By now most brands have a presence on the the *major* social networking platforms (so that’ll be Facebook, Twitter, YouTube… not MySpace) and it’s all getting a bit crowded. Those visionary brands who adopted such platforms early can now not be differentiated from every other bugger and everyone is the midst of an almighty fight to the top of the greasy social media pole desperate to demonstrate that they are the belles of all things digital. Unfortunately brands have begun to realise that there is only so much one can do with any one of these social media platforms and standing out from the crowd is really rather tricky.
Obviously we here at Ryan*MacMillan have been giving this some thought (ours being a social media agency afterall…) and one way we think we’re going to start seeing brands differentiate their social media activities is by handing over the reigns of these platforms to their audience. A great example of this is Adidas Classics’ Facebook page which has been taken over, a few times now, by members of their audience.
So how have Adidas given over control to their audience? Well, they ran a competition to throw the winners a party – the winners were then allowed to document the build up to, the events during, and the fallout after, their party on the Adidas Classics Facebook page. It’s a nice simple idea that creates much more compelling content than what most brands have to offer. Afterall, who knows what an audience wants more than members of that audience?!
Another recent example was Skittles’ homepage being given over the ‘#skittles’ hashtag allowing the audience to take control of the Skittles homepage.
So there you have it; my prediction for the coming 6 months: brands handing over control of their social media platforms to their audience.
