Social media giant Facebook agreed yesterday to making privacy changes to their system in accordance with Canada’s privacy laws according to this article in the Globe and Mail. Facebook categorizes this change as  “Delivering More Control and Transparency” over to the facebook users, according to Tim Sparapini, Facebook Director of Public Policy.

I categorize it as the mainstreaming of social media tools and the development of policies and procedures governing their use in order to benefit the general public, build their comfort level with the technology plus provide  private media companies like Iterro with  the structures and guidance in order to function appropriately in the social media space.

And these things are going to create growth in the social media space as the user comfort level increases. Plus, it will give  companies like Iterro more to do as marketing managers hunt for ways to preserve their brand DNA (and maybe their careers) plus grow their business and successfully compete in this new environment.

The changes came about as a result of efforts by the Office of the Privacy Commission of Canada, acting under Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart who acted on behalf of an initial complaint lodged by the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa. The specifics of the changes relate to the following areas, according to Jared Newman, writing in PC World:

• Third-party data mining of Facebook stored data (such as parents, location, preferences and age).
• Account deactivation and the removal of Facebook profiles.
• Privacy  concerns related to “non-Facebook users” or people who just surf facebook pages but don’t build profiles.
• Privacy concerns related to information retained on Facebook after the death of the user.

Canada is the first country to complete a full investigation of Facebook’s privacy practices and has around 12 million facebook users, more than one in three of the population.

T.S. Eliot is often credited with the quote “Mediocre writers borrow. Great writers steal.”

I guess that makes me a mediocre writer because I’ve just borrowed an interesting quote from media strategist Jay Deragon’s blog post on the “Death of Advertising” where he states:

Many say “relational advertising” is impossible. It is to those who say so. It isn’t to those who do it. The advertising industry will simply have to learn how to create conversational currency. Get it? See the difference in the presentation below.

Here’s the presentation, also borrowed, from the same website:

Based on the above, it seems that all you really need to create conversational currency is a good compelling story which does something for people that they find useful, interesting or entertaining and helps them connect with the advertiser and the product in a two way dialogue.

Only then will the “media skeptic” become less skeptical.

The “relational advertising” component is simply a fancy term for two way dialogue and after you’ve exchanged enough two way dialogue and shared a few interesting stories then you’ve developed “conversational currency” which is simply the building up of enough trust so that the person on the other side of the conversation doesn’t completely distrust everything you say.

This sounds like a complex and time consuming process, kind of like a relationship or a marriage.

What happens when there are 10,000 people looking to connect to one advertiser? How can any single advertiser or marketing manager possibly engage in a two way dialogue with that many people? Won’t the cost of all those distinct, individually targeted campaigns essentially bankrupt the company?

That will be the topic of a future post.

Traditional advertising as represented by television and print is changing into something different and more interactive, at least according to people like Gerd Leonhard (who writes the Media Futurist blog), Eric Clemons (who tried to explain why “Advertising is Failing on the Web“) and even advertising executive Lee Daley (who was working at the London office of media giant Saatchi and Saatchi in 2005 when he said that “We’re looking at the end of the “TV comes first model“).

And it’s all blamed on something called the media skeptic, a person generally distrustful of messages provided through traditional media channels.

Here’s a short, slightly sarcastic history of marketing and advertising to bring everyone up to speed.

Now I don’t work for Scholz & Friends (the company that built the above presentation), but they do seem to have hit the nail on the head when it comes to describing the history of advertising. It’s just a shame the presentation left out any real discussion of how to gain the trust of the media skeptic.

Some (like Scholtz and Friends) would argue that the solution to the problem is the use of a good story, told through the mechanism of social media, a mechanism allowing for two way communication, engagement, feedback and even debate between advertisers and consumers sort of like an old fashion telephone call (which is never called social media even when used for telemarketing. This is likely because the real advertiser is replaced on the call by some call center employer reading from a limited script so no real social interaction can take place).

Others, like social media skeptic Jennifer Mattern believe that “the focus on social media can distract PR people from their real work, which is to influence the organizations that shape opinion and achieve business results for their clients.”

So what is social media? Here’s the best definition I’ve come across from the people at commoncraft.

But life marches on and while this new social media tool might have leveled the playing field that existed since the rise of radio (in the 1920’s) and television (in the 1950’s), we haven’t quite yet reached the end of history (even two decades after Francis Fukuyama wrote his essay).

Therefore, marketing executives will certainly attempt to deal with this new proliferation of marketing channels, continue to manage brand consistency across those channels and at least pay public lip service to the concept of building and improving customer satisfaction levels (even if that means they must begin to engage in an actual direct, person to person dialogue).

Some may even succeed and that’s what this blog is about.

We’re going to talk about the tools that marketing executives are going to need to learn and use and especially share with others in marketing and sales (and maybe even at the retail store manager and clerk level) in order to compete with that brave new world of individuals using freeware and social media tools to create their own unique “conversational currency.”

We’re going to show you how to win the trust of that media skeptic.