It’s that time of year when planners identify new strategic approaches for the next 12 months. This year, more than ever, the cry for a ‘social media’ strategy is strident. But the demand is all too often the wrong one –prioritising quantity (of social followers across a plethora of platforms) over quality (of engagement and interaction).

Social strategy needs to work harder to understand the real needs of those people we want to speak to. Consumer insights should be the starting point for not only what channels we use, but also why and how we use them. And who better to turn to as a guide for analysing human needs and desires than the founding father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud? If ‘he of the mother love’ were alive today, what would he make of our use of social media and what could he teach brands?

Freud’s famous theory divides the personality up into three conflicting but intertwined elements: the Id, Ego and Super-Ego.

  • Id: the instinctive part of the personality – driven by instinct and the pleasure principle
  • Ego: Reality – how the impulses from the Id can be expressed in an acceptable manner for society. Essentially, the way we weigh up the costs and benefits of our impulses and express it in a time- and place-appropriate manner
  • Super-Ego: shaped by society, allows us to make ‘good’ judgements and to perfect and civilise our behaviour

Thinking about the social and digital options that are available to us as planners, there are overlaps with Freud’s theory which can help guide our strategic thinking:

Know your consumer’s deepest desires (The Id)

According to Freud, the Id is both instinctive and pleasure-driven. It wants instant gratification. When we have a burning question, need an answer fast, or a secret query… where do we all go first? Google. We have all been there; frustrated when we can’t find what we are looking for, or the results delivered neither quickly nor instinctively answer that burning need within us. Starting with a good, solid search strategy that considers users’ needs isn’t just good practice; it actually bypasses the cognitive part of the brain and directly feeds their primitive urges. Ann Summers has run brilliantly effective paid search over the years, using tactical response bidding to place its brand in unexpected places where people were already looking.

So, we shouldn’t think about search from ‘our’ perspective (prioritising what the brand wants the audience to discover about it) but rather from the consumers’ perspective, with the brand conveniently meeting their needs. The most beautiful communications in the world will count for nothing if – through a simple search – people who want to discover them cannot. The same principle applies to mobile optimisation. With consumers increasingly accessing sites via a mobile device rather than desktop, it is just bad science that around 50% of brands’ websites are still not mobile optimised.

Understand your consumer’s motivations (The Ego)

Freud’s theory of personality defines the Ego as the reality where we weigh up the pros and cons of our impulses. It is where we consider and craft our response to our instinctive Id. What we do and say is a reflection of ourselves. Remind you of anything? What people do and say on social media is a carefully curated reflection of ‘self’. Consider the Tweet – essentially the perfect (or at least perfectly considered) encapsulation of our minds in that moment in 140 characters; the Facebook update to our nearest and dearest; the artfully cropped and filtered image of our chosen projected life via Instagram.

Again, when thinking about using these channels in communications, we could think less about what we (the brand) want people to do for us, but rather what our customers/ consumers / friends will get out of interacting with us. Altruism is not our driving desire here – even when it might appear so.

Consider the #nomakeupselfie campaign, which raised £8m for Cancer Research UK in six days by offering a wonderful way to give to charity and receive a compliment about your fresh-faced appearance in the process. Compare this with the many social campaigns routinely asking people to take selfies featuring their product in one hand, thumbs up on the other and upload to a pre-approved hashtag for the chance of winning a prize. Can such an approach ever tap into the driving force of the Ego to achieve staggering engagement?

Always think consumer-first (the Super Ego)

Finally, the Super-Ego – the driving force of our overriding personality conflict – wherein we have ‘civilized’ our judgements to create a projection of the perfected self in society. Consider for a moment the engine behind all social engagement: sharing. When we share, we are not only saying something about ourselves (the Ego) but we are also thinking about the recipient. Increasingly, this is seen via exponential growth in platforms like BuzzFeed.

Sharing only has impact when it considers the recipients’ needs first and foremost. As brands and agencies we may be desperate to tell the world about our product’s USP, but why would those on the receiving end of the communication share it; what does it enable them to ‘give’ to their own network? Fiat’s The Motherhood is an example of sharing done right, offering a readily identifiable, entertaining tale to resonate with its target audience of new mums.

New research from Headstream finds that the top FMCG brands with the biggest budgets behind them aren’t always the most successful in social. In fact, competitor brands placing an emphasis on quality, relevant content that adds value are those scoring highest for social engagement. Useful questions to consider before creating social content are whether it something your audience will find entertaining, interesting or educational – is it something they can truly connect with and appreciate?

I’m not suggesting that all social planning needs to be considered through the scope of a psychoanalytic lens, but Freud’s theory does drive home that recurring mantra in planning to place our thinking consumer-first, rather than brand-first. It usefully reminds us that planning is less about ‘what we should do’, more about ‘why we should do it’. In a world where our projected reality is becoming increasingly important, if we want to be a meaningful part of people’s lives we have to understand consumer motivations across all touch-points.

 

By Jen Smith, Head of Planning at Maxus. 

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