Look, I’m no advertising pro, I don’t hang out and scrutinize and analyze adverts, but what I am is a person in the world .OBVIOUSLY. And I use Twitter and Facebook, and I know what I want from these platforms, and this should be of use to brands. Brands are only brands because of the public, and public opinion should obviously count towards what works and what doesn’t.

So last week I was approached by an agency managing an alcohol brands campaigns, I won’t say in what area of booze they deal in, but what they needed was someone to engage users on Twitter/Facebook and needed someone to run their online presence. A cool opportunity, where I would have been free to update from anywhere, and get paid for my hours.

But I turned it down.

As you may have gathered from these pages, I exclusively do what I want to do. I don’t write about brands because everyone else is getting sponsored by them, in the hope that they will sponsor me. I use products that I want to use and that I believe in, and I find it impossible to steer away from that formula, even when money comes into play. And it’s not that I didn’t believe in this alcohol brand, I just didn’t believe in the medium they wanted to promote through…Facebook and Twitter. For me, these don’t create ‘communities’ For a brand to create a community, they need to offer something really unique for me. Just like in the old days, brands were all using TV, magazines and radio to advertise, and they soon realised, when the internet took over, that, shit this isn’t working.

And we’re reaching the same problem today, brands are all getting stuck in a rut of believing they need to have a Facebook/Twitter presence. And I don’t think they do.

I’ve watched the way local brands operate their Facebook pages, trying to engage users, but their attempts come off as weak and pathetic and so superficial, I lose respect for these brands.

As an example of what I hate, the Markham Facebook page often runs statuses like this:

‘Hope you all had a fantastic weekend! What are you listening to right now?’

Now for me, I know that Markham as an entire company, with shareholders, staff, delivery people, accountants…they don’t give a shit what I’m listening to. They don’t care about my weekend. How can they care about all their customers weekends? They can’t and they don’t. It’s so fake, I cannot cope.

The problem is, brands think they need to update statuses everyday. A brand isn’t a friend that I want to chat with everyday. I don’t want to tell them about my weekend. What I do want from them is top quality products, good prices, friendly staff, nice looking stores and customer service that kicks ass. When I have a problem with a product I want to chat to them and I want them to solve the issue. I want to interact with them when I need to. I don’t want to see my Facebook timeline filled with their stupid lines from one person paid to sit on Facebook and post statuses.

I know that brand as a whole doesn’t care about what I’m doing right now, and you know what? I don’t expect them to care. I don’t lose respect for a brand if they don’t interact with me on a daily basis. I truly don’t care.

If I buy a pair of denims, I pay for the denims. I don’t pay to be asked questions on Facebook. I don’t pay to ‘like’ that brand, or be ‘friends’ with that brand. I pay for a product.

Now back to this alcohol brand, I just didn’t see how I could truly make their Facebook page work on a daily basis and really, honestly, deep within my heart engage users in a meaningful way. I just didn’t see it working. I didn’t have a passion to do that. Sure, I could have said yes, signed a contract, and got paid.

But then what values do I as a person have? Well none would have been the answer. I’d still absolutely love to work with that brand, on more ‘on the ground’ projects that have real value to their customers, and I will happily give them ideas, and if they want to use them, they can pay me. The problem with an alcohol brand is, you either like it or you don’t. There are almost never quality problems with alcohol like you would have if you’re Woolworths or Markhams, where problems obviously do arise with quality/stock availability etc. And there it is cool to contact these brands via Twitter and Facebook, but then again, why not just call customer service?

When I was in the meeting, they asked me, who do you think is really doing Facebook and Twitter right, locally? And I couldn’t answer them, because I didn’t know of any brands doing it properly. And I don’t see brands ever really doing it right, for me. I enjoy viral ads, I enjoy clever ads like Nando’s and I enjoy clever marketing stunts like what Richard Branson and Virgin do.

Viral ads and marketing stunts don’t require anything from me, they don’t want anything from me. Whereas, I know that a brand is only trying to engage me socially so that I maybe see a link to their products that they send out, and I hopefully buy it.

Viral ads don’t push me to buy anything, but if they make me laugh, make me smile, and they have a really good product…then chances are I may buy it. In fact, I may already be a customer, but it certainly helps keep the brand fresh in my mind.

The Old Spice ads for instance…those viral ads reminded me that I liked Old Spice, and I bought a bottle because of them. They had just slipped off my radar, and those ads reminded me that, damn I should be wearing Old Spice like my old man used to.

And what I also find useless is these new ‘giving away iPad’ competitions. Once you’ve given away the prize, why should I keep liking your brand? What are you doing to excite me? Wheels24 for instance, I liked their page to win an iPad, but I’ve unliked them now because all they do is post links to new articles, and there is no value or entertainment in this for me. I’ll use RSS, or check out their site if I want to. I don’t need everything doubling up on Facebook.

And on that note, if your brands Facebook/Twitter page doesn’t have that many likes/followers, don’t worry about it. The brands I really like and use everyday, I like them in real life, not on Facebook.

These is a world beyond Facebook and Twitter, we need to get out of this bubble thinking, where we think Facebook and Twitter are the world.