Hello Jupiter? Anyone Home?

While other bloggers are trying to track down which Senator has put a 'hold' on legislation to create more transparency on what companies are doing business with the Federal government, and for how much, we have our own tempest in the social marketing teapot.

It started with this announcement from JupiterResearch and subsequently carried by several news services. Here's an excerpt from Business Wire:

Through best-practice analysis and consumer and executive surveys, JupiterResearch's Social Marketing research will provide marketers and site owners with recommendations on how to profit from the use of consumer generated content, blogs, podcasts, and other emerging media tools.

Rohit picked up the ball and noted that 'social marketing' was already taken.

Nedra was also posting at Spare Change and she and I both left comments at Influential Interactive Marketing.

Now this morning I'm getting emails from colleagues, who obviously subscribe to Google alerts, asking what's going on? .

Here's my open letter to Jupiter. Take a few minutes, and using the email link, let them know what you think 'social marketing' means. After all, we are a community too - aren't we?

An Open Letter to JupiterResearch (since you can't email a real person in a market research company)

As a 'research' firm, did anyone suggest to Emily that she google the term social marketing' before running with it? And if she did, what decisions were being made and why after you looked at the results?

Since it's only been around for 35 years to refer to marketing efforts for ideas and behaviors that have social benefits, have you simply overlooked it - or ignored it?

It is also astounding to me that a company trying to position itself as an expert in social network solutions can display such obvious insensitivity by ignoring the existing community.

When Forrester was made aware of their inaccurate use of the term (as in 'social marketing bootcamp'), they did the right thing. What about you?

Technorati Tags: JupiterResearch, Social Media, Social Networks, Social Marketing

Comments

[mikekujawski]

Whenever this issue comes up, I point people to a post I wrote last year:

http://www.mikekujawski.ca/2007/09/13/the-difference-between-social-marketing-and-social-media-marketing/

I still get emails from reputable marketing organizations like the CMA, or independent consultants confusing the two terms. I send them the above link every time. If we want to stop this, we have to take action ourselves.