Two days ago I wrote a post about the 10 Commandments to Social Media based on the The Ten Commandments of Branding in the book Emotional Branding by Marc Gobe. The first commandment is called “From Consumers to People.” The point of the next 10 posts is to connect the concepts in Gobe’s book with the strategies of social media marketing.

Let’s dive in.

From Consumers to People

Traditional marketing and communications has created a landscape of constant battling. The board rooms in advertising and marketing firms have conversations surrounded around the concepts of “attacking” and “owning” a particular consumer group. Times are changing with social media marketing as part of the overall marketing strategy. Marc Gobe gives reference to the concept of marketing battles:

“Terminology like “breaking down their defenses, decoding their language, and strategically to win the battle” is in my day-to-day experiences, still commonly used.” (pg xxviii, Emotional Branding)

We are now a community centric consumer base. We listen to our peers more often than the billboard on the side of Interstate 465.

Your consumer (client) is human.

They live. They breathe. They have families, small children and college grads. They love everything from American Idol to Dirty Jobs. They have lied, hurt, and been punished. AND… they buy.

You are no longer dealing with separate groups of consumers. You are dealing with hundreds of millions on people…

And they talk daily.

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