Advertising/Marketing Industries Have Civic Responsibility To Fight Fake News
When Interactive Advertising Bureau President & CEO Randall Rothenberg called for an industry-wide commitment to fight “Fake News” at an Annual Leadership Meeting in Hollywood, Florida in January of this year, the response from the audience was mixed.
Randall Rothenberg went on in his truly inspiring speech, to elaborate the important role advertisers and marketers now find themselves playing. He outlined the myriad ways algorithms, big-data, and the eco-systems that prop up digital advertising, are ruining the exchange relationships of information online. And he suggests to his audience, CMOS and ad agencies representing some of the top companies in the world, that they need to help bring the change, or suffer the consequences of an eroding trust in the digital landscape.
Looking back now, Rothenberg’s speech takes on a Nostradamic hue of prophecy.
Marketers and advertisers have unwittingly taken public discourse and the connected community of the Internet into a navel-gazing, filter-bubble filled, truth-destroying, civilization-shaking, death spiral. And to pull out of it, we have to realize our place in the cockpit, and understand how we got here.
Entertain me – what’s the worst that could happen?
A group of our marketing and advertising colleagues working with the Data and Marketing Association literally stood up and cheered as they were on hand to witness Congress, then the Senate, then the President, peel back Obama-era protections/regulations, allowing ISPs to access and distribute consumer data, browsing history, in-app messages, and emails, to third-party companies for profit, all without consumer consent?
The interested parties have struck a deal – people love relevant ads!
When the vote passed the Senate, on March 23, 2017, we heard this from Emmett O’Keefe, SVP of Advocacy at the Data and Marketing Association:
“Today’s vote in the Senate and expected approval in the House signal that our nation’s top policymakers recognize that our current system of responsible data use works.”
The trust was apparently so overflowing, and the data of the marketplace was handled so responsibly, that the same day, these US companies followed the lead of brands in the UK, and pulled entirely out of Google & Youtube digital display advertising agreements, resulting in a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars for the digital ad giant….
- AT&T
- Beam Suntory Inc.
- Dish Network
- Enterprise
- FX Networks
- General Motors
- GSK
- Johnson & Johnson
- Nestle
- PepisCo
- Starbucks
- Verizon
- Walmart
These companies, “unknowingly,” were buying programmatic ad-placements that were being paired up with hateful content on Google & YouTube – a Snickers pop-up under an ISIS beheading, or Nazi propaganda brought to you by Mercedes. Truth be told, digital ads have always been placed wherever they can be, and who cares where they go cos they are cheap as dirt! You got the impressions/clicks/views – digital advertising, accomplished. So we spend a few bucks on digital display ads – What’s the worst that could happen?
One of the Managing Directors at Edelman PR, Gavin Coombes, has a quote that sets us up perfectly for the next slippery slope we need to slide down – – –
“As Internet-based communication has become used more often and by more people, we have found ourselves in the paradoxical circumstance of more information arguably leading to less understanding. The “echo chamber” – identified in the latest Edelman Trust Barometer as a major factor in feeding fear and distrust of institutions – is a phenomenon that reached a tipping point in 2016 and with potentially epochal implications. And, seemingly, without warning.”
Coombes goes on to explain that social media operates more like tabloid media, vs traditional mass media – using content that entertains or connects emotionally, rather than content that empirically informs. Users prefer, and come to rely on, a steady diet of things that are happy, sad, funny or violent. This diet is typically filled with people like them and based on info they provide freely. So your social media stream is hand-selected by algorithms owned and operated by the social media ecosystems – always designed to keep the most engaging content in front of you, forever regenerating, endlessly attached to advertising revenue, open to marketers of all stripes.
In 2014, it was revealed that Facebook was able to manipulate users emotions depending on what posts a tailored algorithm allowed onto their “Wall.” Positive posts on a user’s wall were shown to illicit more positive posts in return, conversely, exposure to negativity promoted the sharing of negative material . Facebook performed it’s experiment without any user consent, and since the Terms and Conditions covered the unfettered access to user data, it was all above-the-board. Google and Yahoo both follow this same protocol – provide a seemingly “free” product, observe usage, get as much data as possible, get advertising content, and tweak the delivery to get the “relevant” info in front of the right people.
