Last Saturday night while waiting in the car with my husband for some friends to emerge from their home so we could go out to dinner, I naturally pulled out my iPhone and proceeded to check my email and Twitter. When those revealed nothing special, I started to play a game. We had only been there a few minutes.
My husband objected – he thought I was being rude. Needless to say I put the phone away, but I it occurred to me that if I had been with my Millennial-age son or daughter instead of my husband, there would have been no objection.
In honor of Mother’s Day, Retrevo provided some interesting insights about the shifting mores of cell phone use.
Retrovo’s research asked 1000 Twitter and Facebook users when they thought it appropriate to allow an electronic interruption. They found that mobile communications have become a persistent factor of everyday life. “Over 40% of respondents saying they didn’t mind being interrupted for a message. In fact, 32% said a meal was not off limits while 7% said they’d even check out a message during an intimate moment. ” The study concluded:
“Social media is embedded in our lives. It’s why people go to a restaurant and check Foursquare before they sit down with their friends, then take a picture of their food before they eat and upload it to Facebook,” — Manish Rathi, co-founder and VP-marketing, Retrev0.
Even with this widespread tolerance, the study revealed striking generational differences in tolerance. (See chart) Almost half of mobile phone users under the age of 25 allow social media updates to interrupt meals compared to just 27% of older users. As far as interruptions for more intimate moments, 24% of users under 25 allow “electronic message” to interrupt them while they’re in the bathroom vs. just 12% for those over 25. And in a widely reported statistic, 11% of those under 25 would even allow social media updates to interrupt them while having sex, vs. just 7% of those over 25 (ponder that one for a minute and I guarantee you will have even more questions!).
A funny blog post today by Boomer is titled “Do You Find People Annoyed by Cell Phone Users Annoying?”. The post is meant to be satirical, but my guess is that it may actually sound reasonable those under 25. Here’s a sample:
“Are people who get irritated about public cell-phone use actually the selfish ones? I think so. I love using my cell phone in public. I come from Texas so I talk loud. I especially like talking to my doctor about sensitive medical information, spots where I have rashes and that sort of thing. We all have rashes. We all have to talk to our doctors on our cell phones. And sometimes those conversations happen inside of crowded elevators. We are human beings, for crying out loud. But I keep hearing about these people who are irritated with people like me. They think it’s rude. But here are some things I’d like these people to remember: The person I am talking to on the phone is a person, too. It’s not like I’m talking into a Dictaphone. And people matter.”
‘Annoying cell phone use’ may be become a bigger issue in the future. I even found an article by ‘Wedding Planner’ that lays down some rules of etiquette for cell phone use in social situations.
Why is it that the need to stay connected with the ambient social network often overwhelms what’s happening in the immediate surroundings?
I think I know. First, the virtual world feels just as ‘real’ to a heavy social network user as the virtual one. Second, there is a sense that something important may happen and we don’t want to miss it. Combined, these two factors give social media an urgency that is missing from other kinds of ‘media’. While this urgency may be a bad thing for proponents of etiquette and for society at large, it is infact a very good thing for marketers — provided we respect the ‘media‘.
I deliberately put ‘media’ in quotes because marketers’ presence on social media is an uneasy one. Social media is more social than media, even if it has a ‘public’ aspect to it. This is especially true of Twitter and LinkedIn, but with it’s announcement about opening the social graph, even the content on Facebook pages are increasingly acknowledged to be not truly our own. Likewise, I have heard few objections to Twitter’s recent announcement that it would allow embedded commercial tweets. These are quasi public spaces, and marketers are, if not welcome, at least acknowledged to have a role.
At the extreme end, Foursquare and Gowalla are decidedly public, that is even the point – to tell marketers and others where you are. Perhaps that is why they are causing such a stir in the marketing community at the moment.
At the opposite extreme, text messages are still deemed private. We grant few marketers have permission to provide SMS text messages.
Engaging consumers, and especially Millennial consumers, via social media requires thinking like a friend, not an advertiser. A friend would not interrupt unless it was important or worth sharing.
Developing this kind of urgent, relevant communication requires a new approach to strategic planning. Yes, a brand strategy is essential for guiding consistent brand personality and behavior (i.e., the essential ‘authenticity’ we hear so much about). But forget about crafting a ‘communications strategy’ or ‘key message’. It simply doesn’t matter what ‘message’ we want to get across. What matters is what ‘content’ will the friend find interesting enough or compelling enough to interupt what they are doing to read it or respond?
In an excellent post on his blog, Creativity Unbound, Edward Boches, chief creative officer at Mullen discusses, in addition to other changes, the way that the agencies must evolve to meet the demands of digital and social media. Indeed he even argues we are living in a ‘post digital’ age. Here are two of his most powerful recommendations:
Start with the user
Read Tim Brown’s Change by Design and you realize that anything you want to create – product, experience, environment, and process – starts with the user. From a marketer’s perspective that means understanding a customer’s relationship to content, technology and community — not just to a category or even the brand – and finding a way to add something of value.
Re-write the brief
The brief has remained unchanged for years, almost always answering the question, “What do we have to say?” Better to answer questions like, “How will we get this brand talked about?” “What can we create of value?” “How will we get people to participate?” “What can we make, invent, build that’s worthy of being advertised?” Ask those kinds of questions and see what you get back.
