Dave’s Take

What do Papa Johns, Pepsi and American Express have in common? Besides all being successful major American businesses, they have also all decided to truly test the power of the Internet by going out on a limb and placing all their current ad dollars into one basket – social media. No broadcast, no outdoor, no DM and no print – just their brands riding on the wings of Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare. Daring yes, but smart strategy? Only time will tell.

These big players are the just the tip of the iceberg should their daring roll of the dice prove profitable. I’m sure more than just a few TV stations are watching this play with bated breath. If it works, the floodgates will open and the current rate cards for newspapers, radio and TV will drop faster than the stock of British Petroleum. Even though social media has been growing tremendously over the past three years, it still remains an unproven channel for direct sales and marketing. Clearly, there are still a lot of unknowns in the social media world, but apparently not enough to scare off these big players.

“Social media is the hottest thing out there,” says Janet Fouts, a social media coach (whatever that title means). “The ones who succeed are the ones who will land the tech-savvies, the Gen Y’s and the Gen X’s,” she went on to explain. While few doubt the casual impact of social websites, no real studies have shown any quantitative traction for social media channels to actually move viewers into action. In fact, most studies have shown just the opposite – social sites are great for branding and promotion, but not for driving sales.

Not only are sites like Facebook and MySpace ill equipped for actual sales promotions, trying to force-feed social media subscribers promotional gimmicks may actually backfire for the advertisers. According to Jay Baer, a social media “guru” (again with the self-made titles) the growing number of social media promos could in fact create “participatory clutter” within the social media world. This clutter will only produce fatigue and frustration among the participants of social media sites. In short, using social media for advertising and marketing defeats the social aspects of the sites, thereby destroying any credibility a sponsor may have earned through previous sponsorships and support.

Will the inclusion of social media members in product design and promotion outweigh the “big brother” aspects of advertising in a previous ad-free environment? Who knows—but what I do know is that a lot of ad people will be watching these summer campaigns with a nervous eye.