“You will be watching your television. Your television will be watching you.”

By the age of 18 a child born in the 21^st century will have a digital profile constructed of 70,000 touch-points that pinpoints their online identity, cultivating and interpreting every move made online and in the vicinity of a device. Plainly, privacy is a thing of the past. What does this mean for digital marketers, though?

According to Entrepreneur Online Magazine, “trust is the new marketing currency”. Why? It has long been the purpose of digital marketing to infiltrate people’s online lives with advertisements that are curated for them, so they succumb to unrelenting temptation and purchase with the marketer’s company. Because of widely reported data breaches like the one in 2017 that exposed 145 million Americans, online shoppers now have a strong aversion to digital marketing because they see it as a trap to be sold and have personal data captured.

By focusing on building trust through digital marketing, marketers can establish a huge point of difference from competitors who fail to disclose paid online promotion, for instance, immediately losing the trust of a potential customer. By virtue of being open about online adverts, consumers are more inclined to do business with the company because of the trusting tone set by digital marketers. They then feel like their information will not be misused, which should become a key objective for digital marketers given that according to a recent survey just 3% consider digital marketers and salespeople trustworthy!

Establishing trust in an online ad can be achieved by simply, as previously mentioned, disclosing paid promotions. No, quoting the “9 out of 10 doctors recommend…” line will no longer cut it.

So in an age where privacy is a figment of the imagination of an idealist, digital marketers should look to inspire trust through their marketing, not just sales. Failure to do so will tarnish the company’s reputation and damage performance drastically. Act on the trend. Ball’s in your court, digital marketers…

In most industries, but particularly within the scope of marketing, much debate surrounds whether the inevitable ‘AI takeover’ will reap mostly positive or negative results for people, their jobs and ultimately the need for human assistance.

Just as Alan Turing predicted in 2005, the time of ‘singularity’ – that is, the stage where AI is independent and comparable to the human mind – is near.

Now, if it is true that humans can only access ~20% of brain capacity, AI certainly does not suffer from the same biological constraints. Even now, “2-3 decades away” from the existence of fully developed AI according to Monash’s own Peter Wagstaff AI is far more intelligent and what’s more, intuitive that humans could hope to be.

Google’s AI can read lips more accurately than a trained professional and can ‘defeat’ an entire video game in a matter of hours. Undoubtedly, AI’s capacity for thinking and problem-solving have superseded our own.

It seems then that the only chance we have of retaining our competitive advantage over AI in the marketing workplace is founded on people’s preference over human interaction over talking with a computer. In an August 2018 survey, 55% of US internet users claimed they preferred human assistance. Happily, 46% said they’d rather help from a person even if an AI bot spared them 10 minutes. In more positive news, such preferences were strongest among millennials and gen Z members.

To me at least, it seems inevitable that AI will takeover a large portion of marketing jobs. Executives will simply have to “throw data of a phenomenon of some sort” at the computer and it will be able to sort and interpret data in ways even the top marketers could only dream of conceiving of. 71% of people, though, say they don’t want companies to use AI even if it improves the customer ‘experience’.

While morbid, we will likely have to stand united as a flawed species against the impending threat of independent AI if we are to prevent the marketing industry from becoming autonomous. Sounds a lot like a sci-fi movie, doesn’t it…

“Facebook advertising spend is expected to reach $25.56 billion by next year“

As a young kid, if I saw something – inevitably a dinosaur toy – that I wanted I would ask my Mum if I could get it. Invariably, she would say ‘just leave it for a few days and if you continue thinking about it and want it just as bad, then you can buy it.’ And that’s a purchasing strategy I have used ever since.

Of late though, such a strategy is no longer viable. With the access of information and data nets that collect our information, ideas and movements whenever we’re in the vicinity of an electronic device it has become impossible to not think about an item I’ve seen online, or merely mentioned.

Told a friend about an upcoming concert? Siri caught that.

The banners around my Google Chrome page are littered with adverts of things Google knows I want, and as a result, I can no longer decide organically whether the item is what I covet or not. With companies employing pay per click advertising, SEO marketing and countless other methods to generate innumerable touch-points with their brand, the online ecosystem is George Orwell’s worst nightmare – only the eyes of Big Brother have been replaced with the speakers that adorn the stage of the concert promo shot that I can’t escape.

Digital marketing is statistically as effective as you might have thought, too. For every $1 spent on google ads businesses make twice that in revenue. Don’t feel too bad about your habitual online shopping of late either, because 64% of consumers will click on Google ads when looking to shop online.

Each person is served around 1,700 banner ads monthly, so how in the world are we supposed to ‘forget’ about an item after just a couple of days?