The reaction to Facebook’s experiment from the marketing and advertising community was shock and hidden joy. Here they had proof of a proper approach to gaming Facebook – emotions spread, and targeted, relevant emotions triggered at the right time can cause action. Proof that information, if properly placed at the right time, could affect change. Facebook’s algorithms keep it’s growing 1.7 billion user base glued to the platform – showing them whatever keeps them engaged, and not too pissed off – and all the while, user data is shared with anyone willing to pay for it.
So what? Marketers and advertisers get to sell soap to people they know like soap. We might use emotional triggers to get people to take action, but it’s with babies and puppies. It’s all good – What could possibly go wrong?
For those unfamiliar with the rising prominence of the newest and least experienced player to step on the field of international diplomacy on behalf of the United States, Jared Kushner – or how the former real-estate mogul turned dad-in-law-Trump’s campaign around by scaling existing marketing technology and “expertly” manipulated the filter-bubbles and emotional triggers of social and search….
For those unfamiliar with the technology he purchased through Cambridge Analytica, and how that company can provide it’s clients, through their OCEAN targeting, info on users political affiliation, race, gender, neuroticism, conscientiousness, openness and other psychological/emotional triggers……
For those unfamiliar with Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL Group, which, since 1993, has made its name providing “psychological operations” for political campaigns around the world, marketing its services to militaries and state security agencies, providing impeccable, highly- targeted, and politically-weaponized disinformation campaigns to such countries as Pakistan, and Great Britain….
For those unaware of the role of mega-hedge-fund-lord Robert Mercer in funding Breitbart, Brexit, his huge investment in Cambridge Analytica both in the UK and US, his not-so-shadow-funding of pro-Trump media blitzes through the new non-profit media company “Making America Great Again,” and his insane amount of influence in the de-globalizing, anti-intellectual, climate-denying, xenophobic, media-exploding, war-mongering shit show we are currently living through…….
You should look into this stuff. What’s the worst that could happen?
This quote from Professor Jonathan Rust, director at Cambridge University’s Psychometric Centre, can help fit the final piece of our puzzle –
“The danger of not having regulation around the sort of data you can get from Facebook and elsewhere is clear. With this, a computer can actually do psychology, it can predict and potentially control human behaviour. It’s what the scientologists try to do but much more powerful. It’s how you brainwash someone. It’s incredibly dangerous.
“It’s no exaggeration to say that minds can be changed. Behaviour can be predicted and controlled. I find it incredibly scary. I really do. Because nobody has really followed through on the possible consequences of all this. People don’t know it’s happening to them. Their attitudes are being changed behind their backs.”
So what should/can marketers and advertisers do about this?
Looking at the above information, the marketer and the advertiser can see several opportunities. Opportunities for more user-generated data, enhanced abilities to track and deliver personalized ads on behalf of brands, nuanced insight into consumer behavior, ways to sneak our messages through emotional pathways, unlimited access to centralized audiences, and access to an ever-expanding marketplace.
Or are the opportunities aligned with a larger civic duty, not just towards our profit margins, but to our society, our fellow humans?
- Could advertising, done the right way, save the world?
- Can we open the conversation with our digital marketing companies about ways we can fight ad-fraud together?
- Can we hold our marketing and advertising associations accountable for their Code of Ethics, and be active, ethical allies for conscientious consumers?
- Can we work to protect the marketplaces and technology that enable ethically and mutually agreed-upon exchange relationships from “bad actors” or manipulative entities?
- Can we not sell everyone’s private data up the damned river, just so we can send them “better ads?”
Whatever your stance on ethics and morality and marketplace logic and free-will, we have to realize that while we’ve been engineering the latest and greatest ways to sell stuff in our marketplaces, we’ve also greased the tracks for a whole host of nefarious players to enter into these spaces, use our marketing technology of demand-engineering, targeted behavior modification, and etc., and these sinister forces are inflicting serious harm to the information eco-systems so necessary to our livelihoods and the continuation of modern civilization.
