Every ad dollar we spend fuels algorithms we know are harming people, chewing up the environment, and stoking hate between neighbors.

I must face the fact that my beloved field of marketing contributes to some of society’s biggest problems.

It pains me to write about this. I mean, I’m part of the problem, too. But it’s time to start this conversation because the traditional marketing approach is at a breaking point.

• AI-driven amplification of addiction
• Deep fake, misinformation, the decline of trust
• Easy AI content requires more energy consumption
• U.S. Surgeon General’s warnings on youth mental health and social media

We need to consider what it means to lead and sponsor ethically-sourced marketing.

Let’s break this problem down into four categories today:

• ADDICTION
• DIVISION
• ENERGY / ENVIRONMENT
• OPERATING WITH VALUES 

1. Addiction

Back in my corporate days, I dreamed of creating a product or service so great that people would be addicted to it. I remember saying those words out loud.

Before the internet, the chance of doing that was slim, especially in B2B. We didn’t have the repetitive internet memes, challenges, or reels that could drive people down a rabbit hole.

But today, marketers fund a system where attention is literally the product being sold. And it’s working exactly as designed.

Here’s the basic math nobody wants to talk about. Engagement equals money. Five billion people spending over two hours a day on these platforms? That’s not accidental. That’s the entire business model. Every scroll, every like, every second you spend staring at your screen — that’s a data point being harvested to sell more targeted ads.

The platforms use artificial intelligence to analyze your emotions, habits, and vulnerabilities. They’re predicting human behavior at scale.

But here’s where it gets really interesting, and honestly, a bit sinister. The designers of these platforms have deliberately borrowed from the playbook of slot machines and casinos. Infinite scroll. Autoplay. Those little notifications that pop up right when you’re about to put the phone down? They’re triggering the same reward circuits that gambling does.

It’s the variable reward schedule that behavioral psychologists have understood for decades, now deployed across billions of devices.

Think about the “like” button. It’s a dopamine delivery system. You post something, and you get that little hit of validation when people engage. So you post again. And again. The platform has essentially weaponized human psychology for engagement.

How many of you optimize likes and engagement as an essential part of your career success?

It gets worse. Younger brains are exponentially more susceptible to this stuff because they’re still developing the neurological circuits for impulse control and delayed gratification. U.S. children generate more than $11 billion in advertising revenue for major social media platforms.

Let that sink in. $11 billion extracted from the psychological vulnerabilities of kids who don’t yet have the brain development to resist these systems.

The platforms give lip service to parental controls and safeguards, but they don’t care.

Your marketing dollars fuel the addiction machine. Digital ad dollars are hurting children.

Addiction is the foundation, but the consequences don’t stop at endless scrolling. They spill into something darker.

2. Division

In the social media world we all love, hate is good for business.

A Wall Street Journal investigative report revealed that Facebook knew that its core social media product makes the world more toxic and divided.

“Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness,” read a slide from an internal presentation. “If left unchecked,” it warned, Facebook would feed users “more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention & increase time on the platform.”

One example: 64 percent of the growth in online extremist groups was fueled by Facebook’s own recommendation algorithms!

The company assigned a high-level team to develop a plan to combat this issue … and they did. But then Mark Zuckerberg shelved the basic research and blocked efforts to apply its conclusions to Facebook products. In fact, the Facebook leader has publicly denied his company’s findings and recommendations.

Why?

An internal report said that moderating hate was anti-growth.

That makes me sick. When hate becomes a growth strategy, every advertiser becomes a silent financier of dysfunction.

While the emotional toll of division is staggering, the physical toll on the planet is just beginning to surface.

3. Energy and Environmental Impact

Last year, I was honored to be a keynote speaker at the Belgian Association of Marketing’s annual conference, a first-class event. It was there that I met Dr. Victoria Hurth. She introduced the audience to a new way of looking at marketing and its impact on the environment. I felt ashamed that I had never really considered these realities.

Victoria Hurth

Marketing, she said, is the engine of demand. That’s our superpower. And it’s also part of the environmental problem.

When we stimulate desire, we stimulate production, shipping, packaging, and, too often, waste. The question isn’t whether marketing affects the environment. It’s whether we’re willing to measure it.

Even “digital” isn’t clean.

