Apologies for the long headline, but that quote from Ted McConnell, general manager-interactive marketing and innovation at Procter & Gamble Co, will go down as one of the greatest business quotes of all time. He said it in a recent speech where he questioned whether marketers have a place in social media. He doesn’t even like the words social media!

I admire McConnell for his position and longevity at Procter & Gamble, one of the most successful companies in the world. So I hope he doesn’t mind if I take his quote and place it in a slightly different medium just for the irony of it. P & G made an entire category of deriving money from real estate dedicated to men and women breaking up, the soap opera. GL baby, Guiding Light and its super couple Reva and Josh, known in web circles as Jeva If there is a way to monetize the continuing saga of emotional discovery, P&G can find it.

More Movement Than Market

Here I go again with this movement idea, but McConnell’s perspective supports this concept, social networks are more a movement of communities, than a marketplace for your stuff. A movement to connect, a movement to share, a movement to change – albeit in many of these movements there may be occasion to purchase something, and surely everyone in these movements is a consumer of something. I contend, and perhaps if I’m interpreting his words correctly that McConnell may agree, that social networks are a unique breed of communication. He is quoted in Ad Age “I think when we call it ‘consumer-generated media,’ we’re being predatory,” he said. “Who said this is media? Media is something you can buy and sell. Media contains inventory. Media contains blank spaces. Consumers weren’t trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant. … We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it.”

His words underscore what many in social media (ok networks) have said, for a company to be in the social space it requires a cultural change at the corporate level. To benefit from social networks is to be a part of it, not an intrusion in it. The prerequisite of admission is to be truthful, candor helps, to give in the spirit of community growth not corporate gain, and to recognize that being social is a two-way communication. So be prepared to change a few things based on what you hear. P&G’s main rival, Unilever produced one of the text book examples of social media at its finest, Dove Evolution

Given his perspective then, it makes sense that when Comcastcares on Twitter aka Frank Eliason, responds to a customer, it is from an empathic user who may have suffered the same frustrations.

Is Business Week reporter Steven Baker active on social media (podcasting, blogging, & twitter) because he doesn’t have enough press releases to read? No, it’s because he is curious what he may be missing, excited about the new answers he’ll get on his blog that, had it not been for these relationship creating channels, he would have never known, and I would have probably not been quoted in Business Week.

Is Guy Kawasaki blown away by Twitter just to sell books? No, and while people do learn of his books on social channels like Twitter, they come to know him through by interacting with him. That’s what blows him away about Twitter. I know this from listening to him on a teleseminar yesterday, that I learned about from social media. Imagine that.

Coincidently, a few weeks ago, I was involved in a Twitter conversation with Kawasaki and a couple of other folks. It was about the economy, plus I had a surgery that week so it was an anxious time which must have been evident in my posts. Kawasaki sent a direct message to cheer me up (thanks Guy). There is a person that need not reach out at all. His physical world circle of friends must have been large enough to keep him busy, entertained, and enlightened. You see, but there is always more, more ideas, more debate, more risks, failures, and successes. That is the joy that is social whatever the noun you give it, technology makes being social that much easier. Is there money in that? Well, I did buy Kawasaki’s book Reality Check.

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