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Quick Summary: Read about how engagement is only the middle level in the ‘Marketing Chain of Being’ and how social media and customer service are only tools to create engagement.

The topic of the week in the marketing and public relations blogosphere is whether customer service is the new marketing, so much so that there’s even an upcoming event on the topic.

Most of the posts on the topic have focused on how social media is causing customer service and public relations to merge into each other to form the fabric of a new marketing paradigm.

I’m a brand manager, not a PR practitioner, and I can’t but feel that the above statement is rather simplistic. Yes, customer service is important. Yes, word of mouth is important, and, by association, public relations is important. Yes, good (or bad) customer service is an important factor in creating favorable (or unfavorable) word of mouth. Yes, social media gives customers the tools to amplify word of mouth. Yes, yes, yes and yes. But that’s only part of the story. Let me tell you the real story by going back to my post on the Marketing Chain of Being.

There are five levels in the Marketing Chain of Being — commodity hell (think groceries), differentiation (think automobiles), engagement (think Dell), cultural currency (think Nike+iPod) and meaning (think Google).

The aim of all brands is to move from commodity hell to differentiation to engagement to cultural currency to meaning — and there are no exceptions to this rule.

Dell is often held up as the perfect example of a company that has embraced social media, and it has indeed done a fantastic job in creating differentiation and engagement in a product category stuck in commodity hell, but compare the handful of Dell evangelists with the hordes of Nike or Apple or Google evangelists and you’ll understand what I’m talking about.

So, is customer service important? Yes. Is customer service more important than ever before? Yes. Is customer service the new marketing? Of course not!

As you can see from the comments below, I have managed to annoy some marketing/ public relations blogging biggies with my insistence that marketing is not equal to public relations plus customer service.

I have a theory on why it is so difficult for us to agree on that simple statement, but before I come to that, let me first set the background with The Three Laws of the Marketing Chain of Being –

- The first law is that all brands want to move up the Marketing Chain of Being.
- The second law is most brands can move up the Marketing Chain of Being.
- The third law is that very few brands do move up the Marketing Chain of Being.

Why do only a few brands move up the Marketing Chain of Being when all of them want to and most of them can?

Let’s forget the upper half of the Marketing Chain of Being for a moment and focus on the lower half. If discipline backed by resources is all that is required to move up from commodity hell to differentiation to engagement, it’s surprising, and maybe even shocking, that such few brands have reached the engagement level.

The brand manager in me rationalizes that brands haven’t been able to build genuine engagement on a widespread basis because they haven’t had the right tools for it so far.

In response to that, the marketing thinker in me wonders why Dell is the only name that comes up in case study after case study on engagement when social media has given brands the tools they need to build engagement.

I understand why social media enthusiasts have a tendency to equate marketing with social media. Social media gives brands the tools they need to deliver genuine service experiences and move to the engagement level in the Marketing Chain of Being. However, brands are still struggling with social media and such few brands have mastered these tools that its easy to forget that engagement is only the middle level in the Marketing Chain of Being.

Once again, I’m not trying to belittle the importance of social media or public relations or customer service. All I’m saying is that the best brands (Apple, Nike, Google) don’t operate at the engagement level; they operate in the upper half of the Marketing Chain of Being, and concern themselves with creating cultural currency and meaning.

Valeria Maltoni started the conversation with her post at FastCompany and Todd Defren, Brian Solis, Neville Hobson, Susan Getgood, Kami Huyse, Wendy Harman, My Creative Team, Becky Carrol and Tom O’Brien have posted interesting perspectives on the topic.

Related posts:

1. The Three Laws of the Marketing Chain of Being
2. When Should Marketers Use Social Media?
3. List of Marketing, Public Relations & Social Media Blogs in India
4. Yours Truly Quoted in Story on Social Media Marketing in India in the Online Magazine of IAMAI (Internet and Mobile Association of India)
5. Three Reasons Why Storytelling is the Key to Social Media Marketing Success