According to Media Week’s Justin Hunt, many of these same agencies are in danger of repeating the mistake with social media.  In a recent post, he contrasts Dell’s enlightened decision to allow employees to access social media with the attitude of many agencies who use firewalls to prevent their staff from tracking how their clients’ brands are being portrayed on sites such as YouTube.  How can they claim to be guardians of their clients’ brands if they can’t even see how they are being treated in social media?

We devote a whole chapter in our new book to Dell’s transformation from blogging pariah to arch advocate of social media and this is yet another sign that Michael Dell and his team truly get it.  Check out Jeff Jarvis’ regular postings on the topic if you are interested. If only agency owners were as smart.

I particularly recommend a piece he wrote a few weeks ago on The five sexiest ideas in politics. In this he summarises some of the key thinking in the area of social psychology, which is the emerging intellectual discipline focused on people’s behaviour. Most marketers have an intuitive understanding of the concepts summarised by Finkelstein, but it still helps to have an intellectual underpinning for ideas such as “social norms” (how we tend to copy the behaviour of those around us) or “situationalism” (how the situation in which we find ourselves also shapes our behaviour). Many of these same ideas will also find their way onto the marketing conference platforms during the next 18 months.

So tear your eyes away from the gossip columns and sports pages and check out what is being debated in the politics sections – it is not all John Lewis furniture allowances and Olympics over-spends.