i don’t have much time to write here at the moment (and there’s a very good reason for that, which should be ready by next week) but i just saw something in a business week blog that begged to be mentioned.

at a very interesting meeting with ignited earlier this week, when i presented my perspective that real life events are just as much “social media” as anything online, jason turner, the VP of interactive, called me a “channel agnostic.” i instantly loved this phrase.

as someone who does not subscribe to the belief that there is any one ultimate platform or approach for social engagement (although, i will never deny that there are most certainly common patterns in its application) bruce nussbaum’s post asking “are big ad agencies so clueless that corporations should avoid them?” struck very close to home.

here are some choice bits from the post :

Bottom line here is that many big ad agencies are making a huge mistake. They are pushing their corporate clients to chase technology, not their consumers…. For example, sending big b2b companies who sell to 45-year-old men and women to FaceBook or Second Life is just nutty.

Different demographic groups participate in vastly different ways across the spectrum of social media. And they are constantly moving through it as they age, change careers, have families, etc. You just can’t send everyone to “social networking sites.” Companies and their ad agencies have to identify their consumers and locate their communities. Then they have to understand the culture and rules of these communities because they differ dramatically.

What you have to do is get to know their customer culture…. A different way of connecting to the consumer.

What ad agencies need to learn is how to do this. They have to connect their clients to their customers, not the latest technology. And if they do their job right, they might even discover, heaven help us, that some of them belong in print. Because that is where most 40 and 50 year old managers in the US, Europe and Asia spend their time. Still.

connecting clients to customers, not the latest technology…. this channel agnostic couldn’t have said it better.