I’ll leave you with a final quote from Rothenberg, and it’s a perfect ending for this rant of an article, because it’s how he ended his speech, mic drop style.
“. . . now I am asking you to reach higher, and deeper into your own better nature. The values we hold dear – diversity, freedom of speech and religion, freedom of enterprise – are under assault, and digital marketing, advertising, media, and technology companies bear some measure of responsibility. The route from self-interested “standards” to fraudulent ads to blind-eyed negligence to the financing of criminal activities to support for hatred is clear, and it is direct.
What we say here – and what we do here – makes a difference. Please leave this conference with this understanding: You have the power to move fast and fix things. You have the ability to repair our credibility. You have the power to rebuild the trust. Thank you.”
So are you a marketer that is willing to stand up and make the world a better, more trusting place? If you rise to the occasion and exhibit the best of what humanity has to offer, at least in a marketer, what’s the worst that could happen?
The Spectroscopy of Content
WARNING – Huge Marketing Metaphor Ahead.
The Spectroscopy of Content is an attempt to find the connective and underlying structures that all marketed messages share. Whether it’s account based marketing, content marketing, mass market advertising, native, guerrilla, paid, earned, owned, taglines, slogans, calls-to-action; marketing is about humans communicating with other humans.
The Spectroscopy of Content provides an understanding of human behavior, it’s shared triggers and environments, and uses this information, preemptively, to increase the relevancy and effectiveness of the marketing we choose to foist upon the world.
"How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a weary world."
-William Shakespeare - The Mechant of Venice
First – let’s cover what spectroscopy is;
Spectroscopy is a scientific measurement technique. It measures light that is emitted, absorbed, or scattered by materials and can be used to study, identify and quantify those materials. One thing that you need to remember is that “light” is a lot more than just the colored visible light that we can see. – NASA
This is interesting for two reasons –
- What we see as plain, white, visible light, actually contains all the colors of the rainbow, plus a collection of wavelengths that we can’t even sense as humans.
- Spectroscopy breaks up a complex, noisy signal, such as light, into discrete, constituent parts, provides a glimpse of once imperceptible structures, and brings meaningful data points out of the chaos.
So far, so good. Now, let’s bring this back to marketing. Below, “Content” refers to any marketed message, in any marketing vertical.
Content starts as this solid concept, a beam of light, ready to illuminate the minds of our target audience. The beam is the message, and the message is the beam. Strong calls to action. Tracking is set up. We’ll know what success means and we’ll be able to point to business goals that Content will help to achieve. We fire the solid beam of light into the blackness of Deep Space/The Internet/America’s Living Room.
Now, let’s briefly return to the science of light.
Light is perceived by it’s reflection off of surfaces, and two different reflections are possible – Diffuse and Specular.
The light rays that allow us to see non-luminous objects such as our hands, the floor and the people around us, are rays that have traveled from a light source and then have reflected off of an object towards our eyes. There are two types of reflection: specular and diffuse. Specular reflection sends discreet beams in specific directions. Diffuse reflection sends many different beams in several directions.
So what about our Content? Once our beam of light is perceived by our audience, will they, via the specular reflection principle, be able to understand specific messages or triggers embedded in the beam? Or will the light spread out into a million different meanings, fade into the background – a diffuse reflection of our loaded beam?
Well, didn’t we think about the audience and the affect our content would have on their Mind Prisms? Did we think to analyze our content’s Impact Spectrum?
We require a few more metaphors.
Just as prisms help to break apart light, the interpretation of your content happens in the audience Mind Prism. The Mind Prism is the only medium through which your lighted message is decoded and understood.
Content is not what you think it is – it’s what your audience thinks it is.
Content is not the beam of light you send, it’s the beam of light that is received. And, further complicating things, each Mind Prism is unique and it’s absorption can change with it’s environment – and no two will absorb information the same way.
So in The Spectroscopy of Content, we’re seeking to consciously pre-fabricate the beam of light, knowing what spectral lines need to be absorbed by the audience, amplifying the strength of those wavelengths, and thoughtfully anticipating the myriad ways our Content may be interpreted, or misinterpreted, by the Mind Prism.
