It’s the summer season of 2023 and our workforce is placing the ultimate touches on a 100-page social playbook for a shopper.
Increase, one other social platform launches.
It’s not the primary (or final) time this has occurred. However on the time, this thought occurred: Why are we spending a whole bunch of hours and 1000’s of {dollars} on one thing that may’t presumably sustain?
Playbooks can’t sustain with the platforms, however extra importantly, they’ll’t sustain with shoppers and tradition. It made me need to ditch playbooks altogether. A clearly outlined philosophy is the trail ahead towards constructing a profitable model on-line.
A playbook inhibits velocity
Social media is our most democratic artistic medium. It’s the place now we have the liberty to take probably the most probabilities and by giving ourselves a inflexible playbook, we’re eliminating the area to play.
Eliminating the area to play means eliminating the potential for making one thing really memorable, impactful and scroll-stopping. The perfect adverts from Apple, Nike and Volkswagen broke from custom; that they had a motive for being they usually weren’t born out of a playbook.
The identical is true of the social content material that breaks by, from manufacturers like Jacquemus, Heaven and Ssense. They ignore what “works” on social in favor of what defines their model. Social platforms aren’t a spot to chase engagement, however a brand new world by which to characterize our manufacturers.
Construct a philosophy as an alternative
The factor that can really champion artistic freedom is a imaginative and prescient assertion; a philosophy or a dwelling doc to information the spirit and function of brand name work throughout platforms outdated and new. Create a framework that permits doing extra, making an attempt extra and saying no to tendencies that don’t align with a model’s core values. It additionally permits a model to maneuver quick and adapt, the one option to be within the middle of tradition.
A philosophy permits for change with out shedding sight of the North Star; it’s how we confidently function in ambiguity whereas staying firmly rooted in our function. Essentially the most profitable philosophies will likely be concise and provoking, edited all the way down to the principles that give us what is required most: Area to play.
