Top two nominees for Best Quote in a Supporting Social Media Role

Image from blog.jinni.com.

The Academy Awards are just a week away…which means Maggie and I have spent the last couple of weeks catching up on all the movies nominated for best picture so we’ll actually have something to talk about when we watch the Oscars being handed out. Most recently, we checked out The Social Network and The King’s Speech. And while I was a fan of both in general, each had one quote that made the PR-and-social-media-loving nerd in me smile.

1. “You don’t want to ruin it with ads because ads aren’t cool.” — Sean Parker, The Social Network

If you’ve seen the movie, I’m sure you remember this quote. Basically, it’s the first time Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin meet Sean Parker. Mark and Eduardo have been debating whether or not to advertise on Facebook. They ask Sean to settle the argument for them and he offers the above POV.

The reason the quote stuck out to me and how it relates back to PR and social media is because it reminded me of something Scott Stratten (@UnMarketing) said at his Blogworld keynote last October: “People don’t share key messages. People share awesome.”

Ads are rarely awesome or cool. Sure, they create awareness. But unless they’re part of the Super Bowl commercial lineup, people don’t share them. Why is that important? Because as we start to transition more into what Mitch Joel calls the “new marketing” and others call “content marketing,” creating content that people want to share is going to be a goal that quickly moves to the top of every brand’s list if it’s not there already.

Content that’s shared helps with SEO. Traditional media pays more attention to it. And it gives brands that third-party credibility or recommendation that all the trust studies these days say is integral to an organization’s overall reputation. And cool content creates brand affinity, even if the content has little or anything to do with the brand itself. Just ask the folks at Blendtec, whose videos blending everything under the sun including an iPad, have garnered more than 150 million views and a more than a 700 percent increase in sales since 2006 (stats from this awesome B2b post on Arik Hanson’s blog).

Ads still play a role in how we initially find out about ideas, products and concepts. But people don’t share them. If you’re Facebook, Twitter or YouTube among others, you need ads to make money because you can’t rely on venture capital forever. But if you’re a company using one of those platforms to listen, engage and publish, why would you spend time and resources on content people don’t think is cool or awesome? That’s a question companies need to start asking.

2. “Forget everything else and just say it to me. Say it to me, as a friend.” — Lionel Logue, The King’s Speech

Like the quote from The Social Network, if you’ve seen The King’s Speech, then you remember this one. Bertie (Colin Firth) is stepping up to the microphone to make his most important speech since taking over the throne for his father and brother. Lionel, his speech therapist, offers the above to relax him and provide a sense of comfort at such an important moment. I won’t tell you what happens next, but definitely see the movie if you haven’t already.

Bertie had reason to be nervous. He’s addressing an entire nation about the impending arrival of a second World War. And he’s the king after all. Almost seven decades ago. The speech needed to be proper, exact and on point. But Lionel’s advice was to pretend it’s just you and me talking here and say it like you would say it to me.

The underlying point here is of course about the value of friendship and the bond these two men formed. But for me, being a PR nerd again, I saw it as advice all communicators could learn from when engaging with our customers in a social media world. The proper, elegant, zipped-up message doesn’t fly anymore these days. People want brands to be real. They want companies to have a normal conversation with them and provide answers when questions come up. The key message, no-one-in-real-life-would-ever-say-that quotes that PR has historically filled news releases will simply fall on deaf ears if used in social media.

As communicators, we should be advising our clients to talk to their customers like they would talk to a friend. Calm down Legal and HR reps — let me finish . Customer expectations and access to information has changed. A brand is now just another potential relationship we might or might not build across our human networks (thank you, IBM). To come off polished and on message is to not understand your audience or your target market and what they want.

In the movie, Lionel knew that advising Bertie to “say it to me as a friend” would cut down on his stammering. But the way I saw it, he also knew it would bring out the passion Bertie had for the words he was delivering and make him seem more real to the people he was talking to. Your executives, communicators, community managers — they all need to be more real in today’s world.

Talk to people like you’re reading off cue cards and they won’t respond, except to make fun of you behind your back. But talk to people like they’re your friend and you’ll have the opportunity to build a relationship with the consumer and an affinity for your brand.

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