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The changing nature of influence – from Lil Miquela to Fashion Ambitionist

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Lil Miquela
Lil Miquela, a fake person who on occasion seems (creepily) real

Lil Miquela is a fake “person” who seems real. Until the company that created her revealed that she was a virtual influencer last year in a publicity stunt, her 1.6 million followers presumably thought Miquela Sousa was just another teen Instagram star, not an avatar designed specifically to attract follows and likes. She has partnered with brands like Calvin Klein and Prada, and according to the NY Times, more than 80,000 people stream Lil Miquela’s songs on Spotify every month. She’s also not the only virtual influencer in the market, designed to be the perfect spokesperson. Some are more transparent than others that they are constructs; for example, KFC’s newest Colonel Sanders.

Fashion Ambitionist
Cover of pitch deck for the Fashion Ambitionist proposal experience

Fashion Ambitionist is a real person whose journey to matrimony, as documented this week on Instagram and pitched to sponsors, can best be described as staged spontaneity. For those that are not familiar, the short story is that her boyfriend is whisking her away for an amazing proposal in a faraway and romantic locale, with a variety of stops along the way. All of which is being documented in her Instagram stories. Supposedly, she is in the dark (at least about the details if not the ultimate objective), with everything being orchestrated by her boyfriend, friends and staff of her website. Maybe. There is a detailed sponsor deck for potential sponsors to evaluate the opportunity, so on some level she has to be in the know. It is after all her brand. In the end, though, it doesn’t matter whether or what she knows. It all feels a bit fake, even though they are undeniably real people and the whole thing is (at least somewhat) entertaining.

Fake person appearing real. Real person appearing fake. All in the service of finding followers and influencing them on behalf of brands.

There is no doubt that both Lil Miquela and Fashion Ambitionist have influence with their followers. But is this influencer marketing?

Yes. And no. Or at least, it is not consumer-to-consumer influencer marketing grounded in the genuine authentic endorsement of a consumer sharing her story and experiences with a product with her friends and yes, followers.

It is easy to see how Lil Miquela herself should perhaps be categorized as social marketing, not influencer marketing. Influencer marketing works because we like or identify with the person who is recommending a product, trust that recommendation is grounded in his or her own experience, and are therefore more likely to take action ourselves. While Lil Miquela seems real, her endorsements and actions are fabricated. She’s neither authentic nor genuine and her recommendations are simply advertisements. We can like and enjoy her content, but we are engaging in a pleasant fiction. We may share her content with our friends, but we should know, they should know, that they are engaging with an avatar, and responding to an ad, not another human. I strongly advocate for deeper disclosure than the simple #sponsored when it comes to avatars.

Fashion Ambitionist is a harder call. On its face, she is simply doing what all social influencers do – telling her story and weaving in brands as part of the tale. Just on a more dramatic scale. It’s not that different from what influencer marketing agencies (like SHE Media’s internal team) do when building programs for brands: we recruit influencers who love a brand to create sponsored content, although we don’t forget the sponsored disclosures. Since there aren’t any on these posts, either no one sponsored, which is sad, given the effort apparently expended, or they are violating FTC guidelines, which is just bad.

Except this Fashion Ambitionist stunt is different. Our goal with influencer marketing should be to have consumers create content that shows how brands are part of their lives. Not to have them stage their lives to provide a vehicle for brands. It’s a fine distinction.

It’s also unfortunately one that increasingly we collectively are not making. People are staging their lives for brands or trying to present some perfect image of themselves on Instagram in the interest of likes and followers. This isn’t authentic consumer storytelling. It’s a performance. Nothing wrong with it as a marketing activity; we should just understand what it is. Furthermore, when social posting detracts from actual enjoyment of the event, it’s not a good strategy and we are not getting the authentic engagement we wanted. Don’t miss the moment because you are trying to get the picture.

Note that I am not arguing against staged marketing opportunities. Flash mobs are fun. Virtual influencers are engaging in a creepy way. Some people are enjoying the Fashion Ambitionist content. In general, parties and events are a great way to create moments that can be shared across social media. Our BlogHer events have been providing sponsors with opportunities to connect with female consumers for more than 15 years, robot-free.

