Herds

Just finished Mark Earls' book Herd. Mark's background is advertising & marketing and his basic proposition is that we are not primarily individuals but in fact social animals. And any attempt to understand us as customers/employees/etc must take into account our social nature. Mark is an intelligent writer and his book draws on neuroscience, anthropology & Peter Kay to argue for our herd nature. Along the way he critiques WoM marketing, focus groups & Taylorism.

Those of you with an interest in social complexity (and Dave, he even mentions Welsh rugby) will find some new examples to delight them. What I particularly liked was the focus on C2C rather than B2C communication - i.e. the notion that what customers or employees tell each other is more important than the messages from managers & companies. Earls does not fall into the trap of saying that those in power can control these exchanges. Instead he suggests that companies can co-create these with customers and that they can only do this from a position of integrity - i.e. they must believe what they say. Or else no one else will.

Talk of brands pretty much brings me out in hives in much the same way that the phrase "customer relationship management" sends a shiver down my spine (Do you want a relationhip with me or or is it my wallet you're after? Come on, look at my face when I'm talking to you, not down there) but this book is relatively free of BS. Even if advertising people seem obsessed with winning awards. Are they not getting enough love from non-advertising folk? I sense a "Hug a Marketer" campaign coming on - go on, share the love...

Which brings me back to the Social Technographics report. Whilst the demographic data is interesting what it does not do is indicate how these different identities (creator, critic, etc) interact - which implies the serious limitations of survey-based data for understanding the social media ecosystem (real or potential) around your site. You may actually need to join the herd to do that, rather than watch it from afar.