Tag Archives: Marketing and Advertising

July 9, 2018 · 12:08 pm

The Company We Keep

I’m sure you heard the same thing from your parents as I did. Don’t hang around with a “bad” bunch of kids because you get known by the company you keep and their lousy reputation will stick to you whether or not you’ve engaged in the same bad behavior. You probably haven’t thought about that quote in terms of your business but there are some things going on these days that might cause you to do so. Let me explain.

If you’re a brand (and every company is) and especially if you’re the person responsible for marketing that brand, you’d have to be under a rock not to be aware of what’s going on with social media and data protection. I’m not talking about hacks in which data is stolen. I mean the willful use of your private data by these companies as part of their business model in ways that you never contemplated nor to which you explicitly agreed. I received an email the other day from the folks at Business Insider which contained some of the results of a study of confidence in social media companies’ ability to protect users’ data. The study was conducted among their “BI Insiders” (disclosure, I’m one of them) and the results aren’t great news for Facebook in particular:

Over half (56%) of Facebook users have zero confidence in the platform’s ability to protect their data and privacy. This was the lowest level of confidence of all platforms and highlights the uphill battle Facebook faces to regain the trust of its users. To be fair, users weren’t all that confident in the other platforms either, but the gap between Facebook and the others is significant — at least 18 percentage points from all other platforms. Meanwhile, LinkedIn came out on top for the second year in a row.

The problem for you is that your mom was right: you’re known by the company you keep, and if your brand is active on these services, your reputation is damaged as well. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer study...

Consumers are not forgiving when it comes to brand safety. About half of the survey’s respondents said that it was a brand’s own fault if its advertising appeared alongside hate speech or other inappropriate content online; 47 percent said that the points of view appearing near advertising and marketing are an indication of that brand’s own values.

This is what I found to be of great importance to any brand:

70 percent of digitally connected people around the world think brands need to pressure social media sites to do more about fake news and false information proliferating on their sites, and that 71 percent expect brands to pressure social media platforms to protect personal data.

In other words, if you’re keeping company with social media and they’re misbehaving, you need to exert the influence you have as a client and get them to change. Leave the platform if you must to get their attention – that’s what consumers are doing. If you don’t, you’re risking getting blamed for their bad behavior.

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June 20, 2018 · 11:23 am

Known Side Effects

I watch a lot of news on TV. If you do that, you are inundated with ads for drugs that promise to cure everything from asthma to zits and everything in between. One thing that most of these ads have in common is that a significant percentage of each ad drones on and on about potential known side effects. The side effects often are quite serious and death is sometimes one of them. Then again, I guess death cures the disease.

I thought about side effects this morning as I was reading my usual collection of articles about the media and marketing businesses. There have been an awful lot of changes, some for the good, many for the bad. Nearly every one of them has some side effects too. On a most basic level, it’s great to stay in touch with family and friends via social media, but a known side effect is the reduction or disappearance of your privacy. It’s wonderful to have a communications device on you but a known side effect is that you’re tracked everywhere by your phone provider and everything you do with that device is watched and recorded. But those aren’t business issues.

Take, for example, what’s going on in TV sales at the moment. The digital revolution brought with it programmatic buying and selling. In theory, this made the entire process quick and way more efficient. It also had the side effect of advertisers and publishers paying huge “tech taxes”, fees to the providers of the technology that runs the process. Another side effect is rampant fraud and an overall increase in the number of bad actors who suddenly found a way into what had been a relatively closed process.

TV buying and selling are suddenly undergoing the same sort of change. Having sold TV for many pre-digital years, I think many of the same side effects will manifest themselves as the closed, carefully run process opens up. Of course, the biggest side effect will be yet another purge of salespeople and the failure of many rep firms. As eMarketer reported:

Overall, 46% of respondents felt that the tech advancements happening in the TV industry are a threat to their organization’s existence. Again, the fear was highest among reps, with 87% saying that tech changes threaten their firm. There is no doubt concern that the expansion of programmatic TV could extinguish traditional methods of brokering inventory.

TV reps as coal miners? Who would have thought that? Then there are the so-called influencers. The movement to trusted voices as sources of product information is, I believe, generally a good one. The problem is that word “trust.” Fake reviews run rampant. Since influence is often measured by the number of followers, fake followers and/or bought followers are a massive problem. The side effects of establishing trust are numerous and can potentially make the marketing challenge worse if they’re ignored. 

The cure is sometimes worse than the disease. It’s worth remembering that and searching out the possible side effects as we make our marketing and media plans. It’s great to become more efficient but not at the expense of killing the patient. Make sense?

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June 1, 2018 · 1:21 pm

Tomatoes, Bugs, and Nannochloropsis

Foodie Friday, and today we’re having a think about the food of the future. I don’t think it’s news to anyone who pays the least bit of attention to the world that humankind’s ability to support itself is in peril. CNN said it well:

We’ve gotten ourselves into some trouble. Our dining habits are a big part of the problem. The average American male consumes 100 grams of protein daily — almost double the necessary amount. This overconsumption isn’t sustainable. The United Nations projects food production will need to increase as much as 70% by 2050 to feed an extra 2.5 billion people. To survive, we need to reinvent the way we farm and eat.

Exactly, except that some of that reinvention, while packed with nutrition, is…well…gross. I know that I’m applying my American diet standards here but how would you describe eating bugs or algae? We have plenty of both, both are sustainable sources of protein, and both reduce the impact we’re having on our planet. Cricket anyone (and I don’t mean the game!)? How about a nice plate of nannochloropsis?

There’s a great business lesson in this. To understand it, let’s look at another food that was once anathema to most Americans: the tomato. That’s right. Until the early 1800’s, the tomato was grown purely for decoration in this country because it was considered poisonous. What happened to change its reputation and make it a mainstay of our diet? There are several theories, including one involving Thomas Jefferson’s promotion of dishes using the tomato. I think it has to do with immigration and the fact that European immigrants used the fruit (you know it’s a fruit, right?) in their cooking. Whatever it was, people overcame their fears and began consuming tomatoes en masse.

If I were marketing bugs and slime (OK, it will probably be protein derived from those things made into other food products), I’d do a few things. First, I wouldn’t deny that there might just be a perception problem. No brand can deny its past. I would aggressively try to control the conversation and the message. That means a lot of marketing, especially through influencers and social channels. I’d research the heck out of consumer attitudes on a continual basis and I’d avoid making emotional responses to misperceptions, focusing on the data. Mostly, I’d do everything I could to get the products sampled and I’d use the testimonials along with the overall message that these products are saving the planet by decreasing the need to rely on other protein forms that are inefficient at least and detrimental at worst to the environment.

When I was a kid, the notion of eating raw fish in this country was nonexistent. I’ll bet many of you did just that this past week. There just might be a bug in your future once some smart marketers get to work. What do you think?

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