All these things — flash mobs, events, parties, virtual influencers – are opportunities for social marketing to tap into the desire of consumers to share content that excites them.

Influence, certainly. But influencer marketing well done isn’t just staging the event or making a social splash. It’s not about how much someone was paid to create content, and I am definitely not arguing that influencers shouldn’t be compensated for their work or that compensation somehow corrupts an endorsement. We don’t love a brand any less when it asks for our help in its marketing efforts.

Influencer marketing done right is about harnessing consumer passion for brands and connecting them to opportunities to share their love in the context of their own story. It’s about helping the brands reach those consumers in the right way, with the right opportunity, at the right time.

The influencer marketing moments that make my heart sing? Those are rooted in love.

A mom creating a sponsored post for a sunscreen and sharing a moment of joy of her child at the beach. A family test driving a car for a week and sharing their hectic, happy and not-so-happy moments along the way. A makeup lover sharing her tips, tricks and favorite products with her followers on YouTube, always trying out new things. Sometimes sponsored, sometimes not. A home chef leveraging her love of cooking into sponsored content opportunities and her own cookbook. Fans of a much-loved TV franchise sharing their excitement about the reboot.

Those moments when we capture that lightening in a bottle and connect a brand with its customer and make influencer marketing magic.

I love that.

— UPDATE 6/24 —

NY Times article on Fashion Ambitionist’s wedding stunt. Spoiler: they are married, sort of. French law has very specific residency requirements to legally marry in the country, so the stunt ended with a fake wedding.  Which is perfect in its own way.

The lines between real life and entertainment are forever blurred thanks to reality television. Social media didn’t create this phenomenon; Fashion Ambitionist’s wedding stunt was no different than your typical reality show, which is why it captured public interest. If you were entertained by it, great. If you thought it was ridiculous, fine too. Different strokes for different folks.

But don’t confuse it with the principled practice of influencer marketing. The pitch wasn’t very good. Hard to read, light on the specific value for brands. Sponsored disclosure was terrible. The burst of followers is likely to be fleeting. It also was a lousy advertisement for Fashion Ambitionist as a legit influencer.

In other words, if you are mapping out your strategic plan to grow your own influence, this may not be the model to choose. It all depends on whether you want to be famous or infamous.

Because the difference between the two? It matters.

3 tips to make sure your influencer marketing works

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influencer mktg tipsDoes influencer marketing work? Of course word of mouth marketing works. It always has and always will. The endorsement of a consumer like you (or whom you aspire to be like) has always had power.

What makes social media marketing work is the social. The connection and conversation between and among humans. Respect, trust and drive toward community (homo sapiens expression of the pack instinct.) Digital media is simply the delivery mechanism that allows our communities to discard geographical considerations and allows us to replace, when we choose, the proxies offered by mass advertising with other consumers.

In the early days of influencer marketing, when it was small dollars and called blogger relations, we were perhaps collectively sloppy about the metrics. Potential reach as an example. Which is fair enough when you’re experimenting with a new tactic, but a non-starter as the tactic matures and acquires increasingly larger budgets.

To prove influencer marketing works, we have to address expectations, objectives and investment, and we just can’t show that it works. We have to demonstrate that it works BETTER than another tactic. That’s the RETURN on investment part. We also have to design our program for success. Good results from an influencer marketing program aren’t happy accidents. They are the result of solid planning that matches the tactic to the KPI and defines a clear, measurable and realistic objective.

Recently, the business press in our little corner of the world was full of headlines about @arii, an Instagrammer who unfortunately failed to sell the minimum number of products required in her test launch, and then complained, including about folks who got press kits and didn’t post.

Her Instagram complaint spawned a social media field day. Pundits wondered if influence was dead. Others pointed out the serious flaws in her business plan. For myself, I wondered why you would fail so spectacularly and then tell everyone.

