Does your ad agency need to have its own regularly updated Twitter account in order to be competent in social media?
That seems to be what this Ad Age article suggests as it looks at the Twitter feeds of a wide variety of agencies. And while folks like me at small, independent agencies often find it amusing to poke fun at big holding company agencies, I found the article to be mean-spirited and unfair.
But before we get to what this piece got wrong, let's talk for a bit about what it got right.
After skewering Euro RSCG for failing to update its Twitter feed, the piece by Rupal Parekh goes on to identify several marketers -- including C-level executives at Best Buy, Zappos, and Express -- as Twitter users who utilize the channel successfully to "boost brand awareness and interact with their consumers."
I think praising the marketers who have been able to figure Twitter out and who are using it to build their businesses is the right thing to do. My own agency advises clients that no one can be a better company representative in the social media sphere than people who actually work at the company.
But I don't think it logically follows that just because Euro RSCG doesn't update @Euro_RSCG that its strategic skills in social media ought to be dismissed as lacking. Did anyone ask whether Euro's profit margins support paying staffers to update the agency's feed?
The article goes on to level criticism at agencies from BBDO to VivaKi for the contents of their Twitter feeds (or lack thereof), before noting that there are several agency personalities who are interesting and engaging Twitterers. Well, duh.
Just about everything in the social media sphere is designed to help individuals communicate with other individuals. Part of the challenge is figuring out what role social media can play for companies when the medium is used primarily for connecting with other people and not necessarily with brands. So it's only natural that a few of the more forward-thinking and resourceful agency folks have developed their own personalities on Twitter before the companies they work for managed to follow suit.
This shouldn't be a surprise.
I think the thing that bugged me the most about Parekh's article was that it made a huge leap of logic that I wasn't able to follow -- the notion that because a company successfully makes use of Twitter that its agency ought to as well. That's like saying that because an ad agency recommends that a client launch a print campaign that it ought to be using magazines to promote its agency services as well.
To me, that represented exactly the kind of tactical thinking that gets us into trouble in the social media sphere to begin with. Marketers who ask themselves, "What should be in our Twitter feed?" before they ask, "What role can Twitter play in building my business?" usually find themselves blowing with the prevailing social media wind, blundering into whatever particular tactic happens to be hot that particular month.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of "show me, don't tell me" when it comes to demonstrating competence in social media. But I don't think that agencies ought to be picked on for not using particular social media tactics successfully themselves. If you want to pick on them, pick apart the social media strategies they're recommending to clients.
Tom Hespos is the president of Underscore Marketing and blogs at Hespos.com.
On Twitter? Follow Tom at @THespos1 or @_MarketingLLC. Follow iMedia Connection at @iMediaTweet.
