mike manuel

So an upcoming Forrester report (for release, I’m told, later this spring) indicates growth in social media budgets will outpace all other forms of interactive marketing — they even have this colorful chart, so shit, this *must* be true. Now don’t get me wrong, these numbers are all fine and good, but here’s the problem with the data: the dollars for social media programs are coming from *all sorts of pockets* within companies — PR, HR, IT, Web, customer support, etc. — social media programs are by no means the exclusive line item for corporate branding budgets. And you know, generally speaking, I think that’s a healthy thing because we’re still seeing a lot of interesting applications that cross organizational boundaries.