Clearly, she didn’t have the influence she imagined, with her 2.6 million followers, or a solid business plan. It’s nice to have both, but it’s the solid business plan that is absolutely necessary. With a better plan, that she personally didn’t have the audience she needed for her product, might not have mattered.

Here are three influencer marketing lessons we can take away from her unfortunate tale.

  1. Know your audience. Research your influencers. Does the audience generally engage on similar topics or like/share items similar to the one you plan to promote? Likewise, with anyone you identify as a potential influencer? Influence is that moment where endorsement sparks action. Without action, there is no influence. This action doesn’t need to be a digital action, but it is far easier (and cheaper) to quantify based on digital history. When the stakes are high, we also do consumer research that can quantify the full social impact, not just the social media impact. From her results, we can guess that she didn’t do rigorous due diligence about the audience, or the folks she identified as influencers (those who got press kits), and just assumed that her followers would buy and post about anything she presented them with. Hard no.
  2. Consult qualified experts. We don’t know if she had advisors, but it certainly sounds like she did not. Your business plan and your marketing strategy will always benefit from seeking advice. Even if you decide to stick with your original plan, the process of talking it through will expose its weaknesses, giving you the opportunity to fix before, not after, launch. Don’t fall so in love with your idea that you aren’t receptive to criticism or alternative approaches.
  3. Be honest about weaknesses and threats. We are generally great at identifying the strengths and opportunities in our idea. Not so much the weaknesses and threats. There were likely many weaknesses in this plan, but I want to focus on one: the belief that her follower number on Instagram translated into real reach. Some percentage of a following that large is bound to be bots even for influencers that have never purchased a single follower. An even larger number is lurkers. At SHE Media, we use a REACH RATE to understand the percentage of an audience that is actually viewing the content: IMPRESSIONS or VIEWS/FOLLOWERS. Likewise, ENGAGEMENT RATE looks at the engagements in the context of the views, not numbers of followers. ENGAGEMENTS/ IMPRESSIONS or VIEWS.

I’ve been doing social media marketing for 15 years and marketing for even longer, and no matter what the tactic or communication vehicle, the fundamentals always matter. Digital and the rise of social media have changed how we execute against our goals – all the stuff in the middle – but the start and the end are still and always the same.

At the start, you identify your unique value and the audience for that value, analyze your SWOT (Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Threats) and determine key objectives (awareness, purchase etc.) At the end, you evaluate your performance against the objectives. Applaud your successes, fix the things that didn’t work and do it all over again.

From a recent post on her Instagram, @arii seems to have taken the lessons of her failure on board. That is a great start for her next endeavor and I wish her the best of luck!

Instagram unlikable? A brief analysis of the impact of the proposed “unliking” of Instagram

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Last month, digital hobbyist Jane Manchun Wong discovered some inactive lines of code in Instagram that would turn off the display of likes on Instagram posts. Initially, Instagram claimed no immediate plans to test the functionality, but about 2 weeks later at the F8 Conference on April 30th, Facebook announced that it would shortly begin a limited test in Canada.

It’s a small but significant change. You’d still be able to like something, but the exchange would become a personal exchange between you and the content creator. Only the content creator will see who liked something and while content creators can see who, it appears that there may not be a running tally. In other words, they will have to manually count the likes. Instagram also seems to be testing other variations such as hiding the number of likes from the post creator and giving them the choice to see the likes.

Should Instagram turn on the “feature” across the platform, it would impact the social nature of Instagram.

Likes beget likes. It’s human nature: we are more likely to appreciate something when we tangibly see that others have also liked it. It doesn’t even have to be an endorsement by a person or people you admire. A volume of affection signals to us that this is something worthy of our attention, of our like.

Likes are also a key reference point for determining influencer value and the fees Instagram influencers are able to earn for branded content. The more you have, the more you are worth.

As a result, likes have become the next battleground against inauthentic content. Turning the public display off would be a fast, albeit drastic, path to shutting down a source of fraud.

The currency of likes is so strong for popularity that people have died trying to get impossible shots on mountains, towers and other wildly unsuitable places. It’s a strong argument for the platforms to address the issue, particularly with regard to children, which I will address in another post.

