Tag Archives: Advertising and Marketing

Living For The Likes

I’ve been meaning to mention the thing that Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are all either testing or have deployed outside of the USA: killing the like count. They’re not eliminating the positive feedback (or any other kind) that people reading your content provide. What they’re doing is deemphasizing it by not showing total like counts. I, for one, am a fan and I’ll tell you why.

Actually, I won’t tell you. I’ll instead quote a Wired piece on the subject of living for the like and tailoring your message and tactic accordingly:

These tactics are attracting increased scrutiny, about their impact on the health of the internet and on society at large. Publicly measurable indicators—including views, retweets, or likes—are “one of the driving forces in radicalization,” says Whitney Phillips, a media manipulation researcher and associate professor at Syracuse University. It works both ways, she says. A user can be radicalized by consuming content and a creator can be radicalized by users’ reactions to their content, as they tailor their behavior around what garners the most interest from their audience.

Unfortunately for marketers, it also eliminates a metric that many marketers use to guide both their spending and their own content. While a minor disturbance in the marketing Force, they’ll get over it and move on to something else. My hope is that it destroys the “influencer” world. I’ve never been a fan and if this hastens its demise, I’m all for it. These are vanity metrics and not real measures of engagement which can be tracked in other ways. It’s also the final solution to those scam artists that sell fake “likes”.

The real issue for me is that many people – especially young ones – seem to develop feelings of inadequacy if they can’t generate sufficient “likes.” Maybe it even deters them from sharing anything in the first place and withdrawing.  For those of us that were there when all of this social stuff began, it’s been hard to watch it go from a great way to stay in touch with your friends and family to a weaponized space where trolls proliferate and it’s often hard to tell what’s real and what’s not.

I’m sure there are some selfish business reasons behind these moves while remaining hopeful that it’s really the start of the social media company’s coming to grips with all of the downsides of their worlds. When you like these screeds, do I see the counts? Sure. Do I change what I have written? In broad strokes, yes, but not based on the likes as much as on the overall readership and responses. In the 11 years I’ve been writing the screed, things such as a regular post on music (TunesDay!) and blogs about research (only rarely now) have gone because you don’t read them. Would I still write on those topics if I thought I could produce something that would interest you? Of course, likes be damned.

Live for today, not for the like.  You with me?

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Filed under digital media, Huh?

Make Yourself Uncomfortable

I’ve been thinking about writing this rant for a few weeks now. I’ve refrained, hoping that what’s prompting it will go away but it hasn’t so today, I rant.

I spent nearly my entire professional career in some sort of advertising-related business. I sold media. I was a media publisher. I’ve bought advertising on behalf of consulting clients and my own businesses. I’m pretty well-acquainted with how the business works. It’s rare, therefore, that something ad-related surprises me but this has. Lincoln is running an ad called “Sanctuary” for its Navigator vehicle. It features Sarah Vaughan’s recording of “Make Yourself Comfortable,” a song I like from an artist I like as well. At least I used to.

I will be the first to admit that I don’t watch a ton of non-news or sports programming via traditional TV. You can pretty much find me on a news channel or sports channel if it’s old-school TV or a streaming service otherwise. I bring this up because what I’m about to rant about isn’t caused by my rapacious consumption of TV.

I have seen the aforementioned ad at least once every half hour for the last month. In fact, I’ve seen it far more often than that, often once every few commercial pods. I am now at the point where when I hear the thunderclap that begins the ad I reach for the remote. I am sick of the song. I have so tuned out the ad that I didn’t even notice that it’s Serena Williams sitting in the car. I could see this happening if I was on a ton of channels in lots of different programming but I’m not.  I’m about 10 more impressions from setting fire to the next Lincoln I see.

Who do I blame? Let’s see. First, the media buying agency who apparently has never heard of frequency-capping. When your ad is running every 10-20 minutes FOR HOURS on the same channel you’re well into overkill. Second, I blame whoever sold this schedule. Maybe it’s a ROS deal (run of schedule/station) and they’re just filling pods with creative to run up the bill. You might be making a few bucks but you’re losing at least this loyal viewer. Third, I blame the client. Aren’t you looking at the reports? Aren’t you running research that tells you reach isn’t increasing while frequency is off the charts? For the love of all that is holy – make another commercial – you’re killing me.

OK, I feel better. But if you’re a marketer and you’re not asking your people about frequency distributions and commercial wear out, do yourself and your prospective customers a favor: ask ASAP. Deal?

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Filed under Huh?

Intentional Mislabeling

Let’s start with a question this Foodie Friday. If I offered you two carrots, one of which was had a label that said “non-GMO” and the other didn’t, which carrot would you choose? “GMO” as I’m sure you know means that this food wasn’t made from genetically modified crops. Would that make a difference in your selection?

It’s a trick question, actually. There are no genetically modified carrots in the marketplace, at least not yet. Neither are there GMO strawberries. That won’t stop you from finding carrots or strawberries labeled as non-GMO though. You’ve also probably seen that many chickens are labeled as “raised without antibiotics” while others don’t bear that label. Does that influence your thinking? It shouldn’t: antibiotics have been banned on chicken farms for over a decade.

Some labels in food can be horribly misleading while others are not. “Organic”, for example, really does mean that the food was grown without synthetic pesticides and fertilizer. It’s a legal term meaning that there are penalties for its misuse. You might think that non-GMO foods are organic and, therefore, better for you. Unless they also say they are organic, non-GMO foods are conventionally grown using synthetic pesticides and fertilizers.

Why I bring this up in a business blog is that the misuse of these and other terms in marketing is not due to confusion about them. It’s due to the willful deception of the consumer by an unscrupulous marketer who at best is just jumping on a bandwagon and at worst is looking to charge more for an inferior product. Your “cage-free” chicken still lives indoors in a jammed coop and those “free-range” chickens for which you pay a premium probably haven’t been outside either. It just means that they have access to go outside if they can find and get through one of the few doors in the henhouse.

I’m a fan of clear, enforceable labels in all products, not just food. What the hell does “skin organics? mean on a cosmetics label? Chemical-free sunscreen? Not possible, yet some brands are labeled just that way. The labels don’t write themselves and as marketing people, we need to hold our customers’ interests paramount. Their health too since it’s rather difficult to get a dead consumer to buy much of anything. Make sense?

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Filed under food, Helpful Hints, Huh?