Social engagement is down 22% according to Syncapse. Maybe the veneer of social media is wearing thin, maybe we’ve had enough of flaming popular brands or maybe the content is no longer worth talking about.

Whatever the reasons, what is interesting is the fact that we have come to associate ‘engagement’ with conversations.

A cacophony of voices urge brands to use social media to start conversations with their customers.

It’s a case of ‘do it because you can’.

Few people challenge this instruction and in doing so, start their brand down a course of engaging in the most ridiculous “conversations”.

Brands check their bibles for any pretext upon which to strike up conversations.

We produce hair products, they observe, so let’s ask women how they feel about their hair.

We make glasses. So let’s try and get people to talk about poor eyesight.

Sometimes these conversations have the potential to unlock interesting, human stories (though rarely because to do so properly generally means allowing people more space than Facebook tends to encourage).

Mostly, however, they feel stretched, over-polite at best as customers contribute just to get at a deal.

Are these the conversations a customer really wants to have?

Or are they beginning to wonder whether they want their Facebook feed littered with references to 2 for 1 offers?

If you’ve ever wandered down a high street and avoided the clipboards then you will understand the issue currently facing social media now that it’s all becoming a bit ‘normal’.

Because thirty years ago, when clipboards were new, shoppers flocked to them in a rush to be questioned on calorie intakes, sexual preference and whether or not they thought fluoride toothpaste was a good idea.

Ok, maybe not.

But compare that to a crowd around a busker and you’ll see that being social isn’t about demanding something from a customer – even in return for marvellous coupons or the opportunity to look like a celebrity next to Cat Deeley.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

So, no complaints. Not a single customer had to call in ten years to ask where their concrete was.

The boss said he wished he had more people like my friend and asked why he was so different to every other plant manager in the group.

My friend explained that he lived by a simple tagline (he didn’t use that term) which was ‘deliver the promise’. If a customer had been promised a load and my friend was running late then the customer still received it as promised, even if it meant working late (and loads are never, unlike taxis, promised as being just around the corner).

My friend is one of those people, rare in my experience, who pose a real problem to management. They are indispensable in their current roles but would be invaluable ‘higher up’ in a training or management role.

Such a simple philosophy can underpin any other brand. I’m writing this whilst stood across the platform from a billboard proclaiming NatWest’s charter commitments as they make promises (I wish they were different promises really but that’s a separate matter) which presumably they will deliver.

Advertising can sometimes be an attempt to make something from nothing, an attempt to hoodwink the consumer into buying something they do not need (or at least desire). ‘Deliver the promise’ is the antidote to this. It cuts through to the core of what any brand should be offering and enables campaigns to be bold and uncynical knowing that what they are selling will deliver the promise of reliability, genuine interest, comfort – whatever it is the product has set out to do.

A kitchen gadget, the sort we all buy, might therefore, through a deliver the promise strategy, be designed to genuinely change the way we peel or slice rather than being discarded after a few tries.

My friend has promised to retire next year. I’d hope his company wishes that this one time, it’s a promise he doesn’t deliver.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

So we thought it would be nice to show off the latest series of special packs we have designed, this time for Ben 10 Vilgax Attacks.

Isn’t it lovely? Don’t you just want to touch it?

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Seriously.

Eight years ago we were on our lunch break and walked into the local shopping centre. He’d eaten but had the urge to buy some food. He wanted biscuits.

So we walked up to Millie’s Cookies where he pulled out a double handful of the most random collection of coins you can imagine.

There was no way anyone could tell, at a glance, how much he had. He certainly didn’t know.

But he wanted some cookies.

So he handed the cash over to the poor woman at the counter and asked:

“What can I get for this?”

I wanted to disappear. At the time, it was embarrassing and funny at the same time. I thought he regressed about twenty years. The woman at the counter thought so too. She must have thought I was letting him making his first purchase.

But she kindly counted his money for him and handed over the single cookie and some change.

Millie’s cookies taste great. They are expensive, but they taste great.

Gary was pretty happy.

He’d made the most of his money. He could have bought ten packs of custard creams from Kwik Save but to him, that wasn’t value. That was just spending his money and then eating.

A cookie from Millie’s tastes great. They are expensive, but they taste great.

I work on advertising accounts of all sizes.

The big clients spend a lot on media and buy as much coverage as they can. Which is a lot of coverage.

The smaller clients spend a lot less on the same media and get a lot less coverage.

Why are they buying custard creams?

I can sort of understand the big clients wanting a lot of exposure. There are arguments on what that exposure will do for them but I can understand it.

But the smaller clients… well, would they buy a hundredth of an adshell and be lost next to the ad from the big client?

Why aren’t they buying something else entirely and making the rest of us look with envy at them?

I’ll always remember Gary’s cookie.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.