The digital marketing is undergoing an immense shift. While traditional marketing campaigns used to be striking and unmistakable (think the iconic presidential poster with emboldened “YOU”), there is one factor that is of the utmost importance in the current digital marketing space – consumers don’t want to know they’re being marketed too. Never more so than now has the truth ‘people love to buy, but hate to be sold’ been more pertinent.

“Content marketing is the future…of the world”. Why? Because it fulfils all the purposes of what marketing endeavours to do; it incites to high levels of engagement, conveys the brand’s image and feeds the consumer regular messages and reminders of the brand without being invasive and frankly, annoying. Content marketing has revolutionised digital marketing because of one earth-shattering reason: it flipped the formula. Nobody wants what comes too easy or is forced upon them, like ads typically are. By creating captivating content that isn’t forced upon one’s screen as an ad, but rather appears as an intriguing YouTube link, remarkably the consumer will voluntarily go to it. From there they are engaged and fully immersed in the brand’s messages without the subconscious strain of being annoyed about having an advert forced upon you.

Polo Ralph Lauren have mastered this technique. Their YouTube content team creates, well, ads, that do convey messages of their new products but do so in a visually appealing way – they tell a story. Further, instead of appearing as an ad before another YouTube video where you’ll probably skip it, they post it as independent content. The result? 3.3 million views, and a whole lot of engagement…

During Netflix’s ‘The Great Hack’ documentary, narrator David Carroll remarks that “by the time my daughter Is 18, she’ll have over 70,000 data points defining her.” No doubt, like I have, you’ve tested the attentiveness of Siri’s ears by speaking about a foreign topic for a period of time only to have such specific advertisements grace the borders of your iPhone’s next visited webpage, validating completely the 1984-esque surveillance capacities of our apple-laden pocket pals.

With data-collecting services becoming more autonomous and more learned by the intelligent servers which do so, what is presently a blessing could soon become the author of the obsolescence of the digital marketer.

This seems to be the case because ‘traditional’ forms of marketing, whether digital or not, took the form of promoting a product in a way that attracted unknowing future-buyers, or too those who are aware of their desire of a product but required a compelling reminder to invest in their short-term contentment.

Lazy but effective, digital marketing these days consists of simply displaying a product you have shown interest in via your browser continuously until you can no longer resist and succumb to the ease of online shopping.

Without sounding morbid, because of this effective lack of tact on the distributors’ part, online marketers may soon become superseded by the technologies on which they currently hang their livelihood.

“…I’m giving you what you wanted: a behind the scenes look…”

My Dad keeps complaining about how quickly his eyesight is deteriorating. He’s 52.

“Dad,” I said, “that’s completely normal. I’m out here at 20 and I already feel my vision becoming compromised.”

And it’s true. It’s also no secret why. I wake up, check my phone. I read the news on my phone. Check emails on my laptop. I browse the web on the same devise not a moment later. At Uni I work almost entirely on my laptop. For a break I check my phone.

As a result of our dependence on technology more people are now digital marketers than ever. Real estate agents, Formula 1 drivers, sports stars, actors, producers and the like are all marketing their personal brand through online posts of vlogs (video blogs). Not marketing one’s brand digitally in this day and age is to ostracise one’s brand from the modern business space. People’s attentions are focused online – specifically on succinct, entertaining videos.

Maybe it’s the informality of them. Maybe it’s the ease in which they convey information without long paragraphs. Whatever the case, it’s no surprise that self-videography is the way forward.

The main point is this: if you have a personal brand but you’re not uploading homely videos of your focal point, you’re slipping behind, much like my eyesight.

Last Wednesday I was sat in the rear left corner of a poorly insulated classroom beside a fellow peer of a pale complexion and dazed countenance. As I looked across the table I noticed, hastily plastered over the camera atop his laptop screen, a length of tape.

“Why’ve you done that mate?” I inquired.

“Can’t be too careful…,” he boasted.

With Nexflix buying and streaming documentaries such as ‘The Great Hack’ and Zuckerberg’s testimonial on the multi-billion-dollar data collection scandal being published across all social media formats, we are forced to consider the implications of our internet use and the accompanying relinquishing of our right to privacy. But that’s the irony in it all; all we do is ‘consider’ such implications without acting.

While we stream and scorn Zuckerberg for accessing our data, we do so while tuning onto the forum that allows him to do so, feeding our data to him as we complain.

The question on the lips of many within the digital marketing realm is what are, in fact, the implications for digital marketers? Further, how will it impact the way we collect data? Must morally conscious alternatives be arranged?

The answer, while it may not tickle non-marketing ears, is this: no.

While we convince ourselves otherwise, we don’t value our privacy as much as we do the latest tech. As a result, digital marketers needn’t concern themselves with mere morals!

For the tech-using population we revel in our ignorance as we scan our face and send it to a foreign entity all for the sake of a 20 second laugh.

When did I realise this?