Programmatic ads ride on massive server networks that consume real energy. An industry analysis shows the carbon cost of every ad impression — grams of CO? tied directly to the ads we place. One publisher cut its emissions 70% with smarter supply-path decisions, with no revenue loss.

E-commerce? It helps when it consolidates freight … until fast shipping and high return rates obliterate any benefit. U.S. product returns alone generated 24 million metric tons of CO? last year and sent billions of pounds of goods to landfills.

Even our content diet carries a carbon footprint. Streaming and online video now account for an estimated 3–4 percent of global emissions. “Virtual” isn’t virtual. It’s powered by real data centers, real devices, real infrastructure.

And then there’s AI.

OpenAI’s planned chip network may consume 250 gigawatts of power by 2033. That’s one-fifth of America’s total electric generation capacity today. If OpenAI were a country, it would be the seventh-largest electricity producer on the planet. Energy prices are already rising nationwide, as is the environmental impact.

So yes, even creativity now carries a carbon cost.

Dr. Hurth argues that businesses must prioritize human sustainability over profits. It sounds idealistic — until you realize the alternative.

We’re not just creating demand. We’re creating emissions.

4. Operating with values

In the early days of web marketing, I attended a presentation by an SEO “pioneer.” He had hired home-bound disabled people to pose as online commenters in an effort to impact his customers’ search results.

When it came time for the Q&A, I asked, “How do you live with yourself? This is so unethical!”

He responded, “It works. And if I didn’t do it, somebody else would.”

Too often, marketers opt for “what works” and turn a blind eye to the holistic impact of their actions on the world and our customers. A brand strategist is a role in which you are effectively a cosmetic surgeon for capital.

While hiring people to fake our content seems extreme, aren’t we doing the same thing today with AI? Half the comments left on my content are AI-generated fakes.

I learned at a recent meeting that 85% of companies use AI to generate content and that, on average, their content output has increased by 45%.

To what end? To replace humans? To add to the barrage of noise we must endure to find truth? To consume vast amounts of energy and clean water to generate AI slop?

Can we keep one eye on the bottom line and one on our moral compass? If we don’t reclaim the soul of our work, the machines will do it for us.

What do we do about it?

First, let me emphasize that I’m proud to be a marketer. The marketer is the creator, the innovator, the front line of our business. We can be the beacon, shining a light on the good and the worthy.

Throughout history, advertising and marketing have played a role in positive societal change and in creating demand for life-changing products.

Second, the weight of these problems does not necessarily fall solely on us. We’re expected to work in a deeply flawed social media / digital environment beyond our control. Any real change would require complex systemic changes.

So what’s the point of this post?

I’m willing to bet every person reading this has had pain in their heart over the online safety of our children, the impact of global warming, and the divisions that are tearing countries and families apart.

Am I suggesting that we sell less? Quit digital advertising? Abandon profitability?

No. But at a minimum, we need to open this conversation and re-frame the marketing profession in a more holistic context. Any change begins with awareness.

What if marketing became the world’s most powerful engine for human flourishing instead of manipulation? What if innovation, storytelling, and creativity were measured not just by impressions but by the impact we have on the people we serve?”

I don’t have the answers. But here are a few ideas I picked up from Dr. Hurth and others.

Reframe success.

Replace metrics like engagement and impressions with impact: well-being, trust, sustainability, and authentic connection. Isn’t this why we love the Patagonia brand? It can be done.

Track “advertised emissions,” addiction time, and content energy use alongside ROI. Transparency changes behavior. Above, I cited the Scope3 research. One publisher cut average CO2 per thousand impressions by about 70% through supply-path optimization, with no revenue loss.

Design for restraint.

Use creativity to promote durability, repair, and reuse. Ask: “Does this campaign help or harm long-term human flourishing?” Re-use is a significant priority for Gen Z shoppers. A positive trend!

Invest in ethical tech.

Support platforms and partners committed to transparency, safety, and carbon-neutral operations. The energy efficiency of most technologies (especially AI) is increasing at a breathtaking rate. Are you aware of the relative energy use of your tech stack?

Lead with humanity.

Make ethics a competitive advantage. Reward teams for doing the right thing, not just the fastest or cheapest.

“Ethically Sourced Marketing” is a new idea. Corporate culture doesn’t change without a leader who makes this a priority. If this idea catches on, it will likely be because one person embraces the change and sets an example.