Reaction to the potential change has been mixed among influencers and brand marketers.

Some commenters channel Chicken Little (the sky is falling) while others like Dara Pollak of theskinnypignyc.com think it would not be such a bad thing. Says Dara:

Doing away with likes would put the focus back on the quality of the content, instead of just the numbers. Obviously, brands have to rely on numbers for their campaigns to show ROI, but they also should be paying attention to the influencer’s overall brand message to see if it aligns with theirs. If it doesn’t, the content would be disingenuous and likely fail anyway.

As a creator, it’s hard enough as it is to stand out, and when you’re constantly comparing yourself to others in your industry, it becomes an unhealthy obsession. I’m not speaking for everyone, as I know some people thrive off that form of competition, but I think that’s part of the problem. What used to be a fun industry is now just riddled with competition and envy. At this point, taking away likes won’t do away with that entirely, but it might bring a different and welcome change.”

Let’s look at the commercial implications of an “unlikable” Instagram.

  • Likes evolve into a more personal connection with the content creator. They can still be an indicator of the value of the content to the audience, just without the network effect that tends to inflate them. NOT seeing likes works the other way too; when we see something with few likes, we are perhaps less likely to like it – even if we do. Removing the social cue makes likes more authentic. 
  • Comments become the principal social interaction on Instagram. This could drive increased authenticity and better conversation. The truly engaged comment and converse. Engagement rates will decrease, but the quality of engagement will be better.
  • Third-party measurement tools and models will be impacted; the degree depends on how reliant they are on publicly displayed information. If the change is released broadly, I’m inclined to believe that the Instagram Business API will support the data privately for marketers and approved API partners.
  • Conversion metrics will become even more important. Clicks to site, affiliate sales, strong calls to action to drive purchase from intent to action. Not surprising considering Instagram’s ecommerce initiatives, the latest of which, Instagram Checkout, enables users to buy items they see on the app without ever leaving it.

What should we do?

This is only a test. Instagram has not implemented this broadly. When/if it does, the final version may look very different from what is currently being tested.

That is, after all, the point of a test.

However, it doesn’t hurt to be prepared, so I recommend a few things.

  1. Make sure your sponsored Instagram posts offer real entertainment or information value to the viewer. Creating great content is never a mistake.
  2. Think about the call to action. Don’t rely on the more passive behavior of the like to measure success. Encourage an action – comment, swipe for more, check out the link in bio etc.
  3. Review your measurement models – how you report success – and make sure your tools are keeping up with the platform changes, and will be able to support you, come what may.

This is a developing story. I am sure I will write about it again. 

Two Truths and a Lie: trust, #ad and privacy

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Gregarious Narain is on vacation until the end of the month. We’ve got a couple guests lined up to join me in his absence, but this week was a little hectic so (truth) I did not have time to prep them properly, so this week it was just me, and a slightly shorter show.

Would you like to join us on the show? It’s pretty easy. We broadcast live on Fridays at noon eastern for about 20 minutes. I send you a link to connect to the broadcast platform in the morning along with any show notes we’ve prepared and you log in by 11:50 am for an AV check. Sometimes you’ll be joining Greg and me, other times it is just me.

What will we talk about? We are open to discussing any topic related to marketing writ rather large — digital and social media, advertising, influencer marketing, technology , but also Internet culture, consumer behavior, digital fraud, privacy, artificial intelligence. If YOU have a topic you’d like to bring to the table within that rather large brief, we’d love to build a conversation around it with you. Email me at sgetgood@getgood.com or message me on Facebook.

Now to this week’s topic — consumer attitudes and trust. Joining me are my two guests this week, Mr. Rogers and Captain Rogers, two icons of honest integrity.

I only have 2 topics this week, because both are both truth and lie. The first is that consumers don’t like or engage with sponsored content the same way that they do so-called organic content. I wanted to discuss this (again) this week after reading a great op ed in Ad Age, In Defense of the Lowly Hashtags #ad and #sponsored by Natalie Zfat. Written in response to the statement “nobody likes the hashtag #ad” at an industry panel (filled with marketers), she shared her pride in using #ad because it meant she was able to successfully monetize her content while creating valuable content for readers.

