The Social Divide
May 27, 2011 by Reena Leone
Social Media is dividing the marketing and advertising industries, and the noise is starting to bleed into public debate.
Simplified, the division seems to be between entrenched industry veterans and scrappy up and comers. Fear of change has always been the default reaction of any establishment, but it feels like the digital marketing world has increasingly split into two camps when it comes to social media: one embraces it as a new form of creativity and communication in the digital space, while the other belittles and does all it can to disenfranchise it. The aforementioned veterans generally fall among the latter.
Last week, I spoke at an event designed to help small businesses with social media. An industry veteran spoke before me. In their introduction, she stated that “people under 35 seem to think they know everything about social media,” suggesting by insinuation that actually we don’t.
Later she went on to explain how her company checks employees’ personal twitter accounts, and everything an employee posts is subject to scrutiny, something I personally do not agree with. This person also kept looking at me, since I’m obviously under 35. As a capper, she left the conference immediately, not sticking around to see what I might have to say during my subsequent presentation on Facebook for Small Business.
Then there was Peter Shankman’s article (that I wrote a response to earlier this week) “Why I Will Never, Ever Hire a Social Media Expert.” In his article he makes reference to how you should not be “listening to the 22-year-old who says, ‘we’re going to do this social media thing because it’s cool?’” citing age as part of the reason this person should be discredited.
What brings this backlash? Several factors. Social media is accessible to anyone. It’s an easy point of entry, and it’s easy to learn the tools (and why many people feel comfortable calling themselves “experts”). The younger generation has grown up with social media and thus is quicker to adopt new social media tools, channels and applications. In fact, the paradigm shift has been so swift and so complete that it is now hard to imagine a time there was not a way to connect with people digitally. Thus, this new crop of social media savvy professionals is perceived as a threat by the old guard -- after all, no one in advertising likes to think they are out of touch, or that their ideas are outdated. Social media is just one part of the much larger shift in the advertising world towards digital.
A colleague of mine sent me the following excerpt from an article by Graham Button:
...There are more 28-year-olds alive on the planet today than any other age group. They became adults in 2001, the year the earth moved. A year from now, they will be one-third of the U.S. workforce. In 10 years, they will be the backbone of all the major companies, managing the infrastructure and ready to inherit the leadership. And a few minutes after that, what they believe about business will be the only thing that matters.
Button, a partner at Denver based consultancy Genesis, recognizes that instead of looking at the Millenials strictly as competition, view them as heirs to the throne. They will be the ones bringing in new media and technology. Without them, agencies will probably die out.
Playing the age card doesn’t make 20-somethings look immature or unprofessional; it makes you look stagnant and dated. Do you realize comments like that make you sound like Mr. Fredericksen from the movie Up? Age has nothing to do with it. Someone can be a brilliant social media strategist at 23 or at 53. It is all about the person.
Why don’t industry veterans partner with new professionals and mentor them? Why can’t different generations in the advertising world share ideas, compare styles and reflect on how much the industry has changed? Why don’t they come together to figure new ways to integrate traditional methods with new digital ideas?
Either way this line drawn in the digital sand needs to go. But if it doesn’t come by truce, you can bet time and tide will just wash it away. Along with all the haters.
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Tweet it and weep: After almost four years at Digitaria, Reena Leone is leaving to begin her new social media career after Memorial Day weekend.
Reena Leone Marketing and Social Media Coordinator
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Comments
44thfloor May 31, 2011 at 11:30am
Sorry, if you already received this comment, I originally posted this comment from my mobile and maybe something went wrong. My bias, if any, stems from the erroneous self titling of the social media expert. Their has to be a distinction made between participating in social media and creating social media strategy. I view the relationship between the roles similar to that off a designer to seamstress or a tailor. Yes, many of their skill overlap but the designer has the creative vision and idea that is core to the whole. On the question of age, being the young or the new person and having your status questioned isn’t unique to social media but can be more isolating during periods of change. For some, the age argument is used to mask the more primary fear of having years of experience equalized by the shift to digital. I went through the same thing during the dot com era as the spotlight and money shifted to new media and the true digital natives, like myself, struggled to prove relevance in terms of the overall business bottom line. Luckily for me, i was in the music and television industry where all market indicators pointed to digital as being a model killer. I believe the solution for the social media professional is the same as it was back then, you have to create real value that is unique to your domain and the rest will follow.
John Russell May 27, 2011 at 3:39pm
Like Einstein said: "Brilliant spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."
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