The seven lives of social, brands relaunch on creators and communities

Seven lives like cats, or maybe even more. Who would have bet on the adaptability of social, still central to brand strategies. On the other hand, marketing is moving beyond the logic of broadcasting to embrace narrowcasting dynamics: less indistinct audience, more relevant communities with targeted messages. Thus relational platforms are growing for companies that become amplifiers of interactions, not megaphones of themselves. An evolution that could, however, increase communication clutter. "The many-to-many turnaround may reduce some of the disorder - less messages dropped from above, more listening, more feedback - but it also tends to amplify others because it multiplies emission points, fragments audiences, accelerates circulation and makes it more difficult to distinguish between information, entertainment and promotion. In this sense, we do not leave the advertising regime: we see it transforming. It is not from advertising to conversation, but advertising that blends into the conversation and assumes its codes such as authenticity, intimacy and participation, often within an algorithmic architecture that rewards polarisation and performance'. So says Giovanni Boccia Artieri, professor of sociology of communication and digital media at the University of Urbino and author of 'Sfiduciati' for Feltrinelli.

But there is more. That is, communities are not only markets, but also symbolic and identity spaces. "When a brand enters them it exerts visibility and defining power because it shifts attention, internal hierarchies, themes and languages because it brings resources and amplification. Rejection arises when the presence is perceived as colonisation with the appropriation of codes, intrusion, extraction of attention and data without reciprocity: then comes irony, call-outs, boycotts and loss of trust even towards the creators involved," Artieri points out.

The threshold is related totransparency: if the brand does not give something back, it is rejected. "In an exposed society, the brand can become indispensable when it increases the autonomy and well-being of people's daily experience through useful services, reduction of friction and dissemination of positive values, consistency between what it promises and what it does. The borderline with manipulation lies in transparency, measure and responsibility: declaring intent and sponsorship, not turning every interaction into attention grabbing, accounting for effects. If it only wants our attention, it is not relevance but feed occupation'.

Thus the stakes becomeaccountability, avoiding turning the conversation into persuasion techniques. But then can focusing on creators as mediators of credibility work? "Yes, but it has its own fragility because the creator transfers relational capital to the brand subject to consistency and transparency. The risk is the externalisation of responsibility. Instead, in an exposed society we need accountability: declaring interests, data, limits and holding up to contradiction,' Artieri concludes.