Until a recent time, any action towards a clientele has been defined as B2C, which relates to an approach aiming at bringing a product to a consumer.

Before the industrial revolution, the situation was clear. We were used to go and shop in our local store, and to buy a locally produced good. The shop owner and his or her clients knew each other and exchanged between them. They constituted a tiny and comprehensive community. The industrialization of manufacturing processes had admittedly responded to the mass consumption needs but it had also made the proximity between the vendor and its buyer disappear.

The notion of brand consequently appeared. We were not buying from someone anymore, but from an entity virtually concrete. Ad agencies subsequently born, advocating the fact that the trading success had to pass through a pertinent advert, published with a huge recurrence and according to an outstanding frequency. The B2C was born!

In the course of time, consumers have been surrounded by this advertising flood or even struggled with it. In 2010, we count a daily average exposition of 3000 ads per North-American [source: media-awareness.ca]. In this context, we easily understand publics get used to this phenomenon and turn away without thinking. The problem is that publics want to get more. The paradox is they wish to melt into a self-matching societal mould (notion of mass) along with beneficiating from a tailored product or service (sense of identity). The C2C is consequently here!

Online social networks constitute a tremendous mean to promote its messages towards its communities, indeed. In the context, Tractr claims for a systematic questioning from brands. We cannot freeze a strategy in the long run. The strategy has in fact to be continuously adapted, enriched and modified. Thinking similarly, there is not one target audience for a product but several or even tens. Each with its way of consumption, it aspirations and its audience above all: its community.

Here’s a quick video, which may illustrate to position of some brands having not understand everything yet: http://youtu.be/D3qltEtl7H8

How would you define your brand? Have you ever perform such kind of actions?
By Julien Clari, Account Director @ Tractr