Once the light is considered through the Mind Prism, the Impact Spectrum should be analyzed and considered. To explain this last piece – we return to the light. . .
The spectrum from distant stars contain the signatures of the elements that compose the star. Spectral absorption lines in the wavelength of visible light, correspond with elements, present in the stars chemical makeup. There is a Hydrogen Line, a Sodium Line, Magnesium, etc.
In The Spectroscopy of Content, the “absorption lines” reflect the ideas or concepts that are anticipated to hit the intended Impact Spectrum – and we have several different Spectra of Understanding. Below are three versions I’ve created specifically for this piece – but there is room for thousands more!
Are we soliciting buyer behavior, are we making someone mad, are we talking about cultural values? Is this a curveball with a mysterious trajectory, a fast pitch in an elevator, or a beachball in a stadium? Does this message leave enough room for the recipient’s ego? Does the Content talk about personal things, or relevant ideas in society? Will this make them think of Church, School, the bedroom, the barber shop?Before we launch any Content, we have to ensure that it’s light will reflect into at least one Impact Spectra, if not multiple. And although it is true that each Mind Prismis unique, certain concepts like the ones briefly covered in the above examples, work on more basic levels. Humans are unique, but human behaviors and reactions tend not to be.
In closing – The Spectroscopy of Content aims to understand the ways information impacts people on this basic level, and use this information to fortify and empower the messages we send in the future. Whether we’re analyzing various Mind Prisms, or their associated Impact Spectrum, one this remains true throughout this “new” marketing metaphor. . . Our success depends not on how much we put ourselves into our marketing, but by how strongly our marketing considers our audience.
Please let me know if you have any questions or would like to learn more about The Spectroscopy of Content.
Six Marketing Insights from “Miracle on 34th St.”
I recently watched the 1994 version of “Miracle on 34th St.”, and other than being sad I was dissecting a holiday movie for marketing lessons, I was way too happy to discover no-less-than six top-notch marketing insights packed into this Christmas classic. For those not familiar with the movie, a brief synopsis will help. For those who are ready, follow along as I unwrap these. . .
Six Marketing Lessons From “Miracle On 34th St.”
1) Uncover Resources by Changing Perception
They could see Santa was drunk. The special events director for the annual Cole’s (Elizabeth Perkins) Thanksgiving Parade needed to find a replacement Santa ASAP. So seeing a man that fit the part in Kris Kringle, (Richard Attenborough) she saw an opportunity present itself. Disaster had forced her to see things differently, see the hidden opportunities in the calamity.
That she “resourcefully” picked the ACTUAL Santa Claus is not important here, what’s important is that resources can present themselves if we decide to see things differently. Or when fake Santa gets drunk. But being scrappy and resourceful isn’t just for Elizabeth Perkins.
Marketing strategist Nick Westergaard beats the resourceful drum hard and loud in his book “Get Scrappy.“ By focusing on core competencies, simplifying processes, and taking the customer experience into account, Westergaard shows that our strongest resources can be found when we focus on customers. When we focus on the Allison Janney in front of our face.
Lesson One – in the chimney.
2) Listen To Your Customers, ALL THE WAY
Later in the movie, the Cole’s marketing director is on the floor of the department store, watching the new Santa knock it out of the park. He’s approached by a customer (Allison Janney). She informs him that Santa is sending folks AWAY from Cole’s, to other stores where the toys are cheaper. He starts to walk away to confront/fire Santa, and as he does, the woman says,
“Tell Santa he made me a Cole’s shopper. I’m coming here for everything but toilet paper. Any store that puts the parent ahead of the buck at Christmas deserves my business. Tell Mr. Cole his Santa Claus ought to get a raise.”
The marketing director, rather than admonish Santa for sending customers out their door, chose to listen to his customer, all the way. He ingeniously ascertained from some very direct feedback, that customers want to do business with a company that can help them “get a job done,” not just push product. By sending people to places where they could get the job done, Cole’s marketing director was creating loyalty – and by saving the customer money, there’s more for them to spend loyally at your store. Happily, the “jobs to be done” framework is not just for the miraculous.
Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen and his team have built several successful business strategies using the “jobs to be done” framework. Here is a brief explanation of their work, that mirrors the Miracle on 34th marketing metaphor magically –
“The jobs-to-be-done framework is a tool for evaluating the circumstances that arise in customers’ lives. Customers rarely make buying decisions around what the ‘average’ customer in their category may do—but they often buy things because they find themselves with a problem they would like to solve. With an understanding of the ‘job’ for which customers find themselves ‘hiring’ a product or service, companies can more accurately develop and market products well-tailored to what customers are already trying to do.”
I highly suggest you get amongst Clayton Christensen’s tasty work HERE.
Lesson Two – Good for you = Good for me.
3) Narrow Your Focus
Once Cole’s realized they were dedicated to helping the customers find the best deals, the latest communication tools were made available for every employee to fulfill the current selling model. In 1994 – these tools were phonebooks.
Goods, services, price points, angles, coupons, deals, size, packaging – Rather than focusing on multiple ways to differentiate their company’s assets, the marketing department of Cole’s listened to customers and focused in on one thing – helping their customers “get the job done.” Once they narrowed their focus, they had a collective mindset to sell from, reaching across the entire company, providing a unified vision that every employee could easily understand. The store had differentiated in a powerful way. Once Cole’s concentrated on serving the actual needs of their customers, and narrowed their focus, Cole’s business boomed and the competition couldn’t hang. And this isn’t just restricted to 1994 NYC – this can work in your world too.
In his book “X: The Experience When Business Meets Design,” Brian Solis demonstrates the powerful impact of creating easily understood, company-wide selling strategies. By visually mapping out the experiences of their sales process, businesses were able to see the focus of their sales strategies – providing a clear-cut concept to everyone in the company. One they can easily understand, and use in whatever job capacity they have within that company. “X” is a great, beautiful book on marketing and design, and I suggest it.
Oh, Lesson Three – Oh, Lesson Three – Thy leaves are so unchanging.
4) Crush Competition Through Focus and Service
Cole’s is not without their competitors. Right across 34th St., the greedy mega-chain store Shoppers Express sits like a snake in the grass! Their attempts to thwart Cole’s is made apparent at the beginning of the movie, when we discover that, due to slow sales, Cole’s will be bought by Shopper’s Express at the end of the year. But the competition, who sells the SAME thing you do, who buys the SAME ad spaces you do, who uses the SAME selling strategies, is not prepared for the subtle, two-sided-knife of focus and service.
By embracing this Service-Based Anti-Selling Model sourced straight from Santa’s laptop, and by focusing on solving specific problems based on actual insights from the customers, the idea of competition on a product level or a price level became a secondary concern to Cole’s. How did they do it? To stand out – use your resources, listen to your customers, and use their feedback to narrow your focus on solving specific problems and being super useful – and it works in even the most competitive verticals. And this isn’t just for Santa to slay with…
David Ogilivy, arguably the Father of Advertising, embraced the idea of focusing in on specific unmet needs and then using those to differentiate from competition. He also made sure salesmen didn’t bad mouth competitors – Even if your product or service is far superior, no one wants to listen to you bad-mouth the competition. Focus your sales conversations on your customers’ unmet needs, instead of your competitors’ faults. Here are other ground-breaking sales tips from Ogilvy’s 1935 book on selling Aga stoves.
Lesson Four – There’s More In Store
5) Communication IS Experience
By far one of the most touching moments in the movie, is when a mother places her daughter on Santa’s lap and tells him that she is deaf, and just would like to look at him. Santa takes pause, inhales, and then begins signing to the little girl. She lights up and begins eagerly speaking with him, and tells him what she wants for Christmas. I’m getting a little emotional right now as I write this, because this is the soul of the world; successful communication with others. The allegory here is deep – even when you think someone can’t hear you, or you’re unable to speak – always strive for understanding and connection.
Luckily, the human takeaway is similar to the marketer’s – every point of communication you have with your customer creates the customer’s experience of your brand – and experience is everything. When you clearly communicate with your customers, you create experiences full of value and meaning. And experiences aren’t just for the silver screen….
