Rising to the Social Occasion: A Q&A With Salt’s Paul Parkin

Social media is big with consumers. That much we know. But for brands, it also raises issues of consumer control, employee empowerment and just who owns the darn brand anyway. Salt Branding, an integrated branding agency with a client roster that includes Coca-Cola, Disney, Nissan and Microsoft, points to employee evangelism and careful consumer listening as two of the biggest branding trends of 2010. Chief Marketer spoke with Paul Parkin, a Salt founding partner, to learn more.

CM: Why do we hear so much today about the significance of brand values and brand culture?

Parkin: I think because of the rise of social media. It’s the first time we’ve seen actual employees with an audible voice able to talk about the company. Some are embracing that and helping their employees engage in that; others are being very restrictive. And a lot of companies are still struggling with how much leeway to give their employees to talk about their business.

Everybody jumped on the social bandwagon without really thinking about it and encouraged their employees to create Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and blogs. For the more innovative companies, that’s proven very successful. But the larger, more established companies are now trying to rein in some of that openness. And that’s going to be very, very difficult.

CM: Who’s an innovative company doing strong brand-building in the social sphere?

Parkin: Zappos is taking the culture of internal brand building to its most extreme expression. The way they train, engage with their employees and celebrate them — they really are doing an incredible job. It’s driven very much by [founder] Tony Hsieh’s vision of the company, and that is always key to any culture. It really has to be driven from the executives down. You can’t just say, “Here are some values, and we’re all going to promote them.” It really has to be tenets that are foundational to the people who run the company.

CM: That’s the employees. Today’s consumers also play a big part in defining a brand.

Parkin: The brands that are really reaching out to engage consumers are mostly the fast-moving consumer goods: Coke, Pepsi, McDonald’s. Among airlines, Southwest and JetBlue are doing it very well. These brands are listening and acting on what consumers tell them, changing their ad spend and their product development. But that’s not appropriate for every brand — for example, in B-to-B.

CM: Can social marketing survive an apples-to-apples comparison to more traditional methods?

Parkin: The metrics around social are completely unknown at this point. While there are some real advantages to social media in terms of perception and awareness building, in terms of metrics to support ROI, the jury is still out. Even the Old Spice viral campaign [featuring Isaiah Mustafa]: Was it the social component that made the sales so strong, or was it the buy one/get one free coupon that came with it?

Social is just another channel. It happens to be the buzzed channel at the moment, so everyone wants to use it. But it all stems from having the right strategy. Once you’ve defined what your brand strategy is, social becomes another tactic in how you achieve it.

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