Marketers need to recognize the order and permanence of human evolution. Once our species started to walk upright on two legs, we never permanently returned to walking on all fours. Such is also the case between the lower social order of communication called “Information” and the higher social order of communication called “Knowledge”. I will explain the difference now.
Social Value written or spoken to a medium is defined as Information.
Social Value which exists only between human ears is defined as Knowledge.
Likewise,
Social Value is created by transforming Information into Knowledge.
Social Value is reduced by transforming Knowledge into Information.
Once humans learn to create, store, exchange, and trade knowledge among each other, they will never return to the utterly primitive practice of mining and exploiting information.
If you agree with me then I congratulate you for your advanced state of evolution. If you do not agree with me, then I apologize for the inconvenience.
Living in the Past
Advertisers have an especially hard time with this because it is their core competence to devolve human knowledge into information through data mining, social media espionage, and machine gun marketing – all without necessarily elevating anyone to a higher state of social order. This is, by definition, a reduction of social value.
Consumers now walk on two feet in forming a strategic networks of knowledge assets in social media. Meanwhile advertisers still slither around on all fours pimping info biscuits. Consumers can easily see when Value is being stolen from them so they simply ignore the screeches and clamoring of the devolved creature. Or worse, a counter attack is a very simple – and often quite entertaining – using an evolved tool set.
Holy shit, I need a Guru:
So, the advertisers go off and hire a Social Media Guru to make the old evolutionary order all better again. The Social Media Guru does all sorts of things that look civilized to a four-legged creature, but appear increasingly ridiculous to the evolved being.
Lo and behold, the advertiser is hugely successful in attracting lots of other four-leggers and believes this to be progress!! This makes the Guru into a Celebrity. But still, the advertiser simply cannot get any attention from the two-leggers, who now control all the Value. So, the advertiser goes back to the Social Media Guru who responds by joining forces with yet another Social Media Guru….
Surely two gurus are better than one, especially to those who still believe that four legs are better than two.
