Social Media Branding: From Point A. to…

Swings and round-abouts - that’s the colloquilism that best describes the inevitability of brands over-commercialising social media, and in the process damaging its cache as a networking phenomenon.

As predictable as the law of supply and demand, the cache of social networks, built up through media coverage and sheer membership numbers, is proving very attractive to businesses which rely on the monetisation of ‘eyeballs’. The discussion then is not necessarily about what social media is, and should it be exploited, but more along the lines of: “how do I as a brand get in there and build engagement and association using the ‘people’s media’ as opposed to corporate media?”.

As this discussion deteriorates into quick fixes (i.e. “let’s just build our own branded social media space”), the momentum in social media growth in unquestionably slowing. There is increasing suspicion about the infiltration of brands into these spaces, compounded by the clumsiness of brands using ‘friendship’ to build association. This acting as a dead-weight to membership growth.

The proposition is this: are we at Point A (see above), where social media’s momentum is slowing to a high water mark, carrying over into a decline in membership and cache amongst users (current and potential), while at the same time, commercial momentum is building so rapidly that branding efforts completely overshoot the mark, damaging themselves and the context of social media?

Think Starbucks (www.mystarbucksidea.com) as being the most recent example, and more ominously, recent announcements by the head of digital for Unilever in Australia, Nicole Still, who said: “If we could tap into this space of consumer-controlled content where they could be entertained and take it on themselves, we could build great reach before we could buy advertising in that space.”

Every sign so far indicates that the market is at, or near, Point A, which means we’ll see a continued and prolonged period of commercialisation of social media. This will only accelerate the decline in its cache, to the point where commercial ‘drilling’ or exploitation drops away as diminshing returns rapidly set in. This is not music to the ears of either MySpace, Bebo or Facebook.

There’s a delicious irony about brands utilising social media in an attempt to build greater equity amongst consumers, which in fact threatens the consumer standing of social media itself.