Today’s post is a guest post from our friend and tack-minded cohort Matt Ridings, Founder of MSR Consulting, and a thought leader on integrating social media into the realm of Relationship Marketing. He blogs over at Techguerilla, and you can find him on Twitter at @techguerilla
Fluffervoidance
I have an aversion to “fluff”. I don’t mean that jar of creamy marshmallow awesomeness that sometimes sits in your pantry, I mean those words that get thrown around that sound great but rarely contain much actionable value.
Social Media gets far more than its fair share of this type of language, and that’s to be expected, after all a big part of social media is about relationship building. Where relationships are concerned words like “significance”, “harmony”, “trust”, “being real” are par for the course. But when I write them (and I do) a little shiver goes down my spine and I can feel the bile rise in my throat. My body reacts as if I’m a lifelong vegan who has decided to shove these words made of cow parts down my gullet.
Are these words really ‘bad’ however? Do they really only contain feel-good rainbows formed from the glitter ashes of old hippies? I can’t speak for everyone, but I’ve come to the conclusion that the issue isn’t the words, or even the meaning of the words, but rather how they are applied to an objective.
Businesses want control.
First off, realize that this isn’t a bad thing. The only way to predict and plan for something is if you maintain some control over the variables involved. And say what we will, but the consumer wants them to have that control.
Consumers want standardized experiences, they want to know that they can walk into a Starbucks in one city and get the same coffee, in the same cup, with the same familiar layout and product names. That only happens with a lot of carefully controlled variables. So when we start saying things like “all your employees should be in social media and represent your brand” what they hear is “dude, that drooling dork Jerry from IT could say some embarrassing stuff and there’s nothing you can do about it”.
And when we make the big statement “you’re not in control, your customers are”, well Mr. CEO needs a new change of underwear. That doesn’t make these statements more or less true, but they are snippets of a much broader conceptual discussion that are being provided without context. If you turn them into black and white statements they don’t hold up. “Should you put *everyone* in your company on social media in an *official* capacity? No”. “Is your customer in control of everything in your company? No.”
So why do we bring out all of these fluffy words that elicit the same visceral response in executives that they do in me? A company controls its own destiny. It either responds and shapes itself to a market demand, or it doesn’t. It just so happens that the market demand this time is about customers wanting to be made to *feel* in control, and to accomplish that requires some cultural change in companies that necessarily uses some ‘fluffy’ terms.
Methods are not Objectives
The social media world needs to learn that methods are not objectives. We’re still capitalists here. Our *objective* is to make money. How we go about doing that is via a series of tiers of more and more granular *methods*. Being a company that behaves in the way most consumers want is one method of doing that, which is really the sea-change that social media is facilitating.
As a more relationship driven method is approached it requires becoming better at those things that foster relationships, and those things can be captured in words that are…you guessed it…fluffy. My personal aversion comes down to this, you can use the exact same words but if you use them as if they are the *objective* of the company vs. a *method* of achieving the true objective then I consider them useless drivel. If the true objective is always kept within sight then they can be very useful tools for achieving that objective and make perfect business sense.
Business is still Business
If most companies could have their way, they would make something you wanted, sell it to a retailer, and then go away. Wouldn’t you? No one has ever gone into business saying “I want to create a business whose purpose is to make you happy” or “I want a business where I can listen to customer complaints all day”. Ever. There is a marketplace, in that marketplace is a demand, you build a business to service that demand, so that you can make…money.
If making you happy makes them money, then awesome, but that was a method of reaching their objective. That doesn’t mean they aren’t “genuine”, that is a term applied to the people and the associated culture, but the business is still a business. There are lots of companies out there making a lot of money without making you happy because they leverage some other motivator that outweighs it (low cost, ease of access, etc.). Those companies don’t need to change their methods, because you haven’t yet changed your priorities. That doesn’t make them heartless, it makes you fickle.
In short, we don’t need “less fluff”…what we need is “more thought”.
I love this article Matt. You are absolutely right in that business is business and Social Media is a method rather than an objective. I wish I had more to say, but I thought you really hit the nail on the head.
Well done!
Thanks Harrison, much appreciated.
Methods are messed up with objectives when there’s no clear path for the business to follow. Improvising leads you to this, and then a year later you find yourself with some fancy social media activity and no real outcome to show off to your managers. That’s how most social media “strategies” fail and why managers are not exactly happy to discuss about social media in general, isn’t it?
