Social Marketing vs. "Social Marketing" Smackdown

by Nedra Weinreich | Sep 6, 2006 | Blog, Social Marketing, Social Media

At the suggestion of Carol Kirshner of the blog Driving in Traffic, I have created a chart to help elucidate the differences between authentic social marketing and the new use of the term to mean “social media marketing.” As organizations like Jupiter Research continue to knowingly or unknowingly use the term incorrectly (see backstory here), confusion will reign as people try to figure out what each other is talking about. This chart, which I hope will be a collaborative work-in-progress, can serve as a touchstone for continuing the conversation among marketers of all kinds.

Whether you are a social marketer or a social media marketer, I invite you to add your comments and modifications to this chart to make it helpful to everyone in the marketing field. I will post updates as the chart evolves by blogsourcing a la David Armano.

UPDATE (9/6/06): I added the year the usage of each term first appeared. Kotler and Zaltman coined the phrase in an article in 1971. I don’t have a historical source for the “other” social marketing appearing in 2005, but that’s when I remember first seeing it.

UPDATE (2/21/07): Added “community marketing” to the “related fields” list.

Technorati Tags: social marketing, social media, jupiter, blogsourcing

Jupiter Doesn’t Get It

by Nedra Weinreich | Sep 1, 2006 | Blog, Social Marketing, Social Media

David Schatsky of Jupiter Research has posted a response to the concerns of the social marketing community about the use of the term “social marketing” that shows that Jupiter doesn’t quite understand the issue:

If we find over time that the term loses its relevance in our industry we’ll revisit it. We have renamed coverage areas in the past. But for now, and with no disrepect to those who have worked at the other social marketing for years, whose efforts I applaud, I think the name for our coverage area is appropriate in our context and will stick with it.

Perhaps they already ordered the letterhead and don’t want to have to change it.  Perhaps they don’t want to appear to be backing down to bloggers again after an earlier controversy.  I’m afraid they see this as just an issue of us trying to defend our turf, when it should be about helping their customers find them and avoiding confusion when faced with pages of completely irrelevant (to them) search results for social marketing.

We lost this battle.  Can we win the war of words over time?  If you agree that this is an important issue for our profession, what do you think we can do to keep the semantic waters from becoming muddied?

Technorati Tags: jupiter, social marketing

Jupiter Response Forthcoming

by Nedra Weinreich | Aug 31, 2006 | Blog, Social Marketing, Social Media

I received an e-mail from David Schatsky, the President of JupiterKagan, saying that he is preparing a blog post to explain their thinking on the naming of Jupiter Research’s new Social Marketing service. I will let you know as soon as I hear anything more.

Technorati Tags: jupiter, social marketing

Dueling Social Marketing Definitions

by Nedra Weinreich | Aug 30, 2006 | Blog, Social Marketing, Social Media

On the heels of Jay Bernhardt’s explanation of why the CDC uses the term “health marketing” instead of “social marketing” and Craig Lefebvre’s take on the term (“What the heck is health marketing?“), comes a new offensive on the definition of social marketing from the other direction.

Jupiter Research has just launched a new Social Marketing research service that will “provide marketers and site owners with recommendations on how to profit from the use of consumer generated content, blogs, podcasts and other emerging media tools.” Apparently they didn’t get the memo that there is already a long-established field called social marketing that uses marketing to bring about health and social change.

The burgeoning use of the term “social marketing” to refer to social media has already created confusion among techie types I know who have misunderstood what type of work I do. This leads to people talking past each other, thinking that the other knows what they mean when they are not on the same page at all. It’s as if one group of people suddenly started calling a new kind of dog a “cat;” they are very similar in general — four legs, furry, domesticated — but in the details they are quite different.

As a result of my initial discussion of this issue in March, the folks at Forrester Research decided to change the name of their “Social Marketing Bootcamp” to “Social Computing Bootcamp,” and they no longer use the term “social marketing” to avoid exactly this type of confusion. While I agree that “social marketing” would have been a great term to adopt if it did not already mean something else, it’s about 35 years too late for that.

I hope that, like Forrester, Jupiter will take another look at their erroneous terminology and take another stab at coming up with a term that is clear and accurate. Social network marketing, social media, consumer generated media, digital marketing — whatever they want to call it is fine. It would help potential clients find them instead of the many firms who offer social marketing services (using the real definition). And people won’t assume that Jupiter does health & social change research when they mention their social marketing research services. Do a google search for “social marketing” and you’ll see that for pages and pages of results there is nothing but links for companies and organizations working toward social change.

So if you are a social marketer, please join me in leaving a comment for Emily Riley, the lead analyst on the Social Marketing Service at Jupiter Research to let her know why they should consider changing the name, as well as letting other companies know when they use the term incorrectly.

It’s not just a matter of semantics. It’s about all of us doing the work we do best and making sure that the right people know about it. Everyone wins when clarity reigns.

UPDATE: Rohit, Craig and Carol have all weighed in on this issue as well. No response from Jupiter yet. I agree wholeheartedly with Carol when she says:

It is my hope that no one is made the villan here and that both groups can cooperate to make the differences in the two practices and methodologies clear. I think that this would serve the “greater good”. Additionally, the public discussion in the blogosphere could generate positive attention for both.

Technorati Tags: jupiter, social marketing, marketing, social media, social network marketing