The purpose of this Master’s Thesis is to gain theoretical and practical insight of the challenges that companies are facing when they need to communicate, i.e. both socially and across different media platforms. With this Mater’s Thesis we contribute with a new definition of today’s landscape of communication – the definition Social Cross Media, which merges the field of social media and cross media into one combination, maintaining the needs of the modern consumer.

The growth of new digital media, including social media, has meant that companies not only have to use new media as a communication tool, but also that they need to communicate to new consumers.

The modern consumer wants to engage with and co-create both the company brand as well as the communication, having led to the fact that, today, companies have to perceive their consumers as partners and not just as customers. Meanwhile, social media has made the distinction between sender and recipient more or less invisible, having forced companies to communicate to an audience with an audience, who, again, have audiences. Therefore, the rules of communication have changed concurrently with the development of the modern consumer and the new and social media.

Marshall McLuhan’s understanding of how electronic media has influenced our culture, combined with Robert K. Logan’s definition of New Media and Manuel Castells’ focus on the Internet Galaxy, sets the context for this research paper. Within this, we have researched three different main topics: The modern consumer, cross media and social media, which all contribute to an understanding of social cross media.

Our understanding of the modern consumer, builds upon Giddens’ idea of self-identity and how we seek to define ourselves through the things we do. We argue that the modern consumer blog, tweet and share, as an active step in creating ones self-identity, combined with the fact that social media provides a stage on which the modern consumer will try to present himself in a certain way, depends on how he would like to be perceived by others. Brian Solis further contributes to our understanding of the modern consumer, focusing on the connected consumer and that companies need to communicate to an audience with an audience in order to get the attention of the consumer.

Cross media is an important element of today’s digital communication in order to hold the consumer and build experiences across multiple platforms that encourage the consumer to interact with the company or brand as part of the creation of self-identity. This means building a story across different platforms, leading the consumer from one platform to another in his/her search for the unique experience. Trough the perspectives of Drew Davidson, Henry Jenkins and Gary Hayes, we look closer into cross media and how to use it in a communication strategy.
Moreover, when talking about communication today, keywords such as dialogue, relations and people, comes to mind because of social media, suggesting a shift in the balance of power within the communication situation. Now, anyone can participate equally with each other, which can be challenging for companies. We experience how people can produce content on the social media and, thereby, knock out companies that do not understand the concept of making the consumer a co-creator of their brands.

So, how do we combine cross media and social media into one way of communicating? From a theoretical foundation, we argue that social cross media consists of six principles that every company must understand in order to be able to communicate in today’s media and with today’s consumer. The six principles are: Relations, creation of self-identity, interaction, equal sender and recipient, storytelling and availability.

The six principles provide a fundamental knowledge for companies performing in the digital media, and we use the case of Danske Bank’s campaign New Standards to illustrate how the six principles are part of today’s communication and why companies need to relate to social cross media.

Our contribution with this Master’s Thesis is, thus, to bring new insight into the social cross media communication and how to deal with it.