The Missed Myth of Social Media

Or the Mythed Miss. Either way, social media has gotten this lofty reputation for being a challenge that may only be addressed by those who grew up with it since birth.

I can tell you from considerable personal experience, this is so untrue it should become a proverb. While social media buyers certainly have their work cut out for them, as the proper buys are imperative and not always easy to determine within a set budget, the work itself is largely an extension of the creative we've seen for decades.

There is a basic rule for branding that has never changed: make sure you are reinforcing the vision in every medium, even though you may vary the execution.

So many times, and I've worked on tons of social, we are simply trying to engage as we would on television, print or collateral. The execution is different, of course. We sometimes have different audiences and the format changes. But the goal is always the same: capture eyes and ears, be authentic and entertain while promoting.

Please don't get me wrong. Social media is hard work. It still requires deep thought, wild creativity, team effort, strategy, coding and monumental effort.

But social media can often be executed faster than any type of the aforementioned formats. We sometimes churn them out in a week or even a day. Radio always took weeks and lots of versions. Television shoots required more extensive approvals from justifiably demanding creative directors and clients, travel, well-honed skills of the producers, directors and respective crews we hired, countless takes, musical accompaniment, editing artistry from the likes of, for me, Tom Love , Brian Heidebrecht and Noreen Breslin-Moross , production genius from folks like Peggy Fitzgerald and Jim Vaughan . The list goes on and on.

Social media has taken on this mythical personna. Not that the work shouldn't be great or take time to develop. But we really aren't reinventing the wheel here. Just steering in a different direction.