No amount of tweeting can save you now.

It’s feels like déjà vu all over again. I remember standing in that mediocre office in a drab North Atlanta office park and thinking to myself at what point would this client stop pretending to be a viable business and start trying to actually be one. “This website needs to make us look very big and very credible” he said through a grunt while moving the hard top to his Carrera from one side of the office to the other.
There could be no doubt everything I was involved with; all the photos, headlines, designs and this new fangled website thing (It was 1998) had a single aim- sell the company at a higher price. This company was not unlike many I was working with. There was energy in the air. Everyone was buying and expanding and visioning. There was only one problem- no one was actually making anything. The entire economy was virtual. It’s was taboo to point this out, of course. You wouldn’t want to say anything that might begin the inevitable avalanche of falling confidence.
The late 90s dot com era seems like a lifetime ago but it came back to me, in a sense, when I got an invite from the my local Chamber of Commerce indicating that their annual meeting would have some sort of Twitter theme. Now, I’m not too proud to admit it. I tweet. Perhaps it was my desire to find connection with the younger generation much like when I grew my hair out long despite being over the age of 30. Those poor souls who follow my tweets will probably complain to you that 90% of my dispatches are updates as to the growth and proliferation of my garden. But for you non-tweeter, let me explain the magic of twitter.
Imagine sending a quick e-mail to a select group of friends where the message will also reside on a page where people can see your other messages. Also, people can sign up to receive your messages and you can sign up to read other people’s messages. The messages must be 140 characters or less. Yes, that’s what this whole mesmerizing phenomenon really just comes down to. I know, you could have done much of that with e-mail and a website years ago. Now, that’s what twitter is in a functional sense, here’s what it is in a practical sense. Take the aforementioned technology and try to use it to either make yourself seem more attractive, hip, intellectual, popular or “plugged in” or try to use it to hock worthless junk either blatantly or in a seemingly innocuous message that is a bit like “Just got back from a jog. Time to make millions assembling products from home”.
I won’t lie. I have enjoyed keeping up with the tweets of a few folks. But here is my fear. There are at least a few businesses who believe the sheer magic of social networking tools (like twitter) are going to reverse the fortunes of an otherwise fundamentally flawed business. Even worse, there has been a meteoric rise of social networking “experts” who will promise you that you are just one tweet or face book update from windfall success. Where this gets really scary is the remarkably similar pattern all this has to virtual economies, bubbles and implosions of our recent past. Again, businesses are flocking in droves trying to find a quick cure-all rather than resolving fundamental problems of strategy.
When I lecture about this subject to groups, my favorite metaphor for economic transaction is the miller, the farmer and the blacksmith. Think of the very basics of transaction. Each of our medieval friends has some things the others need. The farmer grows grain but needs it milled. Both the miller and the blacksmith need grain to eat by way of the miller’s preparation. The miller and the farmer both need tools and parts from the blacksmith.
We know needs exist and the progression of an exchange is based in some pretty basic motivations. In the acquisition of that which is needed, the purchaser seeks reassurance that the expectation of that which they are acquiring will be fulfilled by that which they acquire. Put simply, if the farmer is exchanging two sacks of grain for a new plow, his intention is that the performance and ownership experience of the plow will be worth the exchange of his grain, time and energy. The deliverable of how a product, service or concept fulfills a set of needs is what a few of us in the marketing world call the promise. And it’s the promise where many companies fail strategically.
In my book The Promise and The Trust, I outline the things that distinguish good promises from bad. Good promises are differentiated in that they don’t simply promise something you can already get elsewhere. Good promise appreciate the whole value and experience of that which is to be acquired vs. that which is used as payment. The rise of CarMax proved that the too often gut wrenching experience of buying a car from a traditional dealer is a factor beyond the mere price. Good promises also resonate with actual needs instead of seeking to solve needs that don’t really exist at a commercially viable level. Finally, good promise are those in which it is believable that the organization making the promise can fulfill what is claimed. GM can claim they’re driving the American Revolution all they want. We still know they’re making a ton of cars in Mexico.
Until a company understands and can articulate a solid promise, no amount of any marketing tactic is going to help. It’s does not matter if they are featured in “100 great places to work” or if they have a new I-phone game, without a good promise it is all window dressing. With a good promise, the trust-building can be relatively easy. BMW’s advertising is by no means groundbreaking. They don’t send me tweets or connect with me on linked-in. I imagine their press coverage might be nice but I hardly have read it. Yet the position of a car, which is truly thrilling to drive, is firm in my and so many other minds. Their promise is solid and enduring and it has paid off. For comparison, what do you supposed GM’s promise is. Yeah, they don’t know either.
After a company’s promise is firm all the other activities intending to build credibility that the promise will be fulfilled begin to occur. This is the tactical side of marketing rather than the strategic and it is where most people in marketing concentrate their thinking. Things like websites, newspapers ads, radio spots, infomercials, sponsorships, news articles and yes, twitter- all aim to build trust that a promise will be fulfilled. However, without a solid promise in which to build confidence, all of these tactics are futile. Think about it, what exactly are you asking people to trust? That you are really, really, really cool or important or successful? Look at most ads- that’s exactly what they are asking consumers to do. When you boil it down, the reason most companies give for why you should give them money, time and attention is that they are cool, important or successful. Nothing about how they meet needs- just that they are more awesome than everyone else. Hardly compelling.
Instead, trust should be built by explaining how you are meeting needs, indentifying with consumers and getting the individual or organization endorsement needed to allay consumer’s mistrust of claims. Take note, I’m am not saying do one of these things. Your marketing should do all of these things. The goal is to tell a story as to why you can be trusted to fulfill consumer’s particular needs.
The world of commerce is at an important crossroads. The shrinking of incomes and credit is making people a bit more tight-fisted with their resources than they were in the past. This could mean great things for the companies that are clear about their promise and do the kinds of things that help people trust that promise. However, this next era in our economy might spell disaster for the aimless, untrustworthy and hapless huckster who cannot muster a sales pitch beyond “hey everyone, look how cool and zany I am”.
The phenomenon of social networking is about to exit its honeymoon and people will begin to ask if it really did all the things that were promised. I suspect, much like the remnants of the dot com era, some of the applications will be around for a while albeit in a more realistic commercial use. Meanwhile, the peddlers of marketing cure-alls will move on to some other bubble and the rest of us will sift through the remains looking for the lessons.
Perhaps if we all stop and think rationally, we might be able to see some of the telltale signs that ignoring the strategic in favor of the tactical has already begun to erode value and confidence. Perhaps we might look back just a few short years and remember the lessons from an economy that also had no real products but plenty of empty promises. If so, we should really start to warn each other. Let’s tell people to focus of fulfilling needs and keeping promises. Let’s spur business to think about what they really do and get them to tell everyone else about it in a compelling way that encourages trust.
Of course, they’ll need to do it in 140 characters or less.