Social networks and the sale of strategies, campaigns and actions seem to be on the lips of everyone who is in one way or another involved in this world of marketing and communication. Parodying an old ad of 2006 known to all: what about the client?

The answer seems to be very clear according to a recent study by the consultancy TNS : we are facing a genuine failure of brands and companies, which fail to attract the interest of consumers in social networks.

The study carried out among 72,000 netizens from 60 countries comes to tell us, clearly and uncritically, that companies are throwing their money open profiles on Facebook and YouTube and now on Google +, or sending messages on Twitter that nobody reads or nobody cares .

So much so, that a new term has emerged, that of “digital waste”, which is the expense produced by thousands of companies and brands whose marketing directors and product managers, as possessed by a strange spirit, throw them into the networks social without saying anything and what is worse, without knowing what to say, simply because of being in the digital world “because you have to be”. Campaigns lacking a strategy and contents suitable for clear, defined and attainable objectives, previously defined.

But the reality is what it is, and in developed markets, including 57% of respondents do not want to relate to brands on social networks. If this is so, what good are those 2.8 billion dollars of advertising that Facebook expects to enter in 2012 or the 234 million Twitter?

The study also tells us that 54% of respondents accept social networks as a source of information about brands and products. Companies face the challenge of knowing how to listen to their customers and offer them what they really want to hear. And on many occasions, silence is the best music.