What follows is stories of blokes trying to attract women. Both come from my time as a student. Both have something to tell us about brands and social networks.
The first concerns me, or the me I was back then. Shy, odd, and wonky (no change today). Fortunately, one of my best friends happened to be a girl who both both funny and cool. We used to go out a lot and I was even invited on girls' nights out.
What a revelation. There was none of the natural one-upmanship that typifies young men, none of the false bravado, you could talk about all sorts of stuff you couldn't with the lads. At that age, girls tend to be far more interesting than boys. A little more grown up, a lot less led by base desires.
Amazingly, there began some success with girls she knew and a little more from strangers. They even came up and talked to me, escaping the horrors of making a first move. The secret? Simple. Girls seeing boys around girls decide your 'endorsed', you must be OK if women in general like your company. You're 'let in'. This was no cunning stratagem devised by a dark mind, just happy accident, Every now and then, nice things happen to shy people.
The next concerns someone I used to work with at a nightclub, where I earned precious beer money. This dashing fellow was something of a player. Confident, good looking, never short of something to say, he was funny if a little arrogant.
For two weeks, he was given the job of checking on the women's toilets. The girl that usually did it was away. He jumped at the chance, believing this was a goldmine to chat up all the lovelies just waiting to swoon at his unquestionable charm and dark good looks.
After two nights he begged for someone else to do it. His success was less than he had envisaged; not only did suffer zero pulling success, he was soundly abused, verbally and physically. Girls simply hated a bloke in their territory, where they re-applied war paint, swapped gossip and (still don't know why) went to the loo together.
So what's this got to do with brands and social networks? The breath- takingly tenuous link is the laziness, nay, arrogance of brands expecting something for nothing.
There is still an amazing contingent and marketing and creative types that believes it's easy to get people doing marketing for them for free, that the newly web enabled consumer (don't yu hate that word!) is impatiently waiting for them to turn up on Facebook with all sorts of spurious groups, apparently they're all salivating at the prospect of co-creating all sorts of stuff with brands, itching to tell all their friends how shiny and perfect the latest washing powder is.
But just like my colleague in the women's toilets, the breathtaking of trying to infiltrate and interrupt their territory with nothing if value, the hubris of expecting anyone to even pay attention, let alone even bother to get angry gets you nowhere. There is maybe a tiny minority of brands with fans who may do this, but they're incredibly rare.
If you want people to join in, or pass things on,you can't get away from creating something interesting, useful and rewarding. Seed it in the right places by all means, but if you're not creating anything of value, don't expect to generate anything of value. In other words, it doesn't matter if you're creating telly ads or something online, you can't get away with being lazy. Worse than being abused, you'll just get ignored.
Which brings me back to my limited success with student girls. If you make the effort to win genuine acceptance, don't pretend to be something you're not, good things can happen, but there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Comments