Rewind: “Can’t be too careful … Hey Siri!…”

Social conformity. One of the most powerful subconscious influences and psychological currents we experience. As humans we ceaselessly strive for continued and seamless integration into various social environments in which we find ourselves.

And it’s no different when we’re interacting online. Often – and without realisation – we conform to ‘liking’ online posts because we see many others have clicked the red heart that props up the post from the left bottom corner of the screen. For this reason, thousands of med-level social media ‘influencers’ are re-evaluating their business models as we speak. With social media titan Instagram removing the likes count from posts in a bid to ease social-confirmation driven anxiety and depression, the perception of popularity of such ‘influencers’ and social media personalities that rested on their ever-growing likes tallies below monomaniacally structured bikini pics has taken a heavy blow to the undoubtedly sun-kissed torso.

Online personalities have seen their engagement levels diminish rapidly. Without knowing whether the latest post was popular our influencer-following contemporaries we have become apprehensive and twitchy, nervous to formulate our own opinion without external input of other users. The social media magnate’s power move has critically altered the road to achieving sustained online engagement. Digital marketers can no longer take the approach of pleasing the masses to incite to motivating users to follow their account. They might now adopt an opposite approach.

If users no longer view what others have viewed, they will be forced to view what speaks to them as an individual. What might result? Likely many robot-like social stars will fall, and new niches will arise who speak to the unaccounted-for Instagram users. Overarchingly, digital marketing will become more specialised and tailored to target audiences, which will – I think – change the platform of social media for the better.

“What I can’t understand is why LeBron James, guarded by a rookie, would settle for about as difficult a last-sec shot as he could take???”

Skip Bayless, Fox Sports 1

Can you be TOO unlikeable as a media personality or digital self-marketer?

Sitting there, as a normal person, with a normal perspective, your initial response to such as question is likely “yes, I wouldn’t watch someone I don’t like”. But history shows us that – as an audience – we love to hate… we love an antagonist.

When we meet somebody face to face and decide, for whatever reason, that we have an aversion towards such a person, our succeeding behaviour is to avoid the person because we understand why we don’t particularly like them. These reasons were unearthed in our initial interaction.

But when it comes to media personalities, we never actually meet them, and therefore never have the opportunity to tangibly experience their human traits. Because our social cognition is founded on principals of interpersonal interactions, we tend to be more intrigued by media figures who we dislike as opposed to being disinclined towards them because we are subliminally fascinated by the persona who can affect us, yet remain unaffected by us.

U.S. sports reporter Skip Bayless has quite literally carve a career from rebuking LeBron James, who is popularly considered a “Mount Rushmore” athlete (one of the greatest). After hitting a deliberate and calculated game-winning shot, Bayless slammed James because the made shot was “too difficult”. You’re right, it makes no sense. The better James plays, the more Bayless criticises. Why? Because people hate him for it, but they keep watching. Bayless’ YouTube views have grown exponentially since his recent ‘villainization’.

Our “attention seeking” generation responds to attention seekers, particularly the ones we don’t like, and digital promoters are taking full advantage.

Still don’t believe that we love villains? Rotten tomatoes ranked Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy: no.1 was The Dark Knight Rises. Same director and lead as the other two. Why was it unanimously the best? It co-stars the greatest villain of them all: Joker.

Like the Joker, Bayless stays mocked. He just can’t hear you over his $4m signing bonus.

“Find new friends”

– Wendy’s

Wendy’s is turning up the heat, but this time grilling more than meat patties.

Amongst a sea of kid-friendly, feel good online advertisements, Wendy’s burger chain has taken to a new method of increasing online engagement: publicly roasting their competitors and devoted customers.

It’s a trend that was made popular by YouTubers who would dedicate videos to taking aim at and showing no mercy towards anyone who dared provoke the home-video stars.

But if the motive is disagreeable, the response isn’t. People. F**king. Love. It.

Websites dedicated. Accounts created. Provocative tweets carefully curated and sent the way of the franchise. All in the hope of being on the receiving end of an icy milkshake-temperature personal attack.

The chain that has long been represented by a rosy-cheeked little girl grinning with glee has now given the world a twitter-bird shaped peep-hole into the personalities and hilarity of the people behind the franchise.

Insights and engagement has increased dramatically with the trend coming full circle: multi-million subscriber YouTube channels have dedicated videos to reviewing (and pissing themselves) at the witty responses coming from what we know as the ice-cream loving red-headed girl.

What’s more, Wendy’s has carved out an untouchable space within the twittersphere. Any competing franchise who tries to initiate or even thwart a roast is inundated with drollery and is left to limp away while the 300+ million twitter users laugh (and probably go to buy a Wendy’s shake).

If Wendy’s has shown us one thing, it’s that we love a villain.

But at what stage of playing the online antagonist do you just become unlikeable?

…to be explored in next week’s post.