Hervé KablaChairman of Be Angels, a leading social media specialist and author of Digital explained to my boss and Social Selling explained to my bosstalks to us about branding in the digital age.
Adwise : Every time a new social medium starts to take off, all the brands rush to it for fear of being left behind by their competitors: is this the new digital strategy?
Hervé Kabla: No, that's not really the case any more. For a start, there are very few new social media that have managed to establish themselves. The world of social media has entered its 'cold phase'. Facebook is making slow progress, Twitter is stagnating, as is Instagram. Snapchat is still making progress, but its business model is not really convincing.
As a result, brands are less likely to rush to new platforms, and the warm, experimental phase that prevailed a few years ago has logically disappeared. Brands have become more mature. Admittedly, not everyone is at the same level of maturity, but it's no longer the profligacy of resources that we used to see; the race for fans is no longer relevant...
Adwise : One of the most commonly used buzz words is "engagement", but no one really talks about image, values or even brand platforms any more...
Hervé Kabla: Yes, there's a lot of talk about engagement, because... marketers need to measure something - one of my clients rightly reminded me that progress can only be seen through measurement - and that the old ways of looking at engagement are not always the same. "vanity metrics (number of fans, number of likes) have no meaning as such, in a world where the reach of publications has collapsed to less than 5%.
On social media, branded content competes not only with each other, but also with current events or our own personal content (cousin's beer, the video of storm Irma, nephew's bike). To be seen, you have to shine, and measuring engagement is one way of measuring the brilliance of a publication.
The notions of image, values and platforms are still very important, but it has to be said that their effectiveness is harder to measure. Human nature is always on the lookout for the least effort, which explains why...
Adwise : Digital, and social networking in particular, is a world of speed and immediacy. Is this compatible with a well-thought-out, long-term brand strategy?
Hervé Kabla: It's tricky to say that digital = a world of speed. It's a fact that digital technology gives people access to much faster processing than ever before. But that doesn't mean we have to do everything in a hurry and without organisation. There is a time for everything. A time that demands speed and rapidity of execution (e.g. responding to a customer who has an urgent problem to solve) and a time that demands reflection and long-term thinking (e.g. thinking through your strategy, developing your brand, building your reputation).
In a way, it's a bit like the advent of the TGV: it makes it possible to reach Lyon in 2 hours, but that doesn't mean that all the lines are destined to become high-speed lines, from both an economic and a purely physical point of view.
Adwise : I'm not going to ask you what the best digital strategy is: it can't be reduced to a 'recipe'. But what do you think should be the starting point for a good digital strategy?
Hervé Kabla: The starting point for digital is the customer. Understand how digital changes the way you interact with the customer: on which platform(s), with which modality(ies), according to which timeframe(s), carefully assessing the risks and benefits that digital can bring, not so much from the point of view of the company or the brand, but from that of the customer.
There's no point in improving unit margins if customers start to flee... In short, there is no universal answer, and false good ideas are commonplace. But as with all things digital, there's nothing like taking risks: you try it, you see if it works, and if it doesn't, you back off at the lowest possible cost.
