I was pleased to receive a review copy of We First: How Brands & Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World by Simon Mainwaring. It covers the rise in consumer power brought on by social media and how brands can best respond. He goes on the add that this rise in consumer power can be good for society and not simply the brands who recognize and act on it in the appropriate ways. The book goes beyond the topic of social media marketing to provide a new look at capitalism. While Simon is supportive of free markets, he wants to make them better with more direct consumer participation.
Simon uses the book title, We First, to discuss a new twist on capitalism – We First Capitalism rather than the Me First. He states that looking for the greater good will actually help the individual. It makes sense because healthy markets and consumers with jobs are necessary to buy the goods and services that create corporate profits and drive more jobs.
The Internet began the rise of consumer power and now smart phones and other mobile devices are accelerating it. He argues that there is a growing interest in doing business with socially responsible corporations and that now consumers have more power to push firms in this direction. I hope he is right on both counts.
Simon argues that the social technology is enabling us to be more human as we can establish greater connections to discover shared concerns. The values of We First capitalism are; sustainability, fairness of reward, fiscal responsibility, accountability, purposefulness, dialogue, and global citizenship. Sounds good to me.
He goes on to argue that a better world and market will occur when consumers and brands work together, A number of companies have recognized this and created online communities for consumer feedback, both private and public. There is also a rise in crowd sourcing. Simon writes that consumers are now in a better position through social media to help co-create a better world that more closely reflects their interests.
I recently saw a study by Communispace, a company that builds and maintains online consumer communities for brands. It founds that the vast majority of respondent sat all levels of technology adoption saw technology as a positive force in their lives (84%) with the more advance adopters (tech fast forward) slightly ahead (87%) on this measure. In a related question: Will technology make of break us? All segments respond make 72% of the time and 85% of the fast forward said make. When asked if technology better connect or creates more distance, 72% of all segments said better connect and 80% of the tech fast forward sided with this view. This is an overall quite positive view and one that I share. The tech fast forward group is also more optimistic about the future. Let’s hope that they and Simon are right. We First contains a useful premise that can serve as a good grounding for social media efforts by both consumers and brands.
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