Customer Speak – A Marketing Blog from Bridgz Marketing Group

Digital Socialism by Bridgz

A well socialized research project done earlier this year by R2 Interactive reported that 65% of marketers who claimed to be active in social media said their companies have not seen any increase in revenue or profited in any way from those activities. That would mean at least 65% of marketers are flying blind.

What they do not seem to grasp is that the economic foundation on which our media infrastructure was built is changing rather rapidly from a capitalist to socialist state — from distribution push to access pull; from ownership to co-creation, aggregation and sharing. The power structure has shifted and business no longer controls media; it has become a public utility owned and operated by the people.

So who owns the content that flows through these media channels and networks? Well, that’s the rather fascinating battle that rages on as companies attempt to maintain control while redefining revenue models. What we’re seeing is a basic conflict of ideology in which traditional business revenue models do not mesh with new socialistic media models. Companies jumping into social media with profit motivation are most often not finding much success.

So what about the other 35% that claimed to be having some success with social media? According to the report, those were the marketers that developed a formal social media strategy before jumping in — one that is designed for pull, not push: the digital socialists.

By the way, as defined by Wikipedia, a socialized information source:

Socialistic: an economic theory based on public or common ownership and cooperative management
Capitalistic: concentrates power among a small segment of society that controls capital and derives wealth through exploitation

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