Dramatic change is possible

Here’s a point of inspiration.

Madewell, a German-based clothing retailer, is working to eliminate plastics, aiming to have 100% of its packaging be sustainably sourced and free of virgin plastic by the end of this year. The brand is also reducing plastic in its products by increasing its use of sustainably sourced fibers and recycled materials, such as recycled insulation and recycled nylon, and is committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2030. 

I read that the CEO is even trying to eliminate plastic pens in their offices.

Can you imagine how difficult it would be to eliminate all plastic in your company? But one leader is driving this change, shaping a company culture that makes a difference on a vast scale.

If one company can eliminate plastic, I have hope that somebody out there can eliminate marketing and advertising that contribute to hate, polarization, addiction, and waste.

There has never been a better time to re-evaluate what we do and how we do it.

If positive change seems unattainable, here’s a good place to start: If you are directly or indirectly doing things that people hate, STOP IT.

Double down on what people love. Trust. Transparency. Humanity. Community. Ethics. A responsible, measurable environmental impact.

Eugene Healey wrote:

“We have to fight under the contradictions of capitalism. That’s non-negotiable. But we should still get to do so by creating beautiful things. In that, we can find meaning.

“If you’re a marketer, make things you believe should exist. If you’re a senior marketer, make the case for the existence of beautiful things. Look at your brand advertising, your out-of-home, hell, even your performance ads, and ask yourself: does this make some meaningful contribution to public space, or at the very least not deplete it?”

The Most Human Company Wins. Keep fighting the good fight.

Help me start this conversation by sharing this post with your marketing and advertising friends. Thank you.

Need an inspiring keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustration courtesy MidJourney

The post Is it time to embrace ethically-sourced marketing? appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

On the latest episode of The Marketing Companion, I decided to take a deep dive into the nooks and crannies of social media marketing, and there’s nobody better to accompany me than marketing genius Dennis Yu.

Dennis studies the art and science of social media success to the Nth degree and we get into some fascinating discussions that include:

• The ROI of a blue check mark
• The viral power of feel-good stories
• A social media platform that is killing it right now
• How social media platforms are using facial and image recognition to elevate content
• Why replay rate is the key to success on TikTok
• Insights into what’s happening with Meta and the metaverse

Dennis also shares a unique perspective on how search engines and social platforms are turning over information to the US government. But TikTok doesn’t have to … which could be influencing the government’s position with that platform.

Click here to listen to episode 270

Resources mentioned in this show

TikTok Advertising book

Blog post: Why hate is good for business

Ocean Spray cranberry juice case study

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant. The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak at your company event or conference soon.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.

Illustration courtesy MidJourney

The post What is the ROI of a blue check mark? appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

A few short items for you today. Too short for a blog post, too big to ignore. Let’s start with a news item showing that we could be heading into a golden age for freelance content creators.

Digiday reported that more agencies are outsourcing their content needs to freelance creators as the work becomes more challenging.

A research report showed that 71 percent of in-house marketers and 68 percent of agencies are outsourcing their content needs to freelance creators. They also reported that the most effective type of content for driving results seems to be blog posts (!). They pointed to these freelance advantages:

• Flexible resources
• Specific industry knowledge
• Lower cost
• Metrics to connect content to sales

The demand for content is rising, with 86 percent of agencies agreeing that there is an increasing need, and the majority of them are further investing in content marketing in the long run. With economic pressures in 2023 and the threat of bot content, this is good news indeed for the freelance crowd.

Creators for the win

YouTube creator Jimmy Donaldson (Mr. Beast) is raising $150 mm at a $1.5 billion valuation. He has 108 mm subscribers and his latest video had 47 million views, which would make him 25 times bigger than Fox News. If that doesn’t speak to the power of the personal brand, I don’t know what does.

Book learning

I learned something interesting this week. I’ve often said that writing a book is like getting a master’s degree — at least the way I approach it! Now that I’m nearing the end of the writing journey for my next book, when I look back at the first chapters, they need an upgrade. I’m smarter now than I was at the beginning of the process!

Another slap in the Face … book

Surprising precisely no one, Facebook will shut down its invite-only newsletter service, which was started in the great newsletter hype/panic moment last year. You might recall they were paying influencers and artists to write essays through their subscription service.

