• by Catharine P. Taylor , June 25, 2008

It's somewhat ironic that, as the emcee of OMMA Social on Monday, I spent less time Facebooking, Twittering and blogging than I have in weeks. The venues were certainly open to me. I could have posted to Mediapost's Raw blog, or Twittered (tweeted?) about my own impressions of the conference. But there was always a missing speaker to find, an introduction to make, a housekeeping reminder to make from the podium.

Meanwhile, the crowd was interacting through both the forums themselves -- actual face time! --  and through its variety of devices. With panels on mining social media behavior, the best and worst of social media initiatives, and a rowdy debate on whether or not many social media platforms will ever be monetizable, it might seem hard to find a theme of the day. Still, one existed -- neatly summarized by Socialvibe President (and Online Spin columnist) Joe Marchese, who suggested that agencies should "get JFK" on their clients, challenging them to ask not what social media can do for their brands, but what their brands can do for social media.

President Kennedy might be rolling in his grave at that remark -- except for the fact that Barack Obama, surely an heir to his legacy, has over 1 million supporters on Facebook, and 40,000 followers on Twitter. Maybe this social media thing is all it's cracked up to be.

But back to the theme. Whether it was Social Media Networks CEO Seth Goldstein saying he had a new ad format that would set the right tone between advertisers and social media users, Lego's online community executive Peter Hobolt Jensen stressing to the crowd that they must "know and understand what your constituents want," or Ogilvy Executive Director Paul Beck calling the company's no. 1 priority in 2008 to be listening, the day was clearly about the difficult realization for many advertisers that the consumer is in control. I'd never thought of it in quite this way before, but for advertisers, social media isn't just about transparency and honesty, it's about humility.

During the course of the day, one brand that was mentioned as striking out in the social media space was Target, partly because of the perception, communicated through the company's sprightly ads, that it, to paraphrase Jensen, knows and understands what its constituents want: cool goods at low prices. But OMMA Social panelists pointed out two of the retailer's major social media gaffes. If you haven't heard of them, one involved a blogger who wrote Target because she was offended by an ad that showed a woman's legs spread apart. Target wrote back that it couldn't really respond before" because Target does not participate with non-traditional media outlets. This practice is in place to allow us to focus on publications that reach our core guest." In other words, you're not important to us. Take a hike.

The other involved a Target program on Facebook in which selected people called Rounders were asked not to make public their affiliation with Target, while they were simultaneously singing the chain's praises. (In this story, the company says that this communication to Rounder members was the fault ofthe company that was running the initiative for Target, but the damage to Target was done.)

I'd never connected the dots on those two stories before, and found it surprising they both involved Target. On the other hand, maybe I shouldn't be so surprised. For all the talk about ways to monetize social media properties, advertisers have to get the tone right first. And if Target is any indication, even the savviest marketers have a long way to go to discover that tone, and discover their humility.

Thanks to all who attended OMMA Social. Please get in touch with your thoughts and suggestions. I'm hoping Monday won't be the last time that so many of us get to see each other face-to-face, instead of only Facebook-to-Facebook.