This strikes a chord with me because I think treating sponsored content as a second class citizen is lazy thinking. Fact: transparency and best practice would dictate that we disclose relationships that might impact an endorsement even if the FTC Guidelines did not. But also Fact: the FTC guidelines in the US and similar guidelines in other countries DO dictate that we disclose when the content we create is sponsored or influenced by payment, business relationship or free product. And finally FACT: people are not as black and white in their consumption of content as the conceit organic:good, sponsored:less good makes it seem. I have seen more than a little organic content that is AWFUL and quite a lot of amazing sponsored content.

It is not that we don’t like advertising. It’s that we don’t like bad advertising. Whether an ad or a sponsored Instagram image. It is incumbent upon us as content creators to create quality content, full stop. When it is sponsored, we disclose, because it is the right thing to do. Cap agrees!

On social media, there is no situation where you do not have to disclose that the content is sponsored. Not even for celebrities. The reason for this is that on social, we have none of the cues that inform us that the endorsement is an advertisement that we have in other media. When we see a celebrity on Ellen, we know she is pitching her new movie because that is inherent in the talk show format. When we see an athlete in logo gear, we assume that he or she is sponsored by the brand, because that is how sponsorship works at that level. When we see the same celebrity promote something on Twitter or Instagram, her post looks just like all her other posts, and just like all the other posts of all the other people using the platform. There are no cues to clue us in that this post is sponsored. When an advertisement doesn’t look like an advertisement, it must be disclosed. Just this week I ran across another article about celebrities failing to disclose, this time in the UK. This is one time where wishing won’t make it so. Wishing you didn’t have to disclose or inventing all sorts of reasons why it doesn’t apply to you won’t change the facts. Because it is all about trust. Right, Mr. Rogers?

So, while it is true that people do treat sponsored content differently, the difference, in my opinion, is largely in the minds of the creators. If we stop assuming that people view sponsored content differently, create amazing quality content and honor the trust of our readers by being honest about our business relationships, we can be proud of #ad.

This week’s other part truth part myth is also related to trust. In this case, our trust in the social platforms and websites. Axios Media Trends reported this week on Census Bureau Data that indicates Americans are less worried about online privacy, largely, the report surmised because we have become accustomed to trading it for access and services.

Photo: Protest Stencil
Photo: Protest Stencil

But we are still concerned about data privacy, security and integrity. Witness the Twitter storm caused by the fake billboards in London last week.

They struck a chord because there is an underlying cognitive dissonance between the value consumers perceive they get from Facebook and the value they are increasingly aware Facebook gets from them. GenZ is already replacing it, including on college campuses, with new “facebooks” coming online, also reported in Media Trends this week.

I have been following the digital privacy conversation for more than 20 years, sometimes closely, sometimes less so but I am convinced we are finally at the inflection point where it matters as much to consumers as it does to advocates and geeks, and it is an increasingly informed consumer who understands that there are 3 issues: privacy security and integrity. Being willing to give up a little personal data in exchange for access is a fair trade but we are no less concerned about the protection of that data.

So. The truth is Americans may be less worried about privacy in general, but it is because they have become more informed. And we are very likely still very worried about how our information is used, whether information is true and whether bad actors can breach the walls. We just are more willing to accept the risk.

Two Truths & a Lie about Brand Safety

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This summer is flying by. We skipped Two Truths last week, largely because I was at the BlogHer Creators Summit for 2 days and the atmosphere was bustling! Way too noisy to record a Facebook Live show with my minimal equipment. I’d probably forget to plug in the mic again 😉

When I started pulling together the posts for tomorrow’s episode, I realized I never posted the August 2d one. So, here it is, very late, but oddly the content is still timely.

The Truths
1. Both YT and FB blocked Alex Jones this week, but it seems like a drop in the bucket for the fake news problem and advertisers concerned about the context in which their ads might appear. Brand Safety is cited by advertisers as a top concern; consumers care about fake news / want to trust social platforms. but FB and Twitter both took a hit in their stock price because user growth dropped and resources were applied (however grudgingly) to these areas. This implies that taking an action / stance on privacy/data integrity has a cost beyond simply the expense of doing the “thing.”

