In my last blog post I wrote about the digital people and three characteristics that describe these people in the way they behave and construct their identity in this new digital world.
This blog post is devoted to the first characteristic – one of the most interesting findings in Søren Schultz’s research. That is, that we have lost control of our own “image” in this new digital world and that has changed the way we act and think.
Back in the days a great thinker, Erving Goffman, argued that human interactions could be described through dramaturgical terminology. If we simplify his theory it’s like this: We had a (privat) backstage where we displayed our “true” identity and where we could rehearse our act so that we were ready to act in the front stage (public).
Our identity was private by default.
The thing that Søren Schultz states now is that we don’t have a back stage anymore or not even something in between. With the emergence of social media and the new technology everything has become public by default. You don’t know when someone is going tell something about you in a Facebook post or a tweet. You don’t know when someone is going to take a picture of you – because (almost) everyone carries a sort of camera now a days!
– A small test to prove the point: How many of the pictures of you on Facebook have you have you uploaded? I think I have uploaded 5% of the pictures I am in. And I am guessing it’s the same for you?
We have lost control!
Identity has moved away from being a more static and private thing into being a process that plays out in public. When you cannot control WHAT your identity is and how other portrays it, the only thing left is to control HOW you react to your identity.
And this applies to businesses as well! You cannot do a traditional one-way-push-celebrity-endorsement-we-gonna-tell-you-what-we-are-CAMPAIGN anymore. Because you do not own the right to portray your company’s identity – everyone does and everyone can!
From my point of view, two things follow from this:
- Stop thinking that you are in control and start taking others saying about you serious – that goes for companies as well as private persons.
- Instead of telling me (the customer) about you (the business) in an absolute and transmissional way, you need to give me the tools for me to start a dialogue about or with you. Because I want to do that: When I start a dialogue about your business it gives you or my friends the tools to portray my identity in a way that i want it.
It can suddenly turn into a positive spiral.