Hmm, I’m not sure I agree. I’d almost say that the way that paths get muddied is by confusing methods for objectives in the first place. But I’ll think on it. Thanks for the comment!
With “Methods are messed up with objectives” I meant that methods are confused for objectives, poor wording by my side, apologies, hope this clarifies 🙂
Brilliant post, Matt! I couldn’t agree more with your point about social media being a “method” as opposed to a business objective. Businesses get it wrong when they dive into social media, copy others’ success and lose sight of their end objectives. Instead as you point out, businesses should keep the objective in sight and devise a social media strategy as a “method” to meet that objective. As your wrote, it should be about “less fluff” and “more thought.”
Social is both a ‘tool’ in a toolbox, and a larger philosophy in how one goes about running a business. The latter is a much larger discussion, containing a lot of cultural change management…and several fluffy words. The challenge is in educating businesses that something philosophical can also be very pragmatic and bottom line oriented (otherwise why do it). Social or not, all companies would benefit from trying to understand what *their* philosophy is.
I would only add “and better thought” to your call for more at the end. We think too much sometimes, too – but any of that done better can only pay off in the end. And I love the picture of Matt with the bunny.
Ahh, if you only knew the discussions Amber and I have had on the topic of “thinking too much”, there are a few articles here that she’s penned on that if I’m not mistaken. Thx Rick
Matt,
Well said. Very well said.
Nuff said.
Always a treat to hear from you Dan, glad you liked it.
Matt – Spot on. It requires a lot of patience working the “social media help desk” to help avoid the fluff effect. We do a lot of coaching about the use case, the insight driving and the desired impact before we engage … I think there is light at the end of the tunnel, I haven’t been asked lately to make something “go viral.” Cheers.
Thx Bill, I appreciate the comment.
I think the problem is that a lot of small businesses, as you say, lose sight of their real objective: to make money.
Why does that happen? I think partly because our culture has been razzing the “Heartless Big Corporations” for only looking out for the bottom line for so long that we, as small business CEOs, want to be different. We don’t want to be painted with the same brush, so we say things like “we’re going to look out for our customer’s welfare”, “we will build real relationships with them”, “we will look after them”. Nothing wrong with that except that they all sound a lot like objectives as well. Again, nothing wrong with that if you’re in the “customer relations” department, or the PR department, or the Social Media department, but it’s absolutely wrong if you are the CEO (or when you have your CEO hat on).
The trick is to know which hat you have on and be honest about your business’s bottom line objective: to look after your bottom line.
Love this comment Colin, because you touch on the notion of context and perspective that is so critical here. I’d argue (and have on this very blog) that the social media industry itself shares the blame given that rarely does a speaker try and set the contextual stage to the audience (who might be a CEO, or a floor level manager) and instead dives straight in.
No one has ever gone into business saying … “I want a business where I can listen to customer complaints all day”: sounds like a business opportunity here. Out sourced complaints dept.
If we agree that the capitalistic bottom line is making money, and you do that by selling a product or a service, then ultimately what you seem to be circling around but not landing is the larger idea of branding, a hugely misunderstood term.
”…What we need is “more thought.”
We do: about “why” the product or service matters. Figure that out and everything else is easy.
The consumer doesn’t have control and anyone who says that is trying to sell you snake oil. What the consumer has control of is how they feel about a product. They determine how they feel about your product or service because of why the company does it. In today’s marketplace of overwhelming choice, if a company’s why is simply to make money, and all things are equal, the consumer will choose the company who’s why is to make money AND give a pair of shoes to the needy for every shoe they sell. THAT pair of new shoes feels better than just a pair of new shoes.
Matt, you aptly point out that a company controls its own destiny. Controlling that destiny comes down to whether they can answer why they matter and back it up with actions and fluffy words.
It seems to me that fluffy words, objectives and methods are pieces of the larger conversation about how a company presents itself to its consumer and whether that consumer cares about the company enough to give it the next 12 seconds of his or her attention. The consumer’s decision to give you 12 more seconds is driven by a complex set of cultural and generational factors. The insight is in how you apply the knowledge of those factors in determining your fluffy words, objectives and methods.
I think you’re touching on a broader discussion than the context I’ve narrowed to here, but it’s important.
There’s a comment that I posted to Edelman’s blog today that essentially says exactly that. http://www.edelman.com/speak_up/blog/archives/2011/01/the_new_push_fo.html (all comments seems to currently be in moderation, so may or may not show up by the time you click this).
