What’s wrong with social media marketing?

Traditional marketing methods don't work in social media. While marketing is traditionally about persuading people to buy our stuff against a competitor's in an adversarial way, social media spaces are about facilitating social connections, building relationships and removing friction from communication and collaboration.

What's wrong with social media marketing?

Steve Taylor

Social media marketing is an oxymoron. Marketing, as we have come to understand it, means persuading people to buy our stuff against a competitor's. It is 'us and them' thinking, while social media spaces are about facilitating social connections, building relationships and removing friction from communication and collaboration.

Social media is about participation and conversation. Social media is 'we' thinking and presents a golden opportunity for brands to build engagement and commitment with an involved audience, thereby going some way to future-proofing brands. But to succeed requires a shift in mentality from...

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands