The tirany of the post plan

We lost spontaneity. We lost the power of listening. And for what? For K’s in fans, comments, likes, retweets and replies. And we pay those K’s and this fake loyalty with sweepstakes, prizes and promotions.

Social networks seemed the perfect playground for brands to become more human. To speak more human like. To drop the whole marketing façade, and to facilitate a more horizontal, two-way communication. But they failed. Not the social network platforms but the social agencies and the marketing and communication departments. Oh and people failed too.

I remember when we launched Torke 2.0 we were more human. We developed human connections. On twitter, on blogs and with bloggers, on hi5, on MySpace and even in the flesh. The kpis and the ROIs where how many people did we reach at a certain time, how many showed up for the private viewing of the premier of the latest season of Grey’s Anatomy. We had an action plan. We knew what we wanted to achieve, to whom we wanted to talk, what we were going to say but we didn’t have a script. Because we sparked conversations. We had the matches but the gasoline was poured by us and those to whom we talked. No script.

But social platforms come and go. It’s only natural. MySpace started souring, hi5 gradually faded away, twitter became more relevant and Facebook made a bang coming in. More and more people started using such platforms. Creating more and more content. In so many different ways. And we began to lose touch. And soon we took cover behind the crippling cover of numbers – how many fans? How many comments? How many replies, retweets and shares? Content is king they said. We must create content that people identify with and see worth sharing. Any content is good – they shouted. As long as it brings more fans so we can spread even more our word. Without noticing it we became a church, preaching the gospel of so many brands. We were again placing the brand on a pedestal. No horizontal communication in sight. So we come up with sweepstakes, promotions super-ultra-mega discounts for our fans. We needed a bigger herd. Another number. The king of them all. The brand dick size. “I have 140k fans on Facebook, how many have you got?” 140k “fans” yearning for the next free ticket for the show, for the next free product. Soon pretty much all we got was a herd of prize seekers, promotion hunters. No real attraction to or for the brand.

When brands/agencies realized they couldn’t do promotions everyday they understood they should have a constant stream of owned and not so owned content to keep people entertained. Like a subliminal message. “if we post everyday, people wont forget about us”. And then they realized they weren’t that interesting. They are actually really boring. The post plan was born. “Let’s control the communication! Let’s know exactly what we’ll say for next two weeks, for the next month, for the next six months.” That was when almost all that makes a conversation was lost. We went back to the old school methods of controlling the message and the discussion. The only difference is that we don’t shout like we did on the TV, on the radio or the press. It’s a different playground. Different rules.

We lost spontaneity. We lost the power of listening. And for what? For K’s in fans, comments, likes, retweets and replies. And we pay those K’s and this fake loyalty with sweepstakes, prizes and promotions. We have got to bring spontaneity, fluidity and honesty back in the game. That will really set you apart from all of the other brands but most important it will make a difference for those who really and truly care about your brand.

A great Portuguese writer once said: “If you have nothing interesting left to write but you keep on writing, it’s a crime. Because you have no right to keep on writing if you have nothing else to write about” – José Saramago. This applies to people but it sure does apply to brands also.

What about you? Have you made your own, personal, post plan for the next two weeks?

Originally published at blog.danielcaeiro.com on April 3, 2012.