In “Experiences: The Seventh Era of Marketing,” Robert Rose and Carla Johnson emphasize the coming importance of content-rich experiences. Businesses that can create cohesive experiences across the brand that communicate value to the customer, and communicate it well, are the businesses that are positioned to succeed.
Lesson Five – Create The Vibe, Know The Jive
6) Belief Creates Reality
Throughout this whole movie, the themes of belief, faith, and disillusionment are omnipresent; struggles that affect every character in someway. When he realizes that Dorey doubts his true identity, Santa Claus explains that there’s more to the red suit than she is willing to see.
“I’m not just a whimsical figure who wears a charming suit and affects a jolly demeanor. You know, I’m a symbol. I’m a symbol of the human ability to be able to suppress the selfish and hateful tendencies that rule the major part of our lives. If you can’t believe, if you can’t accept anything on faith, then you’re doomed for a life dominated by doubt.”
The message here is powerful and poetic – Santa Claus becomes real when we choose to believe and have faith in the intangible qualities he represents. We make him real when we believe in the best of mankind. Stuff that in your stocking. So what’s the final marketing lesson?
The sixth marketing lesson of Miracle on 34th St. is that you have to believe in something to make it real – and belief is a choice. When we launch our content initiatives, when we roll-out our new designs, when we reach out for customer insight – we have to consciously choose to believe in the intangible benefits we’re providing. And this ethical-jive-talk ain’t just for the North Pole…
In “Marketing As An Act of Faith,” marketing consultant Pat Sullivan brings this lesson home for in this quote from a well-known book, The Bible – “…faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Sullivan continues…“Marketing requires faith in our products or services. If we can’t have faith in them, it’s either time to reshape each product or service so we deeply respect it and can affirm its value — or it’s time to offer other products and services that are more ethical, meaningful and useful.”
To Re-Cap
Let’s quickly review the six marketing lessons in Miracle on 34th St. –
1) Get Scrappy to Find Resources – See the opportunities in front of your face!
2) Listen To Your Customers – Find the hidden gold in customer feedback!
3) Narrow Your Focus – Use customer insights to find their “jobs to be done.”
4) Crush Competition Through Focused Service – Serve solutions, and slay.
5) Communication is Experience – Create valuable experiences through thoughtful communication.
6) Belief Creates Reality – Believe in the value your product or service offers – otherwise the gig is up.
And that’s it.
– For more insights on marketing, Follow me on Social, check the Book Reports, and check out more POS Bloggin!
Merry Christmas!
Faces
“I’m looking at the man in the mirror, I’m asking him to change his ways.”
– Michael Jackson
What is this life, but a striving for connection. We want to feel connected, initially to our parents/family, friends, lovers, then to our conception of society, and finally to the narratives we choose to pursue, identify and struggle with, draping them with the flimsy cloth of existence. We also want any irregularities, or unexpected changes in our narratives, to be fully explained and if possible, connected. We want to see ourselves in our surroundings, we want connection.
The Information Lords at Wikipedia have supplied us with this gem –Pareidolia (/pærɨˈdoʊliə/ parr-i-doh-lee-ə) is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant.
Common examples of pareidolia include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon or the Moon rabbit, and hearing hidden messages on records when played in reverse. In 2014, archaeologists in India, discovered prehistoric cave paintings, which they claim depict ‘tripod objects, flying crafts, and a race of noseless, weapon carrying aliens.’ The paintings, done in a natural tone, are thought to be over 10,000 years old.
The reportage over at the Times of India was very well balanced, and didn’t lean into non-facts, or what could explained as pareidolia. “We can’t refute possibility of imagination by prehistoric men, but humans usually fancy such things.” But do these drawings validate the theory of ‘paleocontact’, ancient aliens visiting us in the distant past, giving us our edge? Or are they the “fancy” of an ancient artist, in love with connections, trying to connect the images in his/her brain, with reality, with the narratives of her people?