2. Influencer platforms are rushing to release their “fraudometers” to show the integrity/quality of their networks. We discussed some of the models, but there is no standard for this. Everyone’s just applying their own opinion, whether human or machine derived, to define “fake” follower. In the end, it is also the wrong question. Understanding the fraudulent followers is an exercise to tick off a box. What we really want to understand is what percentage of an audience engages with the content, and then if we are a brand, what percentage of THAT engages with us.

Myth
Brand Safety is a myth. You cannot control all aspects on digital and social. You can get closer with advertising with ad tech tools and things like ads.text, private marketplaces, and guaranteed programmatic, but on social media? People are messy. You can’t control the comments or reshares and sometimes even your influencers go off script and do wacky stuff. Think PewdiePie and Logan Paul. On social, relationships are the keys to brand safety.

Resources mentioned in the show: Five Charts Explaining the State of Brand Safety

From BOTS to BOUGHT: The “crisis” in influencer marketing

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Today, Digiday published the confessions of a former influencer describing widespread fraud in the influencer marketing space, focusing largely on bought followers on Instagram, where influencers regularly amassed followers literally overnight in order to compete for coveted fashion and beauty deals. All to meet the demand of advertisers and their agencies for scale. Reach was the de facto result. This is absolutely 100% true, I have no doubt.

It’s also not influencer marketing. We have to be REALLY careful to not throw the baby out with this admittedly nasty AF bath water.

As I wrote last week, this fraud — and it is fraud — stems from the ad industry’s relentless pursuit of scale without a similar commitment to authenticity and performance metrics.

Influencer marketing works because it is human-centered, and humans beings don’t scale neatly with algorithmic and predictable precision.

In the 90s, anthropologist Robin Dunbar theorized that humans can only sustain a limited number of stable social relationships; 150 is commonly cited as the upper limit. While modern communication has changed how this dynamic works, as we are able to move more fluidly from group to group, online and off, and may participate in multiple networks of people with whom we share common interests, we should always keep Dunbar’s number in mind when thinking about how influence works. The ripple effect of a recommendation matters just as much as the initial impact. Much harder to measure of course, but just because something is hard doesn’t mean we should not strive to do it.

Influencer marketing done right is building relationships with customers over time, who serve as the advocates for your brand to their friends, fans and followers. You know and trust them. Their audience knows and trusts them. You work together to achieve a common goal. Kumbaya and all.

Influencer marketing works because we do move in and out of different groups online, and when we share a recommendation from one into another, we form a ripple on the pond. What’s been missing is way to independently assess the audience of influencers to verify that they do have the right audience. Independent of and across the platforms, independent of the agencies. It’s challenging, and even more so if you respect individual privacy rights. I’m working on some things in this space. More to come.

In the meantime, the best approach is to understand that the best results from influencer marketing don’t come from scale. They come from trusted relationships over time.

The other issue exposed in the Digiday Confession is poor measurement practices.

Reach is a delivery metric. It tells us whether we executed our social tactic successfully. It is not a performance metric. Performance is engagement with content, and your objectives dictate whether you are working toward likes, shares and comments, or driving all the way down the funnel to conversion. Reach is not a result.

The Digiday piece also shared that boosting posts, at least in this confessor’s situation, was just as fraudulent, reaching folks not even remotely in the audience target purely to shore up the numbers. This is just straight up bad practice. Boosting posts simply to increase the reach is a waste of money. You should ONLY boost your best-performing content, the content that is getting verified engagement, to expose it to a larger or different audience. Do not boost your turkeys. Let them fade away.

What about the BOTS?
The other article that caught my attention this morning was a piece on CNN about Lil Miquela, an influential CGI (computer generated image) that amassed quite a following before it was revealed that she was a CGI.

