The rapid ascension of social media as a force in marketing and public relations has produced a nasty culture shock among communications professionals.  For those of us who came of age in a time when controlling the message through strategic positioning (sometimes called lying, by commission or omission), the reality that customers now have talk-back tools and access to a global platform with which to alter the desired perception of even the most carefully plotted campaign is something of a re-education experience. 

The simple fact is that the web has made it no longer possible for a company, or a government, to completely control the message or create a phony reputation in the marketplace.  On balance, this is a good thing because it means those in power must learn to deal with their constituents in a more open, transparent way.  (Except, of course, for Dick Cheney.)   Social media-based initiatives are effective PR and marketing when they respect their intended readers’ intelligence and attempt to engage them in honest conversation.  They are doomed when they do not.

Many companies still don’t get it.  To them, social media represent just one more set of marketing tools to sell more stuff.  They believe they can have it both ways–control the message AND build relationships of trust with potential customers.   They are wrong and, when engaged to provide advice, communications professionals who understand the new realities have a obligation to tell them so.

Deborah Weil has been around the block a couple of times and she must have known when GlaxoSmithKline’s agency approached her to consult on a new flog for its Alli weight-loss product that it was a dishonest, insincere attempt to cash in on the social media craze and that  the parameters set for it doomed it to failure.   You can’t have a successful conversation when personal anecdotes and negative comments are banned and the few comments that are left are so obviously scripted and uninspiring.  Deb stirred up a storm yesterday when she cajoled the readers of her inexplicably popular “real blog” to run over to the scene of the crime and make her client think she was worth the bundle they must have paid her.  Her real mistake, though, was taking such a stupid gig in the first place.       

What is really most sad about this is that Deb got there first with a book on corporate blogging so now she’s become the  go-to source for mainstream media although she represents everything that is likely to destroy the positive aspects of social media.  She is quoted again this morning in both the LA Times and in a WSJ feature misleadingly called Executives Get the Blogging Bug (five Fortune 500 CEOs with blogs, at least three of them ghostwritten, proves the opposite:  most CEOs are sensibly avoiding blogs like the plague, but hey it’s a slow news day)

The social media revolution has given many of us aging hucksters a chance to regain a bit of our virture by finally having a strong business case for direct, honest, communication, but Weil doesn’t seem to want that opportunity.  Maybe she truly believes that companies can use social media to fake transparency and control the conversation just like they did in the good old days a couple of years ago.