Marshall McLuhan Is Still Dead

Oh, those zany marketers. There they go again. Mistaking social media tactics for social media strategy.

According to a recent study, nearly 50% of companies that use social media don’t have strategic plans to guide their activities.

“Our SM strategy? Why, Facebook and Twitter, of course.”

Uh, nooooo, those are tactics. They’re enabling technologies. They’re platforms. Maybe, if you stretch, you can even call them media plan line-items. But a Facebook and/or Twitter account certainly is not a strategy. The medium, social or otherwise, where you choose to deliver a message is not a strategy.

Remember Marshall McLuhan’s “the medium is the message?” Well guess what? McLuhan’s been dead for 30 years. And that canard died with him. The medium is no longer the message. The medium is merely the delivery vessel for your message. Do you know what the message is? The message is the message.

Your communications strategy must begin with “what do we say, and to whom.” That is, marketplace branding and positioning, presumably based on market research. Only once that component is nailed should you examine when, where and how the message should be disseminated.

There’s actually a very good, tangential column by Gannon Hall, COO of Kyte, on this very subject. In the Sept. 13 edition of BrandWeek, Hall posits:

“Marketers have to focus on delivering more personalized content to customers and website visitors. Tailoring the message helps drive customer engagement and loyalty to your brand, and it’s crucial to building the types of two-way conversations that result in long-term relationships with prospects and customers. By creating quality content, adding value and focusing on the needs of your audience across platforms, marketers can spark chatter, increase engagement and round out a truly comprehensive social media strategy.”

Got it? Content before context. Message before medium. Always.

RIP, Mr. McLuhan.

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