One thing I’ve learnt that the business community seems to find very hard to get its head around is:
“Why do people do all this useful stuff in social media FOR FREE?”.
And before we cast these business people as soulless vampires, let me say that these are all nice individuals – people on small training groups over the last two or three years. But really curious and more than a little flummoxed.
When I get that question part of me dies. Only a small part. But it’s the voice that says ‘for fuck’s sake, you’re not motivated by money, I’m not, most people have many motivators beyond money’. And that’s even though I think I get where the question comes from.
Part of me wants to fight back and say something clever about ‘the amount of time Americans spend watching TV each year versus the total time to create wikipedia’ but it doesn’t really cut through (I’ve tried it).
Seeing the Old Spice campaign engaging with real individuals and now the clever Orange singing tweetagrams campaign I’m reminded of how simple this might be.
From my layperson’s perspective, the dynamics on the social web are just basic psychology – basic intrinsic motivators, basic core human qualities. Stuff we intuitively know makes us all tick.
- The desire to share
- The desire to be part of something
- The desire to belong
- The need to have a voice and be heard
- The desire to be alive and to feel alive
- The need to help others
There’s probably a complete list of these somewhere. In fact, I’ve just googled and found ‘The 16 basic desires theory’ – here they are:
- Acceptance, the need for approval
- Curiosity, the need to learn
- Eating, the need for food
- Family, the need to raise children
- Honor, the need to be loyal to the traditional values of one’s clan/ethnic group
- Idealism, the need for social justice
- Independence, the need for individuality
- Order, the need for organized, stable, predictable environments
- Physical activity, the need for exercise
- Power, the need for influence of will
- Romance, the need for sex
- Saving, the need to collect
- Social contact, the need for friends (peer relationships)
- Status, the need for social standing/importance
- Tranquility, the need to be safe
- Vengeance, the need to strike back/to win
So next time we think about the outcome we seek – ‘let’s get this issue talked about’ or ‘how will this conversation spread? – I might try and remember this list, and ask myself which basic desire this thing can fulfil.
Those conversations in Mumsnet, Pistonheads, Singletrack or MoneySavingExpert, the primary motivator to contribute and get involved is not about money. For me, it’s about humanity.
I know it’s preposterous and whimsical and naive, but maybe the course every business person and marketer needs to go on is Basic Psychology or something, before going on a course about the social web. Would that help?
12 Comments
Good thoughts Will. Have you seen our Common Cause report (at least the exec summary) and George Monbiot’s piece on it? All good and relevant reading:
Monbiot:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/oct/11/left-values-progressive-self-interest
Original WWF report from Tom Crompton:
http://www.wwf.org.uk/what_we_do/campaigning/strategies_for_change/
(Heavy going, but fascinating)
This is a great, simple and insightful post. Have held a view for some time that marketers could all do with a Psycholoy 101 and it just becomes ever more prevalent with the social web, requiring greater understanding of individuals, motivators and communities, hey a Sociology for beginners wouldn’t go amiss either!
Think there are many opportunities for businesses/marketers to get smarter, if they only adopt a little humanity (as you say) and start to consider their audience as individuals rather than ‘consumers’.
I think the way people consider the private and public spheres has something to do with the bafflement of your training groups.
In our society we have become accustomed to understanding and fulfilling our desires through the private sphere, whether that’s in terms of a commercial business or the privacy of our own home and friends.
All this “useful stuff in social media”, on the other hand, is a public good. Yet we’re more accustomed to having that provided by the state than we are creating it ourselves as part of desire fulfilment.
As you say, these are nice business types who will understand the desires other than money – they’re just not so used to the fulfilment taking place in the public sphere and creating a public good.
Good one. Agreed.
Instead of dreaming up dumbass creatives, PR and ad wonks should do some psych and some trending/analysis.
Couple more to add to your list: vanity (and the will to publish – radically and newly fulfilled via Social Media); and a common understanding that Free (capital F) often is the best form of promotion/marketing (self or corporate) …both different versions of your first list (belong / be heard), but to my mind more visceral.
Ade – thanks, will read up!
Laura – yes, sociology too!
Simon – you’ve just nailed the nail on the head so damn sweetly. Yes, yes and YES again. Thank you for that precise and helpful thought. Wonderful.
You’re so right Will/Ade/Laura/Simon
All the corporations I have worked with (excepting one of the toxic Banks) over the past 20 years have been filled with decent people just waiting to be themselves. Infact even the Bank, once you got past the Board level crud, was actually filled with frightened individuals wanting it to all go away.
