Cx3: Grow social capital and go guerrilla

‘Citizen Journalism’, ‘The Conversation’ and ‘The Buzz’. These are 2009 buzzwords that describe mainstream consumer behaviour of interacting with social media, the social media vehicles that interact with each other to carry a voice, and the amplification of the voice by social media influencers.

Powerful stuff if the voice is talking positively about your brand!

Growing social capital enables a brand to more easily and cost-effectively influence via social media networks. Creative guerrilla tactics are becoming increasingly commonplace as brands start to leverage social media and grow their social capital. ‘The buzz’ has to start somewhere, and that somewhere is creativity that attracts the attention of 'citizen journalist'.

The Sony Bravia Balls campaign is a well documented case study as the benchmark for how to successfully use social media on the back of simple guerrilla creativity. This was complimented by the consistently creative Bravia paint explosion on a Glasgow housing estate.



T-mobile’s Liverpool Street flash mob dance campaign is another example of guerrilla marketing generating a social media buzz.



Both of these examples leveraged upon today’s consumer behaviour of recording videos and taking pictures on their mobile phones and sharing these via social media. Both brands listened to the unfolding conversation and encouraged the buzz by feeding consumers with more of what they wanted to hear. As a result, the social capital of both Sony Bravia and T-mobile brands established.

Social media communications are now mainstream and fully integrated into consumer behaviour, and it is this evolved and powerful consumer behaviour that brands need to be aware of and leverage upon. So Brands, what are you waiting for? Venture into the concrete jungle and go guerrilla – your citizens are waiting for you with their mobile phones!

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