A study in the Guardian in February proved that emailing and tweeting are more addictive than smoking and alcohol. The media responses release endorphins in the brain. That is why teens will often stay up all night texting and investment bankers trade till the wee hours. In fact, “the London whale” moved the stock market the wrong way contributing to over a Billion loss that JP Morgan in some serious hot water last week.
So does this make our smart phones and computers addictive–hell yea!
Last week, we swore off emailing, texting and social media for a whole week. How sad was it that it was really really hard not to check for the latest email, text, twitter, Facebook and blog. We knew there was a problem when a friend asked if we ever stopped blogging.
The result of the week: less stress, shoulder pain and the realization that we didn’t miss a thing!
Meanwhile, Social media is struggling to find its place in the marketing mix by delivering a real return on investment. Facebook’s IPO did sputter a bit and during the offering GM pulled its advertising. Meanwhile, we are still closely monitoring how P&G uses the social media since they have a marketing mix model and their CMO stated that Facebook had proved its value. Love to hear your thoughts on this market implications….
Related articles
- http://www.sync-blog.com/sync/2012/02/social-networking-email-more-addictive-than-smoking-drinking-study.html
- A Revolutionary Campaign from P&G: Moms as Extraordinary! (revolutionarymarketingideas.com)
- Facebook ROI perspective : P&G’s Old Spice Case Study ttp://revolutionarymarketingideas.com/2012/02/01/facebook-roi-perspective-pgs-old-spice-case-study/
- Do You Have Facebook Addiction Disorder? (johnchow.com)
- From Social Media denial to Social Media addiction? (bloggingraul.wordpress.com)
- Social Media and Addiction (madisonsmc.org)
As always, you’ve provided an insightful piece of commentary, not to mention an example of what just might amount to heroic sacrifice in the intensely digitally-connected 21st century. One wonders whether businesses find social media similarly captivating. Certainly, there are some compelling arguments for such an outcome. A few include, opportunities to segment markets in new ways, enhance appeals to social shoppers, sharpen product or service differentiation, expand customer service reach, and obtain near real-time market intelligence from social media postings about competitors, substitutes, and emerging trends. Perhaps with its post-IPO valuation of more than 100 times earnings, Facebook is counting on that aspect and its new shareholders are hoping it is real.
I spend lots of day time with social media for work. Its why I like to ride my bike, I can totally get away from the digital space. I also don’t have a TV at home and purposely only have 768K upload and download at home so I can’t watch videos due to streaming delays. Wendy – my social presence at Xeeme.com/wendysoucie