Tag Archives: social objects

Objects & Relationships – Equally Dependent & Important

I am off to IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals) to speak on a panel about the importance of video in this industry (food/beverage, hospitality, etc..), specifically from the POV of a brand.  We represent many brands and organizations within this industry and I’ll end up showing a few examples.  But my story isn’t necessarily around the videos, per se.  From my perspective, the video (just like any piece of content) is just another social object (which is an idea/term that’s been around for quite awhile).  It’s a thing.  It gets created, consumed, and shared.  It’s measured in quantity (how many people end up seeing the object?)

But that’s only half of the story.  By itself, it can only do so much for the brand (I’m not going to get into the details of “objects” and “nodes.”  In the spirit of keeping it simple, I’m going to talk in generalities re: social objects.)  The other half of the story is the relationship, the engagement, the context.  Where along the brand’s communication stream – relationship path, if you will – is each person seeing these objects?  Brands need many different social objects to develop/sustain/grow relationships with their audience.  These relationships are measured in quantity (how strong are they?)

If each of them – objects (content) or relationship (context) – work independently, your brand leaves a lot on the table.  Separately they might be strong, but in the end, they are still independent. 

Independency is not the world we live in now.  We live in a world that is interconnected (social) and multi-platform (mobile).  Both have a profound effect on how brand’s should approach 1) creating content (in this case, videos) and 2) creating relationships (engaging).  Everyone and everything can be engaged with, consumed, and shared when people want, how they want, and on what device (screen) they want.  The true nirvana for brands is to consistently, more-often-than-not have a bead on where the audience is in the relationship at the time they are consuming the object so you can create more effective objects.

Here, when content and context work together, not only can brands drive reach (eyeballs), they can build stronger relationships.  Strong relationships grow into trust-based relationships.  Trust-based relationships grow into advocacy and evangelism.  And at the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about.  

Are you creating independent, 1-off objects?  Or are you working to marry content & context?  Shout if you can.