture, and lots more. Your slide show is a good starting point for organizations considering involvement in social media, and thanks for sharing it with us.
As I have time to go through the rest of your presentation, I may have other thoughts to add.
David,
Interesting conversation — thanks for raising the issue. I think the brand owns social media and to a certain extent, social media owns the brand. Because SM isn’t a finite, tangible “thing” we can hold or pass from one person to another — I think it’s more holistic than department or agency driven.
When we think about all of the ways a brand can weave social media into their culture (hiring, marketing, crisis communications, charitable giving, customer service etc.) it’s hard to imagine that any one silo can ride herd on the whole thing.
When an organization has a rock solid grip on their brand — who they are, how they behave and how they’re different (here’s who and how I promise we be) — then all entities that interface with the public — both internal and external have a clear set of guidelines and marching orders. Those guidelines/marching orders come from the top (C-level) and the guts (employee base) of the company.
So in my mind….the C suite/leadership and the employees together define the brand and the boundaries/behaviors of the brand
The C suite/leadership sets the goals for the organization (within the context of the brand)
Each member of the C suite defines how their silo will support and help achieve the goals (CMO — marketing plan, C of HR — the staff plan, CFO — the financial plan etc.)
In every one of those plans — there should be elements/tactics of social media.
I suppose, depending on the organization, that’s where it usually gets sticky. Whether it’s an internal department or outside agency — if they are not plugged in at the C-level, they’re going to drop the ball.
But — ultimately who owns it? The visionary for the company — the CEO. He/she will need to set expectations of how it’s used and who has the keys to the car — based on the specifics within that organization.
I think it’s way higher than a specific marketing discipline. Or else, the company is not really fully utilizing what SM can do for their organization.
Drew
Drew, you raise some excellent points here. I agree that communications — whether it’s via advertising, human relations, investor relations, PR, social media, customer relations/service — must have the imprint of the C-level suite. They should be setting the tone, for sure. But the CEO can’t be involved in execution of strategy through the various channels of communication, and that’s where — once strategy, messaging and tone are established by the top level, with specific guidelines and boundaries, I would think PR should oversee, if not implement.
David — You’ve stirred up quite a lot of passion here!
I share some of the frustration of some of the commenters with the fact that the debate is ongoing because I would argue there is no single answer. It’s different for every organization/company, and we should use tools and processes that allow us to personalize our participation in social media. I think companies should approach social media as a collaboration involving all areas of the business that seem appropriate. This includes situations when companies work with agencies; it shouldn’t be outsourcing — it should be collaboration.
We make it work — incorporating many departments, incorporating internal/external voices — with a collaborative workflow made possible by our management tool Zeitgeist & Coffee. Check it out: http://blog.mlinc.com/web-assets/what-is-zeitgeist-and-coffee/
It allows companies to personalize their teams and tap specific talents. It ends this battle over whose responsibility it is!
Yes, working with an agency shouldn’t be simply an outsourcing situation. The agency and the client really should be collaborators — if the agency structure and the client’s culture truly permit full collaboration. It’s a tricky relationship to build.
Sounds like an idea for another article: “5 factors to making those relationships work (and why it’s worth it)”
Good idea. So go for it.
David – Thanks for further elaborating on my post and for providing your own unique perspective to this debate. I think you summarized my main point perfectly — “Enough fighting!” — sounds about right.
I’ll leave further commentary to the excellent comments your post has generated, as well as what I already wrote in my original post (http://ow.ly/4HnAW). In the meantime, it’s certainly encouraging to know that I’m not the only one who believes the “who owns social media” battles have gotten a bit silly.
Keith Trivitt
Associate Director of PR
Public Relations Society of America
Thanks for your comment, Keith, since your post is where this all started.
David,
I found this really interesting. I especially liked that it was carried by social media.
Your question, “who owns social media”, is ripe, especially in the wake of the ‘revolution’ that has
happened to some very notable ‘news’ sites that were built by the musings of a non-paid social audience…
Steven C. Frissora
Steve, news sites picking up content from non-paid social media opens up a whole new discussion area, probably for another post. Thanks.
David, you are absolutely right – clear lines of communication and advanced planning are key to handling social media well.
Keith Trivitt’s point is also well put – competition is a good thing, but a healthy sense of collaboration is even better and it usually shows in the output
As I had mentioned to an earlier commenter, a healthy sense of collaboration is best for all. The grab for money (billings/control) sometimes gets in the way.
[...] Who Owns Social Media? – To echo the sentiment t of Gini’s post, this piece from Marketing Profs gets down to the following line Why can’t we all just get along? [...]
I am late to join this discussion, but I think this is an example of how agencies,or in some cases departments within a company, try to grab for control of the dollars. I think top management should lead this effort, and once the messaging and strategy have been determined, it should be assigned mainly to one department or agency to execute. I agree with the idea of establishing parameters. I also think the PR people would be best at implementing since they are (supposedly) the experts at communicating and words.
Late or not, thanks for adding your thoughts to this discussion.
David:
I think you are right but you’ve missed the larger point. The changes in culture and human behavior that are both cause and effect of social media have created strategic and operational challenges for the marketing world. Your solution is to tinker with procedure while leaving intact marketing structures that were created decades ago. If the social media phenomenon teaches us anything, it’s that our entire model – including the way we carved marketing up into it’s various roles and disciplines – is no longer relevant.
While the established marketing world – clients, ad agencies, PR firms, etc. – continues to bicker over the increasingly valueless scraps, those who truly understand the cultural change that is unfolding around us are prototyping, testing and launching entirely new models.
Who would you bet on? The people who are arguing about who gets to hold the buggy whip (or even the people who have decided to just share the buggy whip) or the people who are designing cars?