He posits that there is a ‘trust triangle’. It’s a great piece, covering the ‘How’, ‘What’, and ‘Where’ but it struck me that it desperately needs a ‘Why’ to give an organization its personality and sense of ‘higher purpose’. You might want to check it out.
I’m also a believer in the fact that asking ‘why’ at all levels of an organization plays a huge role internally as well. http://www.techguerilla.com/why-a-3-yr-old-is-smarter-than-you-the-power
Thanks for the great comment.
Chad, I really like how you bring into it the “what” of how the customer/user feels. I may question to some degree the notion that the consumer has control over how she or he feels about a product, in fact business may at times have more control for that matter. But certainly the “how the consumer feels” is her or his business, what she or he is about. I like the taste of Coke. I think Coke has a more control over that than I do, but Coke probably wouldn’t taste very good if it didn’t care how I felt and given me all those icy glass bottles in ads through the years.
To talk about why a product or service matters is in my mind more a mental engineering means for getting us on the ad side to figure out just what experiences we want the consumer to have, to get ourselves conceptually to the place where the customer is feeling things.
What is interesting about Social Media in particular is that this kind of perception now is being accomplished less conceptually. Affective sympathy, the kinds of practices that become involved in understanding those you have active conversations with, is when you literally FEEL what the person you are talking to is experiencing, in order to understand them. With Social Media and the virtue of its “conversation” model, some of the things that have been accomplished more conceptually, like asking “why does my service matter” are also accomplished interactively, listening directly to how the customer feels.
The two tools or means are of course interrelated and mutually supportive.
Nice thoughts.
‘In short, we don’t need “less fluff”…what we need is “more thought”.’
And to achieve that greater “boom” it takes a whole lot better “oomph”!
Great post Matt! It should be printed and left on every CEO’s mailbox, a-la-Jerry Maguire. Cheers! ~Paul
Thx Paul, High praise indeed 🙂
You are singing my song! Thank-you!
Matt, you seem to be making two points. One is that there needs to be an attitude change about our business idea of “control”, but also that business minds are confused a bit about what trust building is (its a method for control – to put it bluntly – and not the aim). If I’m understanding you, you feel that if biz-types figure out the later confusion, they will be more aptable to the former.
From my perspective, the problem with “fluff” words isn’t completely the issue of a confusion of method over aim. There is some of that, yes. But it isn’t just that we need to change the way we talk about (and do) control. We have to change the concept of control itself.
Contol needs to be reactive and adaptive. It needs to feel its environment and not dictate to it. The relationship building in the Social Media era is merely learning how to be connected to your environment as much as possible, a degree of connection that really has changed exponentially in the last few years. The ability for a business to sense where it is, and to act with cognition requires certain practices and connectivity, certain aptitudes for how to process what it sees and much of this is relationship building.
I think military strategiest John Boyd expressed this in his OODA loop:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop, a model ironically, influenced by Japanese business. The social media practices of trust are in my mind best seen as building a proximity and sensitivity of business to the ever shifting ground of where it finds itself. Once these practices of sensitivity are in place, businesses can act more cognitively, be it from a preditorial (old fashioned Capitalism) or humanitarian motivation (new fashioned Capitalism).
I do agree with you that its a change in method, but the method itself produces a change in concept. Its not just another (better) way to skin a cat. Its a realization that top down thinking and implimentation often acts blind and less coherently, especially in a shifting environment. Are businesses freaked out by this idea? I tend to think much less so than in the past.
The bigger problem with fluff words in talking to businesses might be that they do not adequately describe the whole power of the shift. They paper over the connection itself and often and do no make clear enough what really is happening. We are establishing presence in people’s lives, sense organs of perception for lasting interaction.
There is also the very strong sense with these words that this is just “social media talk”. These are the words that get trotted out when people don’t have more clear things to say about a sitution – or what they have to say is too technical. They are repeated over and over again in mantra so that they have lost value. They feel saccrine and too-sweet because they are used that way.
Sorry for the longer thoughts Matt and Amber, great post got me thinking.
I think your comment in itself is an example of what I’m trying to get at with the notion of ‘fluffy’ words/statements. The art of taking something really complex and simplifying it down to its core in readily absorbed ways (whether visual, textual, whatever) can tend to produce what appears to be ‘fluff’. The challenge is in knowing when those neat, concise packages contain a ton of wisdom…or when they are just simple feel-good statements. And often, that is up to the reader/listener and their level of education in a particular subject more than the deliverer. Context, as always, is key. Yet with the easy spreading of quick 140 character snippets context is rarely available.
