It’s no coincidence that pre-Covid people were already turning towards ad-blockers and premium, ad-free platforms. 

Blasting people with targeted advertising can lead to short-term results, but often at the expense of long-term brand building.

There appears to be a view held in ad land that it was this crisis that created the need for change and innovation. 

I say that's utter nonsense, and here's why.

Pre-Coviddigital junk, triggering ad fatigue and banner blindness. 

people were constantly bombarded with

Everywhere we went, we were greeted by unwarranted ads - tags and cookies follow us from place to place - insisting we buy things we’ve already bought or have no intention of buying.

A surplus of bad advertising was definitely overpopulating people’s screens and feeds.

 And Just like the multi-channel retail sector, rationalisation within the media buying industry was already leading towards significant staff reductions and a return to a more narrow range of services. 

Pre-Covid there have been a number of accelerators for this like the gradual growth in social platforms along with the programmatic fraud ridden ad tech industry. 

Over time this was also being impacted with companies taking control of a lot of those digital services in-house.

I often see the same thing with organisations where the agency has encouraged them to have an outsourced approach to social media, this is because the strategic value is yet to be unlocked and understood by the leadership team. 

The key triggers for this change have been altered not just by Covid, but by the key changes in consumer behaviour, because their ability to interact with a brand, company, and it's employees today is all driven by social media.

Today's socially savvy, digitally connected prospect is using social platforms to perform their due diligence in stealth mode. 

They no longer go to your website as the first port of destination to invite you in to 'pitch', circa 68% of that due diligence is being done prior to any direct contact being made with a potential vendor.

Due to the free to use, and accessibility of social media in the world of B2B there are now 8-10 internal stakeholders involved in that due diligence, they can see what you your employees are really like, they can evidence what your current customers are saying about you, and they can also benchmark you against the same things with your competitors.

If your an organisation that still thinks that 'Social Media' belongs to marketing, the guy with the beard, or the girl with the tattoo, or is just another way to 'advertise and promote' your brand then you're in for a shock my friend.

So, if you still think that leveraging social media is all about getting the team to 'like', or 'comment' someone else's post is a 'social strategy' then you my friend still don't really understand the superpower of this medium.

It's a skill set that needs to be understood at all levels of the business, not just with the boy with the beard, or the girl with the tattoo in marketing.