You raise a good point, Adam, but I don’t totally agree with a couple of your statements and your horse & buggy analogy.
Yes, of course so much is changing — and so quickly — in terms of how we get information and how we use media. But I’m not sure the marketing “model” is obsolete. Some aspects of it are changing, and the keepers of the marketing disciplines are working to figure out what works best, even in the midst of what seem to be lightning-speed changes. And I’m not so sure those “scraps” the established marketing world is fighting over are valueless — not by a long shot. Network TV, many pundits have been saying for years, will become a dinosaur, yet here we are again, poised for what may be a record-setting upfront marketplace. I wouldn’t call those several billions of network ad dollars valueless scraps.
As for the horse & buggy analogy, I don’t see the battle over social media as that. Social media is a new and exploding phenomenon, but the challenge is to try to harness it in ways that will be appropriate for marketing purposes. I think we’ll still need people expert in marketing to give guidance to the new SM specialists, so their efforts will be on target. SM can’t (or shouldn’t) operate in a vacuum.
David:
Your argument is very typical of someone with a significant investment in the horse and buggy trade. You misunderstand how change happens. It’s not like a light switch. Businesses and industries – like all social institutions – do not die instantly. They die a slow dramatic Hollywood-style death with lots of sturm und drang. You can be sure the horse and buggy trade launched new line extensions with breathless optimism even after the first automobile rolled off of the assembly line. We know now that this was not the activity of a vibrant body but the last bit of twitching from a corpse.
The marketing profession is in the throes of this as well. You can choose to look at the upfront sales as a leading indicator of success. I look at it as the twitching of a dying industry. (Of course the industry doesn’t have to die. It can change. Meaningfully. But it won’t so long as it is convinced that all is well and that only tweaks are required.)
The challenge isn’t (just) that “so much is changing…in terms of how we get information and how we use media” as you say. These are just symptoms. The challenge is that attitudes and culture are changing. This is much bigger than – gasp – marketing and media. People have developed different attitudes about authority, hierarchy, tradition and truth. The influence of time and space on relationships and commerce have been greatly diminished. And, yes, people use different media and use the old ones differently. We are only just beginning to see the impact of these changes in various social domains such as business, politics and religion.
As usual, we are underestimating the impact of change by looking through a lens that is simply not relevant anymore. The way you talk about marketing seems archaic to me. You focus on the upfront sales as if this glitzy corner of the marketing world (actually the media world) is the entirety of marketing. But think about the changes that are just getting underway. New ways of finding consumer insights (through various social media). New ways of developing products (via crowdsourcing). New ways of communicating about our products (digital media…). New ways of selling our products (Amazon Subscribe & Save, alice.com…) New ways of promoting using location-based mobile services (Groupon, Facebook…) And this is just the beginning.
You use terms like the “keepers of the marketing disciplines.” If there is one idea that has been obliterated by developments in commerce (especially branding) and, even, politics, it’s that anyone is the “keeper” of anything. Marketers do not own their brands anymore (they never really did). You know who does? The guy who made that great song “United breaks guitars.”
In a similar vein, I find your comment that “people expert in marketing [need] to give guidance to the new SM specialists” rather benighted. Who is such an expert? You? The deans of the large ad agencies or PR firms? How about Google? Are they experts at marketing? What about any one of the small businesses that advise their clients on how to create and leverage the power of community and are growing 100x faster than any of the networks? You look at social media as just another way people “get information” or “use media.” But the people who work in the SM field (and those of us consumers who use these services and tools) look at them as a more human – and, therefore, effective – way of marketing.
I come back to my original comment. There is no law of nature that says marketing must be sliced up into advertising, PR, promotion, trade programs, digital, social… We know consumers don’t care about this arbitrary taxonomy. Frankly, I find the conversation about which discipline owns social media (or anything else) totally beside the point – rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as a good friend of mine likes to say. The more interesting and relevant question is why we continue to slice up marketing into the slices that seemed to make sense 50 years ago. Why do we have ad agencies and PR agencies and digital agencies and social agencies and promotion agencies…? What is the real expertise of all of these so-called experts? Are they really experts in marketing or are they just experts in cranking out :30s or writing press releases or designing websites…? (Are they even expert at that?) What do marketers really need? Should the marketing profession be cut up by the output or by the type of consumer they talk with? Should the marketing profession be cut up at all? Why? Whose interests does the current arrangement serve? These are the questions that automobile manufacturers asked. The questions you ask are the questions horse and buggy tradesfolk asked.
Adam
Adam, I really do appreciate your comments here. It sort of seems like you’re itching for a fight, though, with some of the language and assumptions you make.
I don’t have time right now to respond to every point you make, but I’ll say this — and I mean it with with all due respect: The marketing “establishment is not the enemy. Yes, some people are trying to hold on to what they know or what they feel comfortable with. That’s just human nature. But many of us (and I include myself in this part of the equation) are trying to change as our entire environment changes. But we don’t have to discard what’s been working yet. Perhaps some things should be given less priority, as we experiment with new tools and even new ways of thinking. That’s what many people are doing. If we still call ourselves advertising pros or PR pros, it’s because we still need to have a way to identify what we do.
If you saw last week’s Advertising Age, the lead article was about some agencies calling themselves other things. One that’s mentioned in the story talks about how they’re not an ad agency, but when you look at what they do… they’re an ad agency.
So let us handle change at our own speed. If a client or a boss wants someone who seems to be moving faster, then he should, by all means, choose that person or that agency or that whatever-they-call-themselves. There’s enough business out there for all of us to get our piece and handle it in ways that make all involved comfortable. And they can be highly effective, too.