March 1, 2017 · 4:32 pm

Ignorance Is No Excuse

I don’t think any of us like being deceived unless we’re watching a magic show. It’s especially angering when you find out that what you believed to be a trusted source has told you something based on someone paying them to do so. You might be aware that several years ago the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued rules about the need to clearly label paid social media posts as ads so that consumers aren’t deceived by ads masquerading as content.

English: Fined Stamp text

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Several companies have been fined as a result of failing to follow the rules. Lord & Tayor, for example, was fined because they paid 50 online fashion “influencers” to post Instagram pictures of themselves wearing the same paisley dress but failed to disclose they had given each influencer the dress, as well as thousands of dollars, in exchange for their endorsement. The folks at Warner Brothers were fined for failing to adequately disclose that it paid online influencers thousands of dollars to post positive gameplay videos on YouTube and social media. Over the course of the campaign, the sponsored videos were viewed more than 5.5 million times.

I bring this up because I saw a piece this morning headlined

Marketers ‘Unaware’ of FTC Social Media Guidelines Regulating Influencers

Only one in 10 know sponsored posts should be tagged as ads, study finds.

Seriously? These rules have been in place since 2009 and were updated in 2013. 60% of influencers – the people who are paid to put this stuff out there with their endorsement – are fully aware of the rules and do a good job of following them. The people paying them? Not so much.

But wait! There’s more! I found this especially perturbing:

A significant minority of influencers said it’s not uncommon for brands to ask them to hide the fact that their post is sponsored.

I’m not sure which is worse – ignorance of the rules or the willful violation of them. Either way, it’s really a problem. Ignorance of the rules is certainly no excuse. One could argue that consumers are sophisticated enough to understand that even traditional product reviews often came based on the product being made available to the reviewer for free. I think most folks assume that unless we’re into the realm of reviews posted by normal people on Amazon or Yelp or Trip Advisor, most “influencer” reviews or posts involve money changing hands. All celebrity endorsements do and seeing an athlete or actor endorsing a product, one can safely assume it’s an ad.

Maybe these marketers can shrug their shoulders and think of the fines as a cost of doing business. That’s short-sighted since the hit to their reputations is larger than the fine, whatever that fine may be. All of us need to know and follow the rules that are in place when it comes to paying people to promote our products. If we don’t the choice is to be labeled ignorant or sleazy, and neither is a great option. You agree?

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February 27, 2017 · 4:39 pm

Learn To Shut Up

I don’t suppose it will be a great shock to any of you that there is new research out that shows marketers can be their own worst enemies. The study comes from Bridge Ratings and is entitled The Facebook Fatigue Dilemma. There is quite a bit in the study but the section I found of relevance to us today concerns why users unfriend or unlike a brand. Not surprisingly, it’s because they are being inundated with marketing messages, and while they can’t really control which ads they’re seeing (more about that in a second), they can control what pops up in their news feed by telling the brand to go away via unfriending.download

What they study shows, as reported by eMarketer, is “44% of respondents “unliked” a brand on the social media platform when the company posted too frequently. Likewise, 43% of those polled said they “unliked” brands because their Facebook walls became too crowded with marketing posts, forcing them to cut down on the number of brands that they follow.”

As marketers, we forget sometimes that our brilliant messages are not the only messages the consumer is seeing. While what we have to say is important both to us and the consumer (hopefully), we are just one of a thousand messages the consumer is seeing that day. We need to learn to shut up unless and until we have fresh content that’s relevant to the consumer.

Of course, we can also do a little educating. Going off on a tangent here, I’m convinced, based on my discussions with many Facebook users, that most people have no clue how to tune their Facebook feeds to serve them. I’ve yet to see any marketer run a campaign within Facebook helping users to use the platform (and to presumably keep your incredibly helpful posts front and center). Do you use the little drop-down tab in each and every news feed post to tune the stream? How about using lists to segment various things? Do you actively report your feelings about various ads to the Facebook algorithm to help make what you see more relevant?

Media isn’t a megaphone. Marketing isn’t a monologue. We need to learn to shut up until we really have something to say, don’t we?

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February 24, 2017 · 10:16 am

Foaming At the Mouth

This Foodie Friday, let’s talk about foams for a minute. Food foams, that is, and not the thick ones such as whipped cream, marshmallows, or even cake. I mean the foams that have come out of molecular gastronomy and are made out of mushrooms or parmesan cheese or just about anything else. Throw some stabilizing agent (agar, lecithin,etc.) into a liquid, grab the old immersion blender and voila: foam.

Let me give you two prominent cooks takes on them. The first is Gordon Ramsay:

If I want foam I will stick to my bubble bath after the end of a long week. Watching foam sit on a plate and 30 seconds later it starts to disintegrate and it starts to look like toxic scum on a stagnant pool of crap. I don’t want to eat foams. It’s not good.

Then there is Alton Brown‘s take:

Don’t think you can replace cooking technique with throwing a bunch of flavors on top of something. Any more than you can making it into a caviar. Or making it into a foam. If I live the rest of my culinary life without a seeing another foam, I’ll be OK. I’m sick to death of foam. What does foam do? Cover our bad cooking, by and large.

I must admit that I’m not particularly a fan of foams on my plate but I find the above two quotes of interest to us today because each also contains a business point. Chef Ramsay rightfully points out that when customers purchase a product they expect it to perform and endure. If you have kids, you know the experience of toys being destroyed by lunch time on Christmas. It’s almost as if the toy makers never put the thing into the hands of a 4-year-old to test endurance. But many of us have had the same experience with tech toys and other products. We need to build our products and services to last.

The second quote points out that customers aren’t easily distracted. A nicely flavored foam can’t hide a poorly cooked protein underneath it. It’s great that we design digital products and physical products to look nice but consumers value substance over style in the long run. Just as diners order the protein and not the foam, consumers are focused on the main promise the product is making and not on how pretty it is.

Foams add flavor without adding substance. I think we all need a lot more substance in this world. You?

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