Thursday, May 04, 2006

It's not called YourSpace, Mr Marketer

Adriana Cronin-Lukas, one of the presenters at What MySpace Means next month (and an Engagement Alliance advisory board member) uses the social bookmarking tool Furl to flag up this USA Today piece about how marketers are trying to emulate MySpace. What is baffling is why any marketer would think that millions of people are going to want to squeeze their individual personality into a space defined and owned not by the individual, but by an advertiser. There’s a reason it’s called MySpace. And it is quite clear from quotations like the following that these marketers haven’t grasped that you cannot emulate what you do not understand:

Marketers are creating Web destinations where people can leave postings about themselves and the brands — and leave e-mail addresses companies can use for communications. “Social-networking places are megatrends that are cutting across online everywhere,” says Dawn Winchester, executive vice president of client services for New York digital ad agency R/GA. “They are at the heart of where people come together around their passions. It makes sense for the right type of brands to be engaged in that type of communication."

If you think that your brand should ‘engage’ in social networking because it could help you harvest a lot of e-mail addresses, I’d be willing to place a rather large bet that your brand will not be following in the footsteps of MySpace anytime soon. If, however, you’re interested in how to extract value from - and bring value to - existing communities, then you’ll hear a lot you like when Adriana speaks on June 21st about why people are attracted to sites like MySpace, and how the same urges illuminate other ways in which your online marketing activities can bring you more value.