Adotas

Where media buyers start online

Featured Author

Dave Coffey is an iPhone- and Facebook-dependent, award-winning new media pioneer with over 18 years experience in the media and marketing field. With a diverse background in media agency work and IT management consulting, Dave brings a unique perspective to complex business challenges. Dave is president of The Coffey Group LLC, a strategic marketing consulting firm that specializes in digital media, political and management consulting.

Dave has served in senior leadership roles at Ogilvy, Sapient and Omnicom Media Group. Prior to The Coffey Group, Dave was Senior Partner, Director for Neo@Ogilvy. Dave also served as Director of Omnicom Media Group’s PHDiQ and as Sapient’s Global Director of Media Services. His past clients include Allstate, Travelers Direct, Mercedes, Harrah’s, Career Education, CSI Direct, Chrysler, Charles Schwab, Eward-Jones, Janus Funds, Jockey, Bissell, HBO, Discovery Communications, Citi Bank, Virgin Charter, U.S. Post Office, Department of Homeland Security, Mitsubishi Motors, and several telecommunication companies.

Before the digital media age, Dave worked in traditional media planning at Interpublic’s Campbell-Ewald on Amoco and Chevrolet. Dave served on the AAAA’s Advanced Television Committee, DoubleClick’s Client Advisory Board and the Audit Bureau of Circulation’s Interactive Committee. He was named MediaWeek’s 1998 All Star for New Media.

More articles by Dave Coffey





Features

Social Media Manager: Marketing’s New Left Tackle

Written on
May 11, 2011 
Author
Dave Coffey  |
Share
Social Media Manager: Marketing’s New Left Tackle

blindside_smallADOTAS – About 10 years ago, around the time that the dot.com bubble burst, many advertising agencies and holding companies made wise investments in research and technology groups. These research groups embraced a new financial structure within the agency, focusing on becoming a profit center rather than simply an expense.

By moving these research groups from the backroom to the boardroom, they were charged with the mission of building the next “Tiffany Box” for marketing. A few months later, everyone was strutting around with their version of the Tiffany Box; General Motors had one, P&G had one, and those that did not have one wanted one.

And what were these Tiffany Boxes made of?

Typically, they consisted of syndicated research data merged with some type of sales data versus marketing spend. At the time, these worked great and the agencies created a new way of revenue generation from clients – all was well.

Over the past 10 years, though, times have changed and while all of us still enjoy that baby blue box with the white ribbon, no one is running around talking about how “The Box” is now giving them all the answers to marketing. Rather, we have evolved to real consumer response level data first with ad servers, to a lesser extent with interactive television, social media and now with QR Codes.

With this shift in the level and amount of consumer data available, does this make the social media manager’s position within MarCom the new left tackle?

In the movie “The Blind Side” starring Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw, and Quinton Aaron as Baltimore Ravens offensive left tackle Michael Oher, we learn how the left offensive tackle position became the second highest paid position in the National Football League. While the book by Michael Lewis, “The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game,” gives a far greater history of the left tackle than the movie, we learn that the left tackle protects the quarterback’s blind side when he’s passing the ball down field as most NFL quarterbacks throw with their right hand.

In the traditional marketing department, the chief marketing officer is typically the highest paid position, then maybe a vice president of advertising, vice president of PR and so on. I would suggest that the new left tackle for marketing should be the social media manager and here is why.

Social media is fast becoming one of the major hotbeds of marketing in the world. For companies that ignore the impact that social media has on consumers, or more importantly for CMOs who don’t fully grasp the potential, the results can be quite detrimental. Just as a quarterback who is setting to pass the ball and doesn’t see the defensive charge from his blind side (who happened to get past that left tackle), he is exposed to a sack, fumble, and potentially a game- or career-ending injury.

With the social media manager protecting the CMO’s blind side through daily monitoring and two-way interaction with the consumer, this is not likely to happen.

What recourse would a chief marketing officer have if one day he or she was asked, point blank, why they hadn’t taken their company to the social media “airwaves,” so to speak? “I didn’t think it was worth the investment of resources,” isn’t going to cut it. Not today, not in this cutthroat, fast-paced world.

Even having the foresight to bring the company’s presence to social media isn’t enough. An effective Social Media Manager will be one who understands the dynamics, the interaction between the consumer audience, and power of constant interactions within the social media construct.

A qualified, skilled, and experienced social media manager will be able to take advantage of the best social media sites currently on the Internet, create a positive interactive experience with those individuals who care to have a dialogue, post comments for the company, or have questions regarding the material that is posted. A quality social media manager will also take full advantage of all of the tools available to social media marketing, such as blogs, audio, webinars, video and images.

The goal for any chief marketing officer should be to maximize the ROI (return on investment) for the business’s marketing budget. With so many potential marketing opportunities to deal with, social media is just one aspect, but it’s a growing piece of that large pie and a vital one.

A quick search on Monster.Com for the position of Social Media Manager returned over 100 listings across the country. Could it be that the Social Media Manager is becoming the new Tiffany Box of marketing for this decade? We don’t believe so.

To truly harness the power of the position, you need to want one -not for the sake of having one- but to listen to your consumers. When the CMO is looking downfield and has a receiver in his or her sights, it’s comforting to know that their blind spot is protected by a talented social media manager.





Reader Comments.

No comments yet

Leave a Comment

Add a comment

Tags: , , , , and
Article Sponsor

More Features


  • Once Facebook goes public, what's the most important thing it'll need to do in order to live up the expectations of its real value?

    View Results

    Loading ... Loading ...

Latest News

News Archive

Spotlight

Sponsormob Leads the Way Into RTB for MobileADOTAS – For more than half a decade, Berlin-based tech firm Sponsormob has remained relevant in an industry characterized by [...] more...

Adotas Partnership