Umair Haque Is Wrong About The Social Web

Umair Haque tweeted a couple of times over the past week about the merits of the social web. In them he argues that it was built by marketers for consumers, implying that the social web was constructed to deliver marketing messages on steroids.

Umair couldn’t be further off-base on this one. While I agree that the social web plays a large part in helping to generate awareness about products and services, and is a powerful data collection tool, in many ways it has completely reconstructed the relationship between consumers and marketers. Many of the classic methods marketers have used to sell products have been undermined or are less impactful than they once were.

Over the past two weeks or so I’ve been reading Buyology by Martin Lindstrom (Great book, pick it up). The book provides a fascinating look in to the world of neuromarketing and delves in to the techniques that marketers have been using for decades to influence the product choices of consumers. Perhaps the most impactful portion of the book talks about how markets appeal to our senses in order to sell products:

• That amazing smell in Banana Republic retail outlets. Now available in cologne I believe… every time I smell it I instantly think of Banana Republic.
• The smell of fresh baking bread when you walk in to the grocery store. Makes you feel like the food is fresh, eh? I know it makes me want to chow down on the nearest bread product.
• Lindstrom talks about a study he conducted with Bang & Olufsen stereo remotes, one heavy and one light. Participants all felt the quality of the heavier remote control was superior. The difference? A meaningless hunk of aluminum inside one of the remotes, they were otherwise identical.

All of our senses & emotions are powerful tools that can be employed by marketers to influence our purchasing decisions - It’s been going on since the dawn of time. These factors are completely meaningless on the social web.

What Umair fails to recognize is that these tools have potential to shift the balance of power between consumers and marketers. Consumers are now equipped with substantially greater amounts of data about the products being sold to them and can seek advice from peers in an instant. Think about mobile apps like Red Laser on the iPhone allow barcode reading for instant price comparisons while on the move. What about the fact that I can instantly put out the call to over 5000 of my peers via Twitter to ask about a product I am considering?

Either Umair thinks we’re all really naiive or he has a fundamentally skewed perception of what the social web is all about. Today, the capacity for consumers to make conscious value-driven decisions instead of passive/unconscious ones is more prevalent than ever. How can you ignore this?

Yes, the social web is an incredibly powerful awareness-generation tool for marketers. Yes, advertisers have access to more data about us than ever before. But try selling an inferior product in today's marketplace and see what happens.

What do you think? Does the social web empower consumers to make better decisions or is it just a tool for marketers to collect data and sell us more stuff?