My opinion? If CGIs advocate for brands and someone is compensated for the endorsement, it is advertising, straight up, and should be disclosed. Ethically, I think it should be disclosed even if they are not doing brand or cause related work, because they are a construct, and consumers should know.

Personally, I’m not sure I love the idea of people modeling themselves after, being influenced by, robots, but as long as it is fully disclosed as CGI advertising, I don’t see why brands shouldn’t have the option to use CGI tools to deliver their message. They can dictate the message and don’t have to worry about the opinion of the CGI. Likewise if they use BOT accounts to manage message flow or respond for the brand in place of human CSRs. It’s okay as long as you tell people they are engaging with a BOT.

But CGIs and BOTs are not influencer marketing. They are simply innovations in advertising.

Digital media predictions for a post-GDPR world

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Last week, a business acquaintance made a ballsy prediction on LinkedIn for which he took a fair amount of flak. Posting a comment, I noted that his essential point was not that much of a stretch. Of course, there were nuances to the argument, but a long statement with a bunch of caveats wouldn’t be nearly as interesting or thought-provoking. Predictions have to push at the edges or people won’t pay attention. So, I figured it was time to step onto the ledge and make some predictions about the future of digital advertising. I’d love to hear what you think, agree or disagree.

1. In a post-GDPR world, targeted advertising is going to become more expensive. Not immediately. There is still a lot of confusion (some real, some manufactured) about what is required.  In the end, though, the increased costs of delivering compliant targeted audiences combined with a decrease in available inventory as consumers retract or refuse permission, will increase ad rates to premium, not programmatic, rates. I’ve been arguing this for a while and the pundits are finally admitting it. 

2. Context will be queen again. In order to reach the right audience, we will turn to content-centric, community-centric marketing tactics. In part because they ARE more effective in converting customers, but mostly because the cost differential between them and targeted/programmatic advertising won’t be so great. It will be just that much easier to take the leap of faith to try these tactics, which are still working out their success metrics (more about that in a bit.)

This is the opportunity for niche publishers and brands to create content for their micro-audiences that both provides the necessary context for ads and sponsored content and creates a relationship and value exchange in which the consumer is more likely to give permission for the specific use of personal data. As an example, Pepper & Wits, a new content site for women 45+ who are navigating menopause is owned by P&G; we certainly should expect sponsored content and other brand outreach but the primary purpose is to offer value to the consumer and targeted context, not targeted ads.

3. “If you aren’t paying, you’re the product” is a cliché whose days are numbered. Consumers will start to care about privacy. It has been a LONG time coming, but I truly believe that consumers are finally understanding the true cost of free digital services/platforms, and are going to want real value in exchange for the right to use their personal data. “Legitimate business interest” is not going to be sufficient to use a person’s data without permission. Publishers and brands who are offering great content and building relationships with consumers will have a far better chance of obtaining (and retaining) permission.

4. Things are about to get more competitive. Facebook and Google are vulnerable in this new advertising economy. They aren’t in danger by any means, but their models are based on scale, not relationships. They have no friends, just users. This opens up a sliver of opportunity for niche content publishers to create better experiences for consumers and pick off a little wedge of the pie. The duopoly will still get (more than) its fair share, but they will be handicapped in delivering their biggest strength, targeted audiences at scale, so the little guys can dart in and nab their share in areas where Facebook and Google cannot play effectively, content and community. Niche publishers, bloggers, even brands who can make the long haul investment. And Amazon. Amazon already does a better job of community than either Facebook or Google, is nipping at their heels and has a distinct e-commerce advantage. I also predict Reddit will make a strong play for the “community ad dollar.”

5. All of this will drive innovation. Certainly, in ad tech to manage consent, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Folks are already working on challenges like better measurement and attribution models that assign value properly and proportionally to all the players in the value chain, not just the last click. This is crucial for branded content, video, social media and influencer marketing.

Community is also getting some attention. Two start-ups doing interesting things to connect brands with consumers: Social Data Collective and Suzy. Suzy (AskSuzy.com) is the evolution of social media and influencer business Crowdtap. It helps advertisers make and manage meaningful connections with customers by offering them access to its super panel of consumers. Social Data Collective has a slightly different approach; it asks consumers to share personal data with the brands they love in exchange for products/services.

