The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

June 29, 2010 | 3 min read

Marketing expert Trey Pennington believes that most large scale companies have yet to realise the potential that the use of social media can have in marketing and maintaining their brands.

Talking to The Drum while in Glasgow to speak at a Media140 event, Pennington said that social media gave smaller companies an advantage because they were able to better communicate to their customers through its use.

“Large companies are unable to relate to their customers in the same way that the smaller ones can which is why the larger ones get clobbered online. As a result, what will replace them are small businesses, tightly joined together through digital technology.”

Pennington continued to say that being connected through social media allowed companies to talk to their customer’s one a one-to-one basis and answer their questions and solve their customer service problems more effectively.

As to whether it was necessary for companies to invoke social media as part of their marketing strategies, Pennington said that he believed most were doing so but that didn’t mean that it was for everyone, before citing an example of a company which creates bullet resistant material for Government clients as one which really shouldn’t.

“Anyone who is serving a non-Government entity, there is probably a good reason to be involved somehow on social media,” he added.

“It’s not just a sales channel though. Although I’ve defined it in a marketing context, there are several other contexts that apply to it too. There’s product development. Quorn is doing a great job online, engaging with customers and answer questions but Quorn has yet to use social media for product develops. They’ve never tapped into the wisdom for what they are going to do next. The same with Facebook which is a colossal failure in that they don’t actually use their tool to make their tool better,” he continued.

See below to watch Pennington's talk while addressing the Glasgow audience at Media140.

Trey Pennington discusses Social Media in the context of Marketing from media140 on Vimeo.

Trey talking about those that surround us from media140 on Vimeo.

Trey Pennington on Social Media Guru's from media140 on Vimeo.

Trey Pennington ... Thoughts on presentation from media140 on Vimeo.