The Hawthorne Effect

As someone who grew up with the Internet and made it my career I can tell you, the era we’re in right now looks and smells oddly familiar. How? Well, back in my day* the Internet was just a thing, conceptual, new. No one understood it but everyone was talking about it. Consumers played with it. Brands tried to use it. The media talked about it endlessly. Like with most new things, objectives for success were often poorly defined, but money, gobs and gobs of money were thrown at it.

Strategies evolved that more or less correlated to success. People got smarter. The tools got cheaper and easier to use while the barriers to working the ‘net got smaller and easier to manage.

Inside of pharma, regulators and brand managers alike struggled to define how to use the Internet properly. Adoption happened slowly. Things seemed risky. Hands were wrung, and decisions delayed until others took the lead.

More case studies were needed.

Soon everyone was an Internet ‘expert’ and the scrum began. Every agency, freelancer, and Johnny-come-lately tried to get digital work. Innovation was sought at the expense of meaningful results. Things had to be new. They had to be shiny. And they had to have lots and lots of Flash.

Prices fell. The talent pool swelled. Expertise was defined by what you’d just launched. The noise level rose. Soon it became hard to tell what was great from what was working. Flashy was the new good.

Now, reread the previous paragraphs and replace the word ‘Internet” with the words “Social Media.” All of this has happened before.

Then, terrible things happened. The economy tanked. 9/11 occurred. The dot–conomy imploded. All those people dreaming of their Internet riches and piles of stock options e-lost all their virtual iDollars and ended up in thepoorhouse.com.

The party was over.

But that tragedy led to the rise to an aristocratic class of digital talent that had gained the specialized skills needed to survive while living through those volatile experiences and creating bigger and better tools. These are the survivors. These are the few. These are the Digerati.

Look around any major marketing meeting. Chances are there’s a late thirty something “smartest-person-in-the-room” that knows everything about anything digital you could want to talk about.

Strangely, I see the lessons of the past not informing the decisions of today. Social media is too new. It’s too different. It can’t be measured. Sound familiar? It should. All of this has happened before.

What I find most astonishing about this is that the very people who seem so flummoxed about how social can be applied to real business challenges are the very same people who should know better. They lived through the pain, and they fought the battles and struggled to be relevant. Yet, here we are again. Square one.

The same regulatory challenges that slowed the adoption of the Internet are playing themselves out all over again in this socially driven age. Remember when the biggest concern about creating a website was whether showing images of packaging  would somehow lead to fraud or a rise in fake products being sold? It may seem quaint now, but the fear was very real and very, very time consuming to navigate.

The challenges faced during the beginnings of the Internet age may be somewhat different than those of today, but the methods for success formulated during those times are just as relevant now.

So where does that leave us? Looking back at the past it occurs to me that 4 key lessons emerge. These may seem like “well, duh” tips, but I assure you, they are often ignored, usually at the expense of some really great ideas which never end up seeing the light of day.

1. Have a defined objective.

The seduction of new tools and technologies are that they generate opportunities to create some really “wow” stuff. That’s all well and good, but often the tried and true works better. Have an objective. Stick to the plan. Generating buzz can be a perfect objective for some programs but is definitely not a one size fits all outcome. Chase the shiny object only if it gets you somewhere. After all, it would be far more valuable to have 1,000 highly targeted, highly engaged patients than 10,000 outliers that will never ask for your product.

2. Understand your audience.

Your audience wants value. They want you to fill a need. If they’ve raised their hand by fanning your page, give them something in return. If your social strategy is merely to repurposed content that already exists elsewhere, chances are you will fail. People in social channels want content and experiences that are useful and in some way shape or form entertaining or interesting. How you write for social is going to be fundamentally different than how you write for a website. Giving them yet another BMI calculator isn’t going to get it done. Location based tracking tools for Alzheimer’s caregivers? Now you’re getting somewhere.

3. ROI matters.

More often than not, I read articles and blogs proclaiming that social media is too unique to measure, that it’s more important to experiment than worry about results. The problem with this mindset is that we all work in a results oriented culture, and showing how every dollar made an impact is very applicable to ensuring you have dollars available next year and the year after, let alone a job. Digital people use metrics like time on site, page views, opt ins, click through rates, likely to be referred, lifetime value and a whole host of other data points to justify the exorbitant money thrown at e-marketing tactics. If your agencies or consultants tell you that they can’t measure the impact of a social program, fire them. Do it now. There are plenty of smart people out there that can help you get the data you need.

4. Put your money where your brain is.

The proximity bias dictates that for the most part, people will go with what they know. I’ve seen brand after brand push money into failing programs simply because they are familiar and “seem” to work. Take a look at how much money you spend on display ads. What’s your click through rate? 2%? How many websites do you have? Do they need to be redesigned? Why? Amazon hasn’t changed its interface in 7 years, but it does reinvigorate it’s offering all the time. Other programs, especially in social may be able deliver far better results for far less money. Challenge assumptions. Push innovation. Demand value. Hard metrics are your friend.

The era of social is here, whether you like it or not. It’s an exciting time, one fraught with challenges, opportunities and adventures. But the lessons of the past should inform the decisions of today and tomorrow, not be forgotten. Mistakes should be learned from and strategies adopted. After all, all of this has happened before.

But it doesn’t have to happen again.

*Get off my lawn, you damn kids!