But I think even more interesting things are on the horizon. For example, aggregators of consumer information that validate consumer audiences and can compare them across properties, including blogs and YouTube and all the other places that community will form, not just sites big enough to register on comScore. Audience data all the way down the long tail to validate that the context IS delivering the right audience. This “data hole” has been the bête noire of the influencer marketing business, but there wasn’t a strong enough incentive to solve it, when advertisers could just buy targeted audiences cheaply. To sell content and community as the right context, you need the metrics to prove that you’ve got the goods. It’s coming. I am certain. And it won’t need PII (personally identifiable information) to do it.

We also need tools to give consumers control over their privacy across platforms and processors. Right now, if you think someone has compromised your private data or is using it without permission, good luck tracking it down. Blockchain is the best bet for creating this privacy audit trail. Someone is certainly working on this already. In fact, if you know who, I’d love to chat with them!!!

So there you have it. My predictions for the digital media industry. If you need me, I’ll just be out here teetering on the ledge.

P.S. If you want to check out the prediction of my business acquaintance, you can find it on LinkedIn.

Customer-Centric Marketing. An idea whose time has FINALLY come?

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Activating the passion that consumers have for the brands they love and turning them into your advocates is the secret sauce to identifying and converting new customers as well as increasing the loyalty of retained customers.

This simple concept, customer-centric marketing, has been the basis of my work for more than 20 years. It’s why I embraced blogs and then social media so wholeheartedly. It’s why I advocate so strongly for transparency, authenticity and disclosure, because they foster trust, the currency of social interaction. Online and off. It’s why I have embraced GDPR and other privacy initiatives for the promise they offer to build strong relationships with customers based on a balanced, informed value exchange for personal data.

Customer-centric marketing is also an idea that is often given lip-service, but not nearly as often embedded in our corporate DNA. We talk a good game about building relationships with customers, incorporating consumer feedback, building products and services that delight them. But when it comes time to implement the marketing plan, we use the language of war. We target audiences. We deploy tactics. We execute plans. We profile the customers into personas who are expected to follow prescribed patterns of behavior.

Which is fine, to a point. It would be foolish not to aim your marketing efforts at the audience most likely to buy. But our language and our tactics both tend to dehumanize our customer, to the point that we forget they are people and not just impressions or clicks or conversions or profiles. Taken to the extreme, and make no mistake modern digital marketing exists on the very edge of this extreme, our marketing isn’t just automated, it’s robotic, and not in a good way.

More human tactics like social marketing, influencer engagement, event marketing and even branded content restore the balance and remind us that customers aren’t simply segmented groups of purchasing behaviors, they are people. Living, breathing people who love our products and services, and are simply waiting to be asked. While these tactics are very often more effective, they are nearly always more expensive than digital advertising which uses programmatic buying and consumer targeting to reach the right audiences cheaply, at scale.

The good news, for advocates of more human centered approaches (like me), is that GDPR promises to reduce that financial gap. The SUPPLY for targeted ads will be diminished when (inevitably) publishers can’t document permission or consumers withdraw permission. It also will be more expensive to deliver an audience targeted PROPERLY with personal data. Both scenarios will increase CPMs for the remaining inventory. More on these and other scenarios in Marketing Week.

Certainly, contextual targeting will pick up the slack for digital advertising. There also will still be a market for premium permission-targeted audiences. Niche publishers in particular have tremendous incentive to develop a strong value proposition, both for their content and in exchange for the use of personal data for targeting. I wrote about this last fall.

As the cost gap closes between digital advertising at scale and more engaging tactics like influencer marketing and branded content, marketers will have incentive to shift budget to customer-centric marketing, where relevance can be proven by our interest and engagement with content and brands, not simply implied by our browsing history or past purchasing behavior.

It’s then up to us as marketers to create the compelling, customer-centric campaigns that engage consumers and convert prospects to buyers.

I’m game!

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Additional Reading on GDPR. Tick Tock. Less than 3 weeks to go. 

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