What RoboCop Can Teach You About the Dangers of Social Media

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Fans of the original RoboCop movie remember all too well the searing disappointment with its two sequels. The original RoboCop movie was bloody, intensely violent, dystopian, and wonderful to watch as we saw nearly-deceased police officer Alex Murphy wreak vengeance on his would-be killers and try to find his humanity again inside his robotic self.

The first RoboCop movie was a box office success, which immediately activated the sequel machine. In the following movies, producers largely made the human story a subplot to lots of shooting, lots of gadgets, and even more gadgets. I can just hear the conversations in the executive suite now…

“RoboCop needs more cool somehow… I know, to jazz up this franchise, let’s give him a jetpack! The kids will love it!”

What made RoboCop successful wasn’t the gadgets. It was the stories, the fairly complicated subplots in the original that were abandoned for larger explosions and more gadgets in the sequels, which did increasingly poorly at the box office.

Your social media efforts aren’t so different.

Rather than looking for the next big thing, the next shiny object, the next bit of wizardry to spruce up your social media presence, stop for a moment and assess what has given you success so far. If you’ve achieved any level of success, a good bit of it is likely from your human efforts, from your story-based work and not the social media equivalent of rocket backpacks.

As you assess your social media efforts for this year, put aside the platforms and technologies for a little bit and look at what stories you are currently telling, what stories you plan to tell, and how your audiences and communities will receive those stories. This year, I’m certain the platforms will change. Stuff that’s hot right now will be less so, and there will undoubtedly be newer, shinier things.

Had the producers of RoboCop’s sequels left the gadgets behind and focused on the story of the human beneath the machine, they might have made even more box office gold. Don’t let the same fate happen to your social media efforts. Forget the gadgets. Bring out the human behind your social media machinery and tell those stories instead.


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Comments

9 responses to “What RoboCop Can Teach You About the Dangers of Social Media”

  1. Wow. I saw this title and thought…ridiculous.

    Then I read it. Saw the salient points and came away more a Chris Penn fan then ever.

    Kudos. So damn right.

  2. Sage advice as usual Chris. It’s not about the TOOLS, nor is it about YOU. It’s about your prospects customers and what makes them tick.
    And guess what . . . your prospects are ‘just not that into you’. It’s a pain in the ‘you know what’ to switch. People as a rule don’t know what they like . . . they like what they know.
    Instead of looking for the next whiz bang shiny new tool, pay attention to your greatest marketing resource that’s standing right in front of your face. I’m talking about your customer. It takes 5 to 10 times the amount of $ to acquire a new customer than it does to keep a current one. That means your lowest hanging fruit and biggest bang for your buck is in customer retention. If you are not maximizing this, then you are creating a revolving door.
    What if you decided to focus the majority of your marketing on current customers? A bottom up approach. Imagine if you went above and beyond surprise and delight your customers. Truly exceed expectations and gave your customers something to post, tweet and blog about. That would be a true paradigm shift.
    Do you agree or is this too simplistic?
    Stan
    @9inchmarketing
    #PurpleGoldfishProject

  3. Wow. I saw this title and thought…ridiculous.

    Then I read it. Saw the salient points and came away more a Chris Penn fan then ever.

    Kudos. So damn right.

  4. Chris, Robocop is the product of a studio. When the 1st was made, there was only 1 cook and a small team. When it got successful, everyone wanted to get in, i.e. there are too many cooks in the kitchen and they’re all fighting for space.

    Committees designing elephants etc

    If you have the good fortune to have sole control over your Social Media strategy, you're in luck!

    The challenge is when you do start to get successful (however you want to define it) others will be over, trying to get involved.

    Remember Al Gore talking about how he invented the internet?

    My advice is to learn how to protect your turf and have contingencies in place when ‘false friends’ arrive on the doorstep.

    Ivan
    Beijing

  5. Chris, Robocop is the product of a studio. When the 1st was made, there was only 1 cook and a small team. When it got successful, everyone wanted to get in, i.e. there are too many cooks in the kitchen and they’re all fighting for space.

    Committees designing elephants etc

    If you have the good fortune to have sole control over your Social Media strategy, you're in luck!

    The challenge is when you do start to get successful (however you want to define it) others will be over, trying to get involved.

    Remember Al Gore talking about how he invented the internet?

    My advice is to learn how to protect your turf and have contingencies in place when ‘false friends’ arrive on the doorstep.

    Ivan
    Beijing

  6. Want proof that your story imparts actual value? The Significant Objects Project (http://significantobjects.com/about/ ) bought dozens of knickknacks from garage sales for just a few dollars each then posted each item on eBay with an accompanying creative story. The items that they purchased for 128.74 sold for3612.51. The single biggest factor behind this nearly 30x increase in value: the story behind each object. Stories are memorable, engaging and emotionally compelling. Use them.

  7. Want proof that your story imparts actual value? The Significant Objects Project (http://significantobjects.com/about/ ) bought dozens of knickknacks from garage sales for just a few dollars each then posted each item on eBay with an accompanying creative story. The items that they purchased for 128.74 sold for3612.51. The single biggest factor behind this nearly 30x increase in value: the story behind each object. Stories are memorable, engaging and emotionally compelling. Use them.

  8. Want proof that your story imparts actual value? The Significant Objects Project (http://significantobjects.com/about/ ) bought dozens of knickknacks from garage sales for just a few dollars each then posted each item on eBay with an accompanying creative story. The items that they purchased for 128.74 sold for3612.51. The single biggest factor behind this nearly 30x increase in value: the story behind each object. Stories are memorable, engaging and emotionally compelling. Use them.

  9. Dead or alive.. You’re coming with me

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