Tag Archives: Reality checks

January 6, 2016 · 12:47 pm

Crap Merchants

Maybe John Lennon had the Internet in mind when he wrote “Strawberry Fields/Nothing is real”.  OK, I realize the place in the song came long before the Web was invented, but they both have a decided lack of reality.  Since dishonesty or a lack of transparency seem to be this week’s theme, let me throw out another thought that’s prompted by the interwebs which might be helpful in business.  

There is a column in the Washington Post called What’s Fake On The Internet This Week.  It’s ending, unfortunately.  Like a car wreck, there is tragedy in every column but you can’t turn away.  What’s tragic is that people believe the things highlighted.  You’ve probably seen some of the amazing crap that goes viral.  Burger King refusing to sell Diet Coke to anyone ordering a 2,000 calorie Double Whopper or new flavors of Oreos.  Those are relatively benign.  It’s the junk about race or religion that is treated as Gospel that’s tragic.

How does this stuff get started?  It’s not an accident.  There are fake news sites that spend all day making this stuff up.  I realize that’s not new – the supermarket tabloids have been doing it for decades.  The difference is social media.  People don’t clip and send a National Enquirer article to hundreds of people but they certainly post things on Facebook.  One guy admitted he that tries to invent stories that will provoke strong reactions in middle-aged conservatives. They share a lot on Facebook, he explained; they’re the ideal audience.  Why do they do this?  Traffic equals eyeballs; lots of eyeballs equals revenue.

That really isn’t the business point.  This quote is:

Walter Quattrociocchi, the head of the Laboratory of Computational Social Science at IMT Lucca in Italy, has spent several years studying how conspiracy theories and misinformation spread online, and he confirmed some of my fears: Essentially, he explained, institutional distrust is so high right now, and cognitive bias so strong always, that the people who fall for hoax news stories are frequently only interested in consuming information that conforms with their views — even when it’s demonstrably fake.

We laugh at the fools who believe that Martians live among us and yet we’re all too willing to circulate information in business which confirms our own view of how the business is functioning.  That’s dangerous.  While a reality distortion field might work for a Steve Jobs, it probably won’t for you.  We need to find out the truth and not confirm out own cognitive bias. Laughing about the crap merchants who push this drivel is one thing.  Being one yourself is quite another, even if you’re less public than the folks who publish it on the Web. Besides, who wants to put their hand in the air and admit they fell for something so blatantly fake? You?

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January 5, 2016 · 12:14 pm

Dishonesty As A Feature, Not A Bug

Since we began the year yesterday with a screed about data gathering practices which are less than forthcoming, let’s continue with some thinking on native advertising.  I admit I’m fairly old school about it, but before you jump to conclusions about what that means, let me explain.  I mean REALLY old school, such as when the show’s talent stood in front of the camera and did a commercial read.  With 40 years in the media business under my belt, I have no problems with advertising.  Where I do have an issue is when advertising masquerades as something else.

Let’s start with the fact that consumers generally don’t know that native ads are, in fact, ads.  Two studies support this:

Across both studies, relatively few viewers understood that the article itself was paid advertising: only 7% in Study 1 and 18.3% in Study 2 (in which all conditions used the most recognizable language, “sponsored content”).

So even though there was a disclaimer of sorts around the article, having the reader mistake it for editorial content isn’t a bug: it’s a feature.  The FTC seems to understand this and issued some guidelines around Christmas.  As reported in Media Post:

The new guidance directs companies to label native ads that potentially could be mistaken for editorial content with terms like “advertisement,” “paid advertisement,” or “sponsored advertising content.” The FTC specifically criticizes labels like “promoted” or “promoted stories,” stating that those terms “are at best ambiguous and potentially could mislead consumers that advertising content is endorsed by a publisher site.”

In other words, don’t mislead your readers.  Call an ad an ad.  The studies, by the way, say that you should do so in the middle of the native piece for maximum identification, and not at the top as is commonly done now.  Seems pretty fair, except that the IAB reacted by saying the FTC was way out of line because it might “stifle innovation.”  It’s not a small issue – native ads represent a $7.9 billion pool of ad money and that pool is expected to grow to $21 billion by 2018.  That’s a lot of misleading.

One need not be a publishing genius to grasp that when a reader figures out that something they perceived to be editorial is, in fact, advertising, they will think less of, and possibly question, everything else in the publication.  The research found

When readers perceive a difference between publisher-created editorial content and paid advertising that resembles editorial content there are differences in how they perceive the credibility of the news story. As online publishers seek to balance the pull of native advertising revenue with a potential push for disclosures from regulators and advocates, they should be aware that the best attempts to create informed consumers may result in negative perceptions of news credibility and quality.

In other words, the short-term gain of the native ad can jeopardize the long-term value of the brand’s credibility.  That’s not a bug either.  There is not a thing wrong with the ad-supported business model until we start disguising the ads.  That’s when we jeopardize the entire enterprise, in my opinion.  Yours?

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December 29, 2015 · 9:48 am

Posts Of The Year – 2015 – #2

Continuing with the most read posts of this past year, here is one from April.  A close friend of mine killed himself (I didn’t know that for sure at the time) and it prompted me to step outside of the daily business screed and into something way more important.  Please read and pass it on.  More importantly, act when you see a reason.

This was not at all how I planned to start this week of blogging but sometimes reality rears its ugly head and our plans need to change.

Over the weekend I learned that a friend passed away.  He was relatively young – in his early forties – and while I’m at an age where death pays a visit in my world a lot more often than it used to, this one has shaken me up.  You see, this is a guy whose life was seemingly very much on track up until about 2 years ago.  He had some physical challenges – very bad arthritis – which made his job in golf difficult.  Things started downhill.  He tried to start a business but it never quite got off the ground.  His marriage broke up.  His social media activity became less frequent as did his general communication.  I even heard he was homeless at one point.  While none of the obituaries mention a cause of death, it may have been as simple as a broken heart, deep depression, or as complex as a suicide.  I don’t know that it matters.

I wrote something on this topic a year and a half ago:

We all know a person who displays symptoms of things not being right in their lives. Those symptoms could come in the form of substance abuse or a big weight gain. Maybe their personality has changed – gone from light to dark. If you care about that person, you probably think about a way to say something that asks about what’s going on. It’s hard – people have feelings, after all and they are probably just as aware as you are of what they’re doing. Probably more so.  The ensuing discussion can be hard for both of you.  Sometimes it can derail a friendship.  More often, it begins a healing process, but only if you care enough to say something.

I tried to follow that advice with this friend.  I tried to help with the business start-up, doing the digital work and marketing.  I invited him to come cook with me (he had professional training and loved a kitchen).  Other invitations to meet up went unanswered.  In short, I tried.  And yet I feel as if I could have done more. I didn’t really “say something.”

It’s easy to say that his family should have been helping – he has a lot of family in the area.  Who knows – maybe they were estranged.  Maybe he wasn’t keeping them informed.  How many of us tell our loved ones all is well when the reality is that our world has fallen apart?

I’m sorry to start the week on a down note but PLEASE.  If you have people in your lives who seem to be lost, helping them find their way is really about helping you too.  Be that selfish.  Do more. Don’t wait and don’t be afraid.  They might be gone before you overcome your fears.

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