George Magazine

opinion GROEGER MARKETS ARE LARS DR Lecturer, MGSM CONVERSATIONS When Time presented its Person of the Year 2006, it was you. People like you and me who generate content by uploading videos on YouTube, creating a Wikipedia entry or posting holiday pictures on flickr. Consumers who used to be sitting passively in the audience were now centre stage—actively producing content and initiating conversations about products and brands for everyone to hear and to be forever archived by search engines. The web is enabling conversations that were simply not possible in the era of mass media. This change has often been described as a media revolution, in the sense that technology enables people to challenge established communication patterns. Yet before the Industrial Age, markets were all about conversations: most products were customised, relationships were extremely important, prices were negotiated and trust was of utmost importance. Ultimately, this media change is only forcing companies to reconsider long-held values that seem to have disappeared: truly engaging in a dialogue with the market as opposed to speaking in the language of the pitch. By now, every CEO knows what social media is and that it is a tool with which to have a conversation; they also know how powerful it can be in reaching a large audience in a short time at almost no cost. Yet, getting the young and hip people in the marketing department to 'do something on Facebook' does not necessarily mean your company is truly engaging in a dialogue. Instead of applying one-way communication tactics to social media, a company might be better off using its limited marketing resources elsewhere. Following the perspective that markets are conversations in which interaction drives transaction, it is unjustifiable to initiate social media campaigns without having a clear strategy and specific objectives—yet it still happens too often. Before a company launches a campaign, it should ask a number of fundamental questions: Who is our target audience? Who do we want to engage with? What are they interested in? Why are we doing this? What do we want to achieve? LARS GROEGER, MACQUARIE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT Once a company has a specific answer to these questions it should then start to listen, learn and ultimately engage in a meaningful dialogue. Dr Lars Groeger is a lecturer in management (marketing) at Macquarie Graduate School of Management. MGSM is one of the oldest business schools in Australia and has maintained a reputation for providing high- quality, flexible postgraduate education over the past 40 years. The school's mission is to develop leaders with a global mindset who create sustainable value and are good citizens. george.opinion 14

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