I was at a party last week and got talking to a very confident chap about his business and how his company now only ever promotes itself through social media. It’s the future working for him today, apparently. He was so passionate about this that a friend who works for an fmcg company asked him for more information whilst bemoaning the cost of traditional marketing costs. His argument was compelling, and I have to admit, at times exciting. Direct communication with your customers, real time feedback and the ability to build a living database to promote new products or campaigns, it’s all great stuff. It’s true, social media gives you completely new ways to talk to customers, in a way that traditional media can only have ever dreamed of. The only problem is, not everyone is doing it.

Yes, in time, probably most people will be, but for now, and for some time to come, national newspapers and the senior broadcasters are still the most reliable and, crucially, the most widely seen.

Pressing my new friend on the numbers he was achieving through his campaigns he became as shifty as a politician. ‘It’s not all about numbers’.

Sadly, in my old steam driven, hard wired world, it’s exactly that; all about the numbers. We love social media here at Bastion, in fact we’re working on a couple of really smart campaigns. But they are part of a whole, working in tandem with traditional campaigns that will deliver the big numbers. New is always shiny, but for time being, however confident you are; only a fool would go solo.