Earlier this year the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, not the very fine pale ale) held an event to launch their Social Media Futures report, which wasn’t, it has to be said, terribly well received
Lots of people were very excited that the IPA were starting to think about this area, but just felt that a huge opportunity had been missed. Then something happened which we weren't expecting - but which we most definitely welcomed. The IPA listened.
To their enormous credit, the IPA contacted all of those who had tweeted or blogged about the event, and asked us all to help them move the conversation on, into something much more collaborative, much more open, much more dynamic, and, well, much more social.
As with many social endeavours, it’s been a case of working it out as we’ve gone along. But we’re getting there. Over the last few weeks / months, I’ve been chewing the fat with a thoroughly awesome group of people – Mark, Le’Nise, John, Neil, Jamie, Amelia, Graeme, Asi & a long-distance late-joiner Faris – facilitated & chaired by the superb Nigel from the IPA.
We’ve tried to kick things off with 10 principles for social thinking & behaviour: not, as John astutely points out, commandments set in stone – rather 10 points of view which we hope will kick start the debate, and serve as a spring board for further discussion:
1. People not consumers – Mark Earls
2. Social agenda not business agenda – Le’Nise Brothers
3. Continuous conversation not campaigning – John V Willshire
4. Long term impacts not quick fixes – Faris Yakob
5. Marketing with people not to people – Katy Lindemann
6. Being authentic not persuasive – Neil Perkin
7. Perpetual beta – Jamie Coomber
8. Technology changes, people don’t – Amelia Torode
9. Change will never be this slow again – Graeme Wood
10. Measurement – Asi Sharabi
We’ll be posting them to our respective blogs to try and kick off the conversation – and most importantly to hear what everyone else has to add to the bonfire. The IPA are also setting up a blog which will pull together all of the chatter around the bonfire – if you’d like to join in, please try to use the hashtag #IPASocial so we can collate all your thoughts (details of the blog to follow)
There will also be an event organised by the IPA on 6th Oct when we’ll be discussing & debating these principles & more: tickets are available from the IPA, but the plan is also for the debate to be streamed & for tweets to be fully integrated into the live Q&A.
The event’s very much intended as a social experience rather than a traditional seminar or conference, and isn’t an end point in and of itself – it’s simply an opportunity to extend the online debate to include face-to-face discussion. The whole aim of the project is to make the conversation open and collaborative – social is as social does, after all.
We’re really looking forward to stoking this social bonfire – please do check out each blog next week and join the conversation.
