Counterpoint

As much I respect my associate's opinion, I'm not prepared to stand on my chair and applaud Coke and its $2.5B advertising budget for coming up with a clever way to engage the community and get them to try a new Diet Coke that isn't actually Diet Coke because it tastes more like regular Coke after they changed back to the old recipe.

Instead, I'd like to share an anecdote about a friend who manages an amazing hotel in downtown Minneapolis. Unlike much of his competition, his hotel isn't part of a chain with an established brand identity reinforced by a multi-market advertising campaign or episodes of Mad Men. He has one line on a modest P&L that represents the entire means with which he can attempt to persuade people to stay at his hotel.

We hadn't spoken for a while when I received his invitation to become LinkedIn. While I was prepared to brush it off as simply a friend who was virtualizing their rolodex (a sporadic but increasingly common occurrence), within minutes of my acceptance, I got an e-mail from him asking me to call him when I got the chance.

I gave him a ring later that day and with very little friendly of our customary banter consisting of NBA talk and Clark Griswold misquotations, he told me that he was looking for some contacts to help him with a social media campaign. And while I was going through my virtual rolodex, he indulged my curiosity and began to explain his new found interest in the medium.

Paraphrasing up to the border of complete fiction without actually touching it, he said that as a hotel spending a dime to every dollar that his competition is spending, social media offers him the greatest return on investment and most level playing field. While his competition was airing commercials and filling up business periodicals, his hope was to leverage his hotel's impeccable reputation into a network that continues to gain the attention and credibility of the consumer market. Or, to plagiarize, engage the community as a call to action. A call that would hopefully be answered by a greater awareness of his hotel and increased room sales.

That's why I enjoy social media at this stage in its development. For now, it's a community of merit. Like something? Tell your friends. Shoot, they'll even give you a free upgrade/month of service/discount to do so. Don't like something? Tell everyone and watch the company that is paying attention respond to fix it. Or, even better, watch the company who isn't watching lose sales without even knowing why. That is until we completely botch net neutrality legislation but lets not digress.

So sure, maybe Coke deserves a little kudos for its efforts. It's scary for a company, especially one with so much at risk and the bank account to hire even the most endangered Polar bear to a talent contract, to blow up the water wings and jump in at the deep end of the growing social media pool. But as people like my friend have begun to realize, the fact that those with so much are still reluctant makes it even more valuable for those trying to compete with less when they do.