When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone the world changed forever. Imagine the excitement of this new invention. The economy changed, behaviour changed, and new and incredible wealth was created.
New product lines were developed, such as special telephone desks, special telephone directories and answering machines. New services that would have taken weeks to organise could all of a sudden be instantly arranged.
Distance and time became the telephone currency that the Bell company was able to change and the consumer willingly paid for such a world changing invention.
The phone took off, I imagine, at roughly the same rate as Facebook when it entered our lives – Facebook, of course, being this century's telephone. What I am wondering is if Facebook as a marketing tool is similar in its power to the telephone?
Telemarketing was always at the bottom end of the marketing chain. Yes, it had a role and, yes, it was necessary for the prosperity of many businesses. But it was never considered with the same reverence as the marketing opportunities provided by Facebook and its social media peers.
I wonder if ultimately, social media as a marketing tool will be seen in the same light as the call you received from someone wanting to sell you something. A call that interrupted the core purpose of the telephone, that is, to socialise, to organise, to simply just connect.
Russel Howcroft is speaking at the AdNews Media Summit. Have you got your tickets yet?
Our desire to socialise and connect with each other is clearly the overriding purpose of social media. The purpose of most other media is commercial, that is, they exist to connect buyers with sellers and to generate demand and sales.
Yes, social media is as ubiquitous as the box but does the consumer use it the same way? There is a difference between media consumption and advertising consumption.
Media companies, in all their forms, obsessively push the power of their platform and the consumption of their media. But this is not the point for those of us in the advertising business.
What should concern us is, which media creates advertising consumption, that is, which media will create sales for advertisers?
Consumers have never really been happy receiving telemarketing calls as that medium is not designed for the consumption of advertising. But they have always been happy to watch television commercials because they recognise that one of the purposes of that medium is to sell.
By Russel Howcroft, executive general manager at Network Ten.