What Presidents Both Dead and Alive Tell Me About the Future of Social Media - Jory Des Jardins - MediaBizBlogger

I've been feeling so patrioticlately. First, I went to my office early to watch the Inauguration with my team last week, and I've been enjoying the celebrated HBO series John Adams. I can't seem to get enough of this talk of inalienable rights, sovereignty, and self-evident truths.

Our democracy was, in some ways, the very first user-generated initiative of this country. Like social media is now, it was propagated by a few forward-minded people (white men, quite frankly), but became universal in nature. Women and minorities have taken leadership roles in the system; it has enabled their voices to be heard.

What I find most fascinating is how our country's Founding Fathers fumbled their way into a system we all hold to be sacred today. In one memorable scene in John Adams, the title character, played by the amazing Paul Giamatti, is proposing to the first post-Revolutionary Congress suggestions for what the new country's first President, George Washington, should be called.

"Your Majesty the President," he suggests, to a collective groan among his peers.

He continues,

"Your Eminence the President," and the groans get louder.

What strikes me here is that even in the midst of diametric change in government, one of the greatest instigators of that change still managed to revert to monarchical, obsolete terms, unaware of how much the former system he despised had become ingrained in his psychic picture of leadership.

This episode made me wonder, if we in the digital media world, too, have just emerged from something revolutionary, with the "power" now acknowledged as belonging to the customer. And yet, our psychic picture of marketing models remains pre-revolutionary, even elitist. Until we fully embrace the spirit of social media, we are working with a faulty system. A democracy that hears only a few. That's not just unfortunate; that's inefficient.

While we're making all attempts at grokking the concepts, dipping budgets into social media experiments (for mere seconds at a time), even following Mombloggers on Twitter, we do so thinking that this is only temporary--this reverence for the ordinary. Once we think of something better, something more Superbowl-worthy to produce, this user-gen thing will go away.

It also makes me wonder: What will it take before we really trust this model as inherently as we do less accountable media such as television? As much as we trust in, say, democracy?

In the absence of the perfect metric for user engagement, recent events have given me glimpses of the answer.

The economic slowdown: There are moments in history that have a forceful effect on the psyche, and while this recession is not exactly the most convenient of events, it does make for an amazing leveler. It has challenged once-worshipped tactics, such as dumping entire budgets into 30-second Superbowl ads, to not rest on their laurels. As you can see from Pepsi's latest reinvention campaign, which provides portable code to anyone wanting to embed Pepsi brands' digital components to their site, there's no point in fleeting, fancy concepts that can't be perpetuated among your customers.

If at one time brands weren't spending more on social media because they couldn't control the message in it, they are now because they just can't afford not to leverage the potential one-to-many effect. The bang for the buck surely beats the stock markets these days. And controlling our message, while less risky, is not efficient. In the process of trying more viral forms of engagement we've found that tapping the long tail--however imperfect it may be—is also extremelyeffective. Nobody can promote your brand better to potential customers than customers.

In a market where your customers are actively spending less, you need to distinguish yourself more. Just like advertisers, consumers who run households still need to spend money. They are going to think harder about how much they spend and with whom. You need to be where they live, and increasingly that's online. We can all argue about the future of display advertising and CPMs, but being seen in the most impassioned places now trumps how you're charged for it.

A new president: Our former administration had the luxury of making decisions largely un-witnessed by the people, or as one former President might say, "The Internets". The utter dismantling of that form of government occurred not from the demands of our new President, or even a few intellectuals on MSNBC, but from the overwhelming buy-in of the cheated, debt-ridden, foreclosed-upon public. Obama's insistence on his role as a communicator of desired change, not the arbiter of it, is what has made even his first week in office memorable , and I predict will make his Presidency effective.

In a recent New York Times Magazine piece, "Multiscreen Mad Men," a transcript of a conversation among advertising agency executives, Robert Rasmussen of R/GA said,

"A brand could tell people what was cool because there was less freedom of choice in media. A brand could say, 'This is the latest thing, and everybody is doing it,' and if the message was persuasive enough, you might believe it. Now you can check on that on the Internet and see whether everybody actually is doing it."

Even the title of the Times piece underlines the change in our perspective; the Mad Men of the late 1950s were oligarchs of trends. They declared what was hot. Today's Mad Men are not only largely women but more noticers of change.

The market cannot be determined any longer by a few with access to data or budget. Listening isn't just a gimmick; it's a means of survival.

A collective desire to serve. President Obama often evokes this growing public desire of people to servetheir country; I think he's onto something.

In my last column I pointed to some microtrends that I hoped would not perpetuate in 2009. If I had to define a common thread connecting them, it would be that they all stem from a superficial understanding of social media at best, and, at worst, an attempt to exploit it. But those that transcend into the Word-of-Mouth Hall of Fame have tended to pull at something we don't always know we have in us—a desire to help others. Those Liberty Mutual commercials are not brilliantly written, but are brilliantly evocative of what's true: We want to help, and when we're helped, we're compelled to pay it forward.

Blogging would not have grown so exponentially if it hadn't been supported by an underlying motivation to help. Sure content gets you somewhere, but co-linking and sharing is what gets you a core following that grows. Service is sewn into success.

I'll wait patiently for the HBO Series about the rise of social media ; maybe this one will also be produced by Tom Hanks; I'm dying to see who gets to play Arianna Huffington or Carol Bartz. I'm certain of one thing: The end-user will be on the winning side.

As co-founder and President of Strategic Alliances for BlogHer, Jory Des Jardins is an innovator in online advertising, women's media and Internet entrepreneurship. Jory can be contacted at jory@blogher.com.
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