Remember Tyler Durden? The protagonist/doppleganger of David Fincher’s cult movie Fight Club?
Do you remember what Tyler’s ultimate goal was? The movie is so visually stunning, so anachronistic and so anti-mainstream culture–it also had a lot of nearly-naked Brad Pitt in it–so its understandable if you don’t remember what Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt/ Ed Norton) was up to.
Project Mayhem Reborn in Social Media
Project Mayhem was Tyler’s project whose endgame was to blow up the credit card database holding every American’s financial information. The point was to Zero everyone out, to wipe the slate clean. Tyler’s philosophy that American society had become so obsessed with consumption that Americans no longer felt anything. It’s why Step 1 of Project Mayhem is to start a Fight Club. Physical violence was the first way to start feeling something again, anything, even a punch in the face.
The culmination of Project Mayhem was to get us all back to a place where we could know what was essential, to consume what we needed but to leave aside all those things we thought we wanted. Leaving aside the Marxist pap inherent in Tyler’s philosophy for a moment, this idea of zeroing out society reminds me of the effect social media is having on our society. Thankfully we didn’t need to blow up the credit card companies. Wall Street and our government did it for us. Thanks guys!
My good friend over at Opinion at Large wrote this today:
Instead of trust flowing vertically from business to consumer, trust flows horizontally from consumer to consumer. This reality has serious implications for marketing. There is no longer a higher ground in the battle for trust. Your position as a brand is no longer a source of trust for your consumers. Companies must come down off their corporate podiums, and start creating a trusted voice within their consumer communities. Brands must abandon the broken channels of vertical trust, and reposition themselves within the horizontal channels.
Social Media Flattens the Playing Field
We are living through a moment where we have all been flattened. In some very important ways, corporations are no more important than average citizens. Yes they still have the money, the influence, the lobbyists, the corporate welfare, the teams of lawyers. But what they don’t have is the trust of the American public. Traditional marketing and messaging just doesn’t work. This is an incredible development, I am not even sure people quite know its happening. Have we finally seen Project Mayhem’s Zeroing project reach its fruition? I think we have.
We crave authentic communication, outreach and dialog now. We identify with brands that do good, not just make good. And we learn about those brands, those businesses through our social connections. Through blog posts and Twitter feeds, through YouTube videos.
So who has the trust?
There is a bit of a land grab going on now for just that. But from my perch, it is the people who have the trust. Have we finally reached the apotheosis of our democratic ideals? Can social media really be that revolutionary? Are we seeing the endgame of the experiment that our founders initiated over 200 years ago?
People Trusting People
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Very interesting points. Brands are an extension of a trademark. The trademark was initially developed (in China centuries ago) to distinguish genuine goods from imitations. Wikipedia says the first trademarks were Roman sword makers. I remember hearing that the first were Chinese pin makers. Either way, they’ve been around for a long time, with the purpose of informing customers that the article was legit, made by a credible source.
The problem with branding and trust is that they both have have disengaged themselves from the underlying product. Marketing today suggests that you buy a certain brand to acquire a certain life style. When that life style doesn’t materialize, then you turn cynical and lose trust in the messenger.
If brands reattach themselves to the quality of product, then trust will be regained. I believe that without the product, all other messages will continue to be viewed cynically. Yep, I bought Tom’s shoes because of the do-good message, but I believe the message because the shoes are well made.
Amos, you nailed it right on the head! We missed you last night at the Arts Tech meetup, and then of course we all went over to X initiative. Me, Bill Powhida, Nic Rad, Man Bartlett and An Xiao
shite. it’s your fault that you didn’t remind me about art tech. Patricia and I were at X until about 8:30.
Love the thought, not sure I agree with the prediction. I don’t think social media is creating any new trust, I think it is just realigning and repositioning the channels through which trust flows. Instead of social media as a source of new trust, it has just dammed up the flow from one direction and is diverting it down a new stream. Or maybe you are right, and trust has been so undervalued for so long that the “trust market” is correcting itself by increasing the value of trust. Too many maybe’s, but it’s definitely a good thing that your posts make me think so hard.
.-= Eric´s last blog ..Are you stepping away from failure or towards success? =-.
as long as your head doesn’t explode ive done my job…wanna see galactic tomorrow at Terminal 5? going with some people
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