There is a lot of room for progress in marketing and digital social media in the the professional services industry. Strange, because here the human connection is what counts. For an accountant, lawyer and management consultant, this ‘new way of communicating’ should be a logical extension of business as usual.
Accenture is, just like other professional services firms, a people business. The three main target audiences are all about people:
- Clients: people buy from people, not from logos
- Candidates: the people make the brand, not vise versa
- Employees: people are your capital
Some time ago I spoke about this at a seminar of the European Association of Communication Directors, the EACD, about this. Hoping for a lively discussion afterwards I explained how marketers within professional services are really the front-runners on social media marketing. We see B2C marketers move more and more towards the individual and social, which is what we have been doing for years. Now, we do this with an infusion of technical possibilities and under the fancy name tag of ’social media’. But in essence, it is about bringing people together, about connecting. Facebook, LinkedIn, Hyves are in this light the new relationship events.
Too many times the brand is being used as an ideal communication source that sits between the people of the organization and the target audiences. Corporate websites communicate after six rounds of approval, corporate weblogs lack interaction and Twitter pushes press releases to digital contacts. Especially in professional services, the brand should not be used as a shield, but as an enabler of human interaction.
Relaunch Accenture BlogPodium
The outside world does not want contact with a brand, but interaction with the people behind it. With the new BlogPodium, originally launched in 2005, we want to facilitate interaction with our people and let them talk about their drivers and ideas. The end goal is for our people to travel around in the online landscape, discussing our topics on various social platforms with BlogPodium as the new digital HQ.
It wouldn’t surprise me if in two years time, we do not see corporate websites anymore in the classical form. Instead, they will all be what we now call corporate weblogs where the people tell the story.
This article was originally posted on Frankwatching in Dutch
Loading ...
