Two waves: social media&social business

Pharma & Marketing session

Brunó Bitter (Nextwave Europe)
Two waves: social media&social business

By 2011 it has become almost self-evident for large business organizations that the rules of engagement in traditional marketing are over. Whether organizations are creating a brand, building one, or managing a big one, they need to understand the dynamics and rules of social media, because it is a significant shift in how people are gaining access to information and, as a result, how they are behaving as consumers. The first wave of social media adaption was about creating external presences on networks like Facebook and Twitter: it was about turning brands into media, creating compelling experiences through narrative and engagement. Prime examples include some of the globe’s biggest brands such as Coca-Cola, Heineken, Dell and Nike. This shift has changed the way marketing and communication is done in the consumer markets but a new wave of applied social systems is also changing how value and knowledge are created and sustained in the workplace in enterprise environments and also in business to business situations. Many call this social business, including IBM and The Dachis Group. The second wave of social media adaption is about the realization that organization’s does not become social from outside-in. Creating an external presence on sites such as Facebook or Twitter will not make any organization a social business as it does not hold any transformational powers on its own.  Organizations can become social from inside-out: they need to have or develop a deeply “social” organizational culture first and only the second step can be the external projection of these values. Southwest Airlines, Zappos and Starbucks are among the most inspiring examples of this notion. They succeed in social media because they are inherently “social” as organizations – before and beyond technology. The barriers to social business does not lie in IT adoption: acquiring new technology is given in most large organizations. The key to success is understanding how organizational systems, human networks, process and culture relate to socially calibrated knowledge management, collaboration, content and value creation. This is not an IT manager or even a “CTO” task. This is a complex task involving organizational analysis, the mapping of knowledge networks, strategic HR planning as well as the continuous monitoring to improve processes, tools and systems to support the framework of being a “social business”.