CEOs must wake up to social media

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Peter Aceto, the CEO of Tangerine, recently said in The Globe and Mail, “I would rather engage in a Twitter conversation with a single customer than see our company attempt to attract the attention of millions in a coveted Superbowl commercial.”

This is the preference of a truly social CEO. Unfortunately, chief executives that embrace and understand the promise of social media are rare, so rare that we call them “blue unicorns” in our book A World Gone Social. Why blue unicorns? Because CEOs that embrace social as much as leaders like Aceto are still so uncommon that we aren’t just looking for any unicorn, we’re looking for a specific color of unicorn.

Reference:  The 7 Attributes of CEOs who Get Social Media. 

Methinks authors Ted Coiné and Mark Babbitt way overstate their point about what Peter Aceto says.  A well-crafted, well-delivered commercial during the Super Bowl can spell millions of dollars for a company, which would take an arduous, undoubtedly impractical effort to nurture one customer at a time on Twitter.  But their suggestions are all points very well taken.  In truth the potential audience on likes of Facebook, Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn far far exceeds that of a one-night Super Bowl.

So any CEO who neglects, denies or otherwise dismisses this truth needs to wake up and sidle out of the rock they've been sleeping under.  But as one former manager said, If the people won't change, change the people.  CEOs who remain incapable or recalcitrant vis-a-vis social media will simply fade away in the sunset, as more savvy, plugged-in CEOs take up their proper places on the mantelpiece.