We are constantly trying to connect everything, to everything else. Centaurs, chili-cheese-fries, gryphons, politics n’ religion, open browser-Twitter-iPhone-TV-Wii, Combos – we want all of it condensed and understood, smashed together in a pill, fitted into a box, all the wild hairs shellacked down to our scalp.
Connections are thought to give our life meaning. But almost all of the most meaningful moments in our life are unplanned, non-connected, beautiful, wild, and sometimes horrifying. And when nature’s had her unexplainable way with us, we get to choose how we want to connect to the information.
So the question of the cave art is this – Do you connect more with an ancient race of people, who with the assistance of extraterrestrials really turned on their cave art, maybe went to space and learned the secrets of the universe, but still died with nothing but great cave art to show for it….or do you connect more with an ancient race of people who strove for connections, who wanted explanations for the unexplainable, who saw their forms commingle with the forms inside their creative minds on a cave wall, a race of people who wanted connection with the forms of nature, a race of people trying to tame an untameable world? Sounds familiar.
Emotional Analytics and the Ham Sandwich
What you hold in your head right now is, for me, one of the key concepts to great social media strategy. Not the ham sandwich itself, but the idea that while each of you now sees a ham sandwich in your mind, none of you are seeing the SAME ham sandwich. It’s your “idea” of a ham sandwich. Now, what does that mean in regards to Social Media? Everything.
The Sandwich Multiverse
When we’re engaging with our peeps, or engaging with our client’s peeps, we have to remember the ham sandwich, we have to remember that everyone is seeing “their own sandwich.” Very briefly, the philosophical concept underpinning this idea has been referred to as “Qualia” or individual instances of subjective, consciousexperience. The term derives from a Latin word meaning for “what sort” or “what kind”. Examples of qualia are the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, or the perceived redness of an evening sky. When you’re sharing and engaging any ideas on social media, you need to be prepared for the “qualia” or the multiple ways your text or links can be interpreted. When we share, we have to engage our brains in emotional and social intelligence. Get these ideas, these deals and these coupons into the social stream, while focusing on the emotional analytics of your content…now what are emotional analytics?
The Empathic Sandwich
People don’t read content in a bubble – they’re reading their News Feeds with their moods, their attitudes, and more sociological baggage in tow. Brought to light by the imitable Stephanie Walden in this article, “Emotions Analytics” is a new field that focuses on identifying and analyzing the full spectrum of human emotions including mood, attitude and emotional personality. When we pump out content, we have to be aware of what emotions we are asking our audiences to engage with, what questions are we asking, how will the reader feel after they’ve given more than a cursory look. So as you engage with these large groups, don’t bank on people “understanding” your knock-knock joke about Shania Twain, or that people will “see where you’re coming from” when you talk about the buzz in the lights while you’re on-line at the Orange Julius in Paramus, New Jersey. These are dead-ends, esoteric wastelands, inside-jokes that will kill your traffic. But this doesn’t mean you can’t be weird.
The Sandwich Unfolds
Back to the sandwich – When I post anything, I try and see the item from as many different angles as I can, before I hit send. I examine my post with the clarifying lasers of questions – “Is this engaging/funny/interesting, is there a trend I’m joining/starting/rebooting, who will catch this, who won’t, who will need extra info to make the connections, who’s gonna be offended, how risque can I get, children, grandparents, orphans…” I refer to this technique as “Unfolding the Sandwich” – Let’s see it in action, and we’ll use our ham sandwich as content –
To some, the ham sandwich killed Mama Cass (Pop Culture) to others it stands as a symbol of religious oppression (Insider Information, Sphere of the Personal/Religious), others may see the ham sandwich and picture those riveters on the Empire State Building (Historical/Educational Signifigance) some may be vegetarian and see the ham sandwich as proof of our inhumanity (Empathic/Emotional Intelligence) and still some may have never even had a ham sandwich and are picturing a large flightless bird (Non Sequiter – Attention Grabbing).
ONWARD
The point is, think long and hard and creatively about the content you share, and when you get responses (Retweets, mentions, Shares, Likes) follow up in the same spirit as the post. Your audience will feel like they’re being talked to, not at – and that’ll keep the billables coming.
POSMarketing 