NORTHERN PLANNER

Here's two views on social media, digital type thinking.

The first is from the very clever (and very pasty) Dave Mortimer (and spot on with the role of creative briefs):

"I'm beginning to think a good digital campaign is a bit like writing a brief. You produce something that inspires them to play. Then they ignore how you told them to play, but hopefully you can work backwards and pretend it was what you wanted them to do in the first place…"

Another view as far as brands are concerned is this:

 People will only pay for the things they can't do themselves. People will pay to watch Roger Federer play tennis, few will pay to watch someone hacking away at the local club. They'll pay for good chef to cook the kind of food they can't make at home and they'll pay for great music or films (mostly) but not amateur efforts on Youtube.

In other words, if you want people to spend anytime doing anything with you, pay with their time if you like, it has to be stuff they can't create or do themselves, or stuff they can get for free anyway. There are too many brand owners just showing up on Facebook or whatever, expecting people want to be friends with them. They don't, they want to be friends with friends.

That goes for ad campaigns that are really good, followed by  a half hearted Facebook fan page. Do it properly or not at all.