But Matt, this is the thing. Let’s take the words you chose: “significance”, “harmony”, “trust”, “being real”. Why do these risk being too “fluffy”? Part of the reason is that they are drawing on a lot of soft, fuzzy ideas and using their supposed power to convince someone of something. But when they get repeated over and over – as if repeating them makes them more effective – they become a kind of “speak”. People know when they are being spoken to, and when they are hearing “speak”. (And I’m not saying you do the latter, it’s a risk for all involved.)
I DO believe that there is all kinds of room for the rhetoric of fluffy words, but it has to be coupled with the concept change necessary for them to stick and become effective. I think you pointed out pretty well that this has to do with changes in “control”. But how about if we open up these words…taking a shot at it:
“significance” – say things that matter to whom are speaking to
“harmony” – you want to increase the experience of compatibility, and shared aims.
“trust” – you want people to feel their investment is returned
“being real” – talk from a place you care about
And these things are in the service of interaction, instead of mere action.
This can be shorthanded of course, but repeating the shorthand does not make it more understandable. If indeed people have to change how they think about power and control – a big change – we have to continually think about re-expressing that change.
I think your post actually went a way towards doing that. Just adding my own thoughts about it as well.
Well, to take on your example descriptors… Take a statement from someone like Jay Baer
“You don’t need to ‘do’ social, you need to ‘be’ social”.
To me, that statement contains an incredibly complex mix of meanings that has been artfully shrunk down into a nifty soundbite. But depending on your view of ‘social’ that may simply mean “get out there, start talking to people like people”. Whereas I may view the exact same statement to mean “social isn’t a set of tools, it’s a combination of technologies with a movement requiring cultural integration throughout the entire enterprise blah blah blah…”.
I certainly don’t see it as trite fluff, but someone else may see it as a naive Social Media 101 blurb.
Good, we completely agree. I suppose that what I took from your post was something like this: “I have an aversion to fluffy social media words, but I also realize that they can effectively capture just what business wants, and that is control, so I look past that aversion”.
Maybe this wasn’t it, but if it was my thought was this:
a). The kind of control that business often wants really has to change, so the fluffy words don’t always capture what business wants well.
b). The “fluff factor” of our new Social Media words has a possible negative consequences: we talk PAST the problem of change in concept which makes it sound like we are talking about a new aim (trust, harmony instead of $$$), and not a change in method. We sound like we aren’t doing business anymore, we are doing something else.
For me the confusion comes from the idea that we are ONLY talking about a change in method. We are talking about both and change in aim and method.
For me the reason for this is that business has developed TWO aims (to be overly simplistic about it):
1). To make the most $$$.
2). To top-down control this process as much as possible.
The Social Media prescription does not necessarily change aim number one (though it might put in different perspective). But it does radically change aim number 2. The reason why number 2 is an aim and not merely a method is that business culture and the people who live it get real satisfaction, meaning and personal value in achieving aim number 2. As does the company itself. When you control things from on top, you become “the man” (or woman). It is a prominent feature of our culture, and is even more emphasized in business contexts. The fluff of Social Media words comes up against this condition.
Perhaps I am missing your point on this, it is certainly something I can do. It is only that when I read your excellent post I felt that there was something I wanted to ad to the method vs. aim distinction, and also about the fluff factor of some words.
As for control. For me, it’s the notion that in the process of ‘sharing’ control in the new paradigm (talk about a fluffy word..oy) you gain control, if that makes any sense.
Ah Matt, I had not read this comment yet as I was responding elsewhere. Great to hear our agreement. I suppose that it was this paradigm-shift that is involved in businesses not necessarily understanding the Social Media message.
They might hear: “You have to stop doing business and starting doing more of this other thing”, whereas we are saying “In order to start doing business better you have to disassociate business from all these values and practices that you think business is, and embrace these”. That is what is behind the fluff words. But at the level of fluff words themselves, that may not be apparent.
Seriously this was a priceless post. Thank you for not boring me to tears with more buzz word marketing drivel. Points all well taken and if I may tell you I wasn’t sure if this
And when we make the big statement “you’re not in control, your customers are”, well Mr. CEO needs a new change of underwear.
or this
what they hear is “dude, that drooling dork Jerry from IT could say some embarrassing stuff and there’s nothing you can do about it”.
made me laugh harder.
Many thanks Lori, appreciate you commenting.
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