Will real time search turn marketing into customer service?

With the popularity of Twitter's real time search, and some Very Large companies like @Comcastcares, @Jetblue, @Wholefoods and @Ford being very vocal about the importance of maintaining a two-way dialogue with their consumers, it follows that the next stage of marketing may feature company reps reaching out via Twitter Search to real consumers and offering product deals, offers, or advice. 

This has already happened in some instances, but it hasn't happened on a grand scale...yet. Marketing as customer service seems the obvious next step in online marketing to me. But I haven't really heard many tech pundits kicking it around in convo or posts much. There was this post by my fave search expert, John Battelle, that sticks out in my mind. It was posted last year. 

The main idea of the post is that Google may feel to us like it's immediate, but it's really an archival system. Battelle writes, "Google represents a remarkable achievement: the ability to query the static web." What Google hasn't done yet is show us what query searches in real time. 

But guess who has done that? Twitter. Ahhhh...Twitter. The darling of the community sites just can't do anything wrong it seems. But it may have some competition lurking in Sunnyvale.

In a more recent post by Battelle, the omnipresence of real time search appears inevitable when Battelle quotes Google co-founder Larry Page as admitting that "People really want to do stuff in real time and they [Twitter] have done a great job about it...we will do a good job of things now that we have these examples."

So have we reached the moment when your search coughs up what people are saying about your query that very second? And if so, what does that mean to marketing? 

This is what's really interesting to me. And you better believe corporations and CMOs everywhere are similarly salivating over the idea of direct, one-to-one sales and marketing via real time queries. I mean, it's the ultimate opt-in, right? The consumer is actually requesting information and is probably near the end of the buying cycle. Plus, the corporation rep can snag that lead and convert it into a sale, immediately.

I can even visualize what the day-to-day job would require: some kind of marketing/customer service/account person hybrid, sitting in front of a multi-panel listening platform, where they monitor certain key word mentions online and entice influencers with micro blog outreach moments. Do you see it too? What do you see?

What's next in a Post-Advertising World

As a writer in advertising for 12 years now, there have been countless times that I've had to ask myself the question:  What story is this brand telling? Unfortunately, even when a writer does identify a killer brand story, by the time most ads are consumer-facing that story has been watered down to a few incoherent tags mocked up in font that abides by a pat style guide and some predictable product shots.  The end result leaves consumers (and truthfully, the client too) wondering what happened to the meat of the story. 

Where's the disconnect? Well, my opinion is that much of the problem lies in the traditional ad agency model and inherently dysfunctional agency/client dynamics. But I won't go too far with this topic, because that particular battle just isn't sexy to me right now. Instead, I offer hope for the future of ads in alternate business models and companies like Story Worldwide.

Story WorldWide is all about this post-advertising moment that we're currently in.  They see that the brands with the best stories right now are the brands that are winning, because people want to hear those stories. So by creating content and media that captivates audiences, Story Worldwide is bringing consumers and brands together by choice, instead of force.

That sounds so utopian to me, I'm in love. *Sigh* So Story WorldWide is one fresh business model for sure. They have the branded content thing down pat. But don't just take my word for it. Check out their blog called Post Advertising for more of their kick ass ethos and insights. 

I'm also into Federated Media and just John Battelle (FM's founder) in general. He's pretty much a genius. If you're in media, content, or marketing you need to subscribe to Battelle's blog if you haven't yet. You will not be disappointed. 

FM helps advertisers connect with a posse of the some of the best and most popular bloggers on the net (BoingBoing, Behance, and Ask a ninja are FM properties). So while it's not a content marketing agency like Story Worldwide is, it's similar in that FM is also bringing consumers together with content they like, to the benefit of both the advertiser and the blog author.

Send me some of your favorite new ad/marketing/media models too. I would love to see what your getting into.

And don't forget to check out my pal Matt Brand's latest joint, Relationship Retard. I'll be contributing to that site too.