One of my most powerful experiences when we first started was…walking into the cavernous atrium of a global giant for a pitch, and looking up to see hundreds of ghostly figures moving about on travelators, like a scene from Blade Runner…and then meeting the coms director (and her team) only to discover that we had actually been to the same Clash gig in the Lyceum fifteen years earlier (we knew this as they were supported by the ‘anti nowhere league’), that she had been to Peel acres, supported Leeds (me too) and loved nothing better than striding across Dartmoor…
That wasnt the person I expected beneath the power suit, the formal written brief and the hardcore objectives. We won the business with a solution focused on individuals not ‘the company’ and still work with her 14 years on.
Somehow the construct of large organisations drives us to behave in strange, fearful, sometimes selfish ways. Hence the need for the service we have been selling…generating engagement/humanity through live experiences, and for the service you are selling…the same through social media.
Yesterday in our meeting we talked big and proud, which is great, but I wish we had also talked (as we did when we first met) about creating powerful social, public…selfless outcomes from any work that we design/simulate.
I think if that attititude can be hard wired in to all aspects of business, not as a marketing or engagement ‘trick’, but as a genuine desire…then the question on your training courses will actually be:
‘How can we use this to do something useful…to do some good?’
see http://www.colalife.org
All spot on, I couldn’t agree more.
The Blade Runner image is great – but I have another – outside Temple tube station one day in the sun watching hundreds of little boys wearing stripy ties and blazers, and carrying briefcases, hurrying and scurrying up and down the stairs, eager to get to their next class.
A horde of “bright” 12 year-olds striving for the next pat on the head from the teacher – for the successfully-passed test; the next lot of pocket money at the weekend; and the next handful of sweets bought from the tuck shop.
Breaking free from that – creating a world not run by (and for) 12 year-old school boys (and I do mean boys) – seems to me to still be the main challenge for the world of business.
The other thing I like to point out is that the marketing world is well aware of basic psychology. Some might say too aware. If you haven’t read it Vance Packard’s The Hidden Persuaders (first published is 1957) is worth a look.
It carefully and entertainingly describes how the advertising and marketing worlds discovered the then relatively new science of psychology and started to put it to their own use.
Would this be a good time to ask you guys to do some free social media goodness by helping improve comms/ help parents engage more with my children’s school? Indeed schools in general!
Hi Hopeful, it’s very hard to say. For a small team we put quite a bit of time into unpaid and hopefully helpful initiatives but we also need to balance that with our paid work. If you’d like to tell us more perhaps in an email then we can go from there – info@nixonmcinnes.co.uk will come through to a few of us here.
So we all agree that it is better to try and make a difference and that it would appear that people on the whole are good. But many people are not bold enough to take this approach or do not feel that they have it with in their control to do so.
This is one of the major dilemas that we face in this day and age and it is relfected by the recent growth of political/economic awareness, cottage industries and the social web and I hope the emergence of new grass roots activism. The tipping point will be when this becomes a common place approach for businesses and corporations. There are of course examples of this out there, such as Howies, Patagonia, Torchbox agency and even Bill Gates.
Is it therefore that we are priviledged enough to work in an industry that we believe can really reach out to people, educate them and enable or mobilise them to understand the issues and know what tools are available to them to address them. Rather than proposing it’s ‘business” responsibility as a whole.
I suppose what I’m suggesting is that whilst we also need to make a living day to day running or working in our companies, we also by default understand todays modern communication tools (whether they be psychology, marketing ideas or technical solutions) and therefore we are the torch bearers that need to be ensuring that we are talking to people, be they clients, organisations, children or our parents to help them understand them and to use them. Or even simply using the tools ourselves to make a difference, from home or within our own companies.
And by the way I am by no means an example of someone who is doing this, but it is something that is becoming more and more apparent to me, which is why this blog post struck such a chord. So having written this, the next step for me needs to be to identify a way to put these words in to action.
I’d love to know your thoughts.
Toby (@tobiasbull)
Hi Will,
Thanks kindly for inviting me to send you some more information re: my request for help with my children’s school and social media goodness. I’ve sent an email with some early thoughts which I hope will provide a bit of context, a slight challenge and an opportunity for you guys to either continue this conversation or point me in another direction
Kind regards
Matt
On October 18th, 2010 at 3:23 pm, naive n hopeful responded:
Would this be a good time to ask you guys to do some free social media goodness by helping improve comms/ help parents engage more with my children’s school? Indeed schools in general!
On October 19th, 2010 at 8:25 am, Will McInnes responded:
Hi Hopeful, it’s very hard to say. For a small team we put quite a bit of time into unpaid and hopefully helpful initiatives but we also need to balance that with our paid work. If you’d like to tell us more perhaps in an email then we can go from there – info@nixonmcinnes.co.uk will come through to a few of us here.
Matt – I’ve replied to your email.
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