Stroking the SuperMe: Targeting Brand and Product from a Social Perspective

How are you today? And how’s your SuperMe? According to one of the media industry’s leading lights, all of us who engage in social networking create a “Digital SuperMe … that only drinks the best wine, vacations in the finest locales and has the best and brightest children.” The SuperMe might seem ethereal, but, given the ubiquitous nature of social media, it has implications for all of us operating in the online space.

Alex Bogusky, widely regarded as the guru of advertising until he recently left the helm of MDC Partners, describes the SuperMe as, “a highly-sharable and incredibly robust digital version of our selves… We have created these alter egos and now we not only refuse to live without them but we have a new expectation for the contribution that other products and services should make to our lives.”

That expectation, says Bogusky, is that products and services must help to support or augment the SuperMe in some way. In his post, Bogusky looks at this possibility in detail, using the auto industry as an example (if you can’t think of a way your car can augment your digital SuperMe, you’ll be impressed by his ideas).

But the concept of the SuperMe has implications for those using and enjoying social media as well as those trying to harness it for brand-building purposes. To build a brand through social networking, you must ensure that your brand helps others build their brand. Your brand must support your audience’s SuperMes.

Individuals and the SuperMe

Following Bogusky’s logic, we social media users want to work on our SuperMes as and when and how we choose. The more, and richer, the opportunities we have to do that, the better. We select social networking tools — and their specific features — based on what those tools facilitate (how they support us in developing our SuperMes), as well as who else is using those tools. But, as Bogusky says, we’ll also select whatever products we can, to some degree, on the basis of the value they provide to our SuperMes.

The questions of privacy and security around the content we place on social networks relates directly to the authenticity of our SuperMes as realistic reflections of who we actually are. This applies as much to the issues of prospective employers finding photos of your last wild party online as it does to strangers being able to access your personal information through a casual web search.

Would you use Twitter to contact a contractor about a quick work question, rather than sending them an email or using Twitter’s DM feature, which would keep the message private? Even something as simple as this decsions plays directly into the issue of the SuperMe. The manner in which you’d respond to a work query posed this way does, too.

These questions ultimately relate to the bigger issue of the types of information we, as users, use to build our SuperMes. They raise issues around what constitutes true authenticity — do you need to reflect every aspect of your life or personality in your SuperMe? — as well as the strength of our desire to belong within our individual social networks, our social circles, and our communities.

Organizations and the SuperMe

Organizations that understand the concept of the SuperMe can harness it and use it to their advantage.

Perhaps your staff will be more satisfied if you allow them access to Facebook and Twitter at work, and find subtle ways to encourage them to include work contacts, and report company news, in the information they publish. I found out about Yahoo’s takeover of Flickr through the Twitter and Flickr streams of a friend who works there. I’m kept up-to-date on the social club antics of a company my friend works for through her social network activity — activity that makes me want to work for her employee-focused employer.

Businesses that want to build their brands among consumer audiences might consider how they can augment customers’ SuperMes. One company I know held a competition that required customers to take pictures of themselves at recognizable national sites with the company’s products, and submit them to an online gallery, as part of a competition to celebrate the organization reaching a truly global customer base. Facebook Groups and Pages, Twitter competitions and Flickr groups are just some of the tools that organizations can use to engage audience members in ways that help them build their SuperMes.

As Bogusky points out in his article, though, your brand can support customers’ SuperMes without actually employing any specific social networks, through products themselves. For example, provide a camera in the rear-view mirror of the car you’re about to release, enabling drivers to take pictures of the kids in the back seat. You could tie this in to an online competition — submit your pictures of families on holiday in family cars, for example — but the addition of the functionality itself gives users the opportunity to develop their SuperMes in new ways.

Tapping into the basic human need to belong, in this case through the opportunities provided by social networking, and by grasping the notion of the SuperMe, might be a good way to build your brand, whether it’s personal or professional.

How are you using social media to meet the needs of your — or your customers’ — SuperMes?

Image by stock.xchng user gökçe –
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Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Can Enterprise Privacy Survive Social Networking?

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