No company on earth has jerked creators around more than Facebook. And they wonder why young people are abandoning the platform.

Solid advice.

Always learning!

Gave the closing keynote address at a conference in Suriname, a small and lovely country in South America. The audience was so wired and enthusiastic! Truly a ton of fun. However, I made a big mistake.

I searched Google for an image of the Suriname football (soccer) team in action to add some local flavor to a slide. I picked the best action picture and thought this would create a great reaction. But the crowd sat there a little stunned.

It was a picture of the US team.

The front of the jersey was not visible in the photo. Apparently, Google was delivering USA photos to me even though I was sitting in Suriname and searching for Suriname!

It was embarrassing but I made fun of myself and announced “Damn you Google!” to the audience. This ended up as one of the most popular parts of my speech! People commented that it was nice to see somebody vulnerable on stage. Many people even thought it was purposeful!

Something ALWAYS goes wrong at a speech and the more you speak, the more you learn about handling adversity with grace.

Tok power

In my classes, I’ve stated that TikTok is the most significant addition to the social media scene since Facebook. There are layers of depth to the platform that make it significant. Here’s another piece of proof: Pew Research reports that a small but growing share of U.S. adults say they regularly get news on TikTok.

This is in contrast with many other social media sites, where news consumption has either declined or stayed about the same in recent years.

In just two years, the share of U.S. adults who say they regularly get news from TikTok has roughly tripled, from 3 percent in 2020 to 10 percent in 2022. Also bigger than Fox News!

A lot of people are worried about how China is collecting data through TikTok. Shouldn’t we be more worried that millions of people are getting their news through TikTok?

Ah, Twitter

I have always loved Twitter. But it is becoming clear that Elon Musk spent $44 billion without a plan. Unless his plan has been to destroy it.

Of all the mistakes he has made, perhaps the worst is the clumsy firing of key employees. The capacity of Twitter’s engineering team to keep it alive and safe has been savaged. Even if he wanted to re-build, who would work in that toxic culture of fear?

Useful nugget

Did you know that Google’s PageSpeed Insights page pagespeed.web.dev will give you a free and near-instant score for the mobile and desktop versions of your website? Thank you to John Espirian for this reminder.

Sort of my personal code:

Have a great week everyone!

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of some of the world’s bestselling digital marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram. 

Illustration generated by AI courtesy MidJourney

The post Could this be the golden age of freelance (and other timely observations) appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

On a recent episode of The Marketing Companion podcast, I had a wee bit of a breakdown. I’m so tired of hearing about Facebook’s endless and deeply disturbing problems that I don’t even want to talk about it any more!

Facebook has been in crisis mode since the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018. Still, the company that started as a dorm-room project and now has more than 3.5 billion people using at least one of its apps monthly has proved to be financially resilient with a market value not far from $1 trillion.

But now thousands of pages of internal documents provided to Congress by former employee Frances Haugen depict a company where data on the harms it causes are abundant and solutions are ignored.

The papers reveal that even Facebook’s own employees agonize over the fact that its central algorithms reward outrage, hatred, and viral clickbait, while its content moderation systems are deeply inadequate. Haugen claims Facebook is “stuck in a feedback loop that they can’t get out of.”

Backed into a corner with hard evidence from the leaked documents, Facebook has doubled down defending its choices rather than fixing its problems. A name change, promises of a metaverse, and aggressive advertising are meant to distract us from the issue. Meanwhile, the company has shed nearly $200 billion in market value in less than eight weeks, as investors flee from the imploding enterprise.

And yet … in our marketing world, Facebook is an essential daily utility for much of the profession. Facebook ads are the very heartbeat of many businesses today.

In all of this mess, is there any way to fix Facebook? Let’s figure that out today … but I have to warn you, it’s not pretty.

The network effect

Shortly after my Facebook podcast rant, I absorbed an excellent HBR article called The Facebook Trap by Dr. Andy Wu. Here’s a summary of the main points:

• Facebook’s business model is driven by a network effect. The more people who use it, the more valuable it is.
• This network is driven in two ways. The first is when people on Facebook find their own friends and interests. These user-generated connections are organic.
• The second method is algorithmic growth. Facebook grows much faster if it speeds the process through algorithms that suggest people, organizations, and groups to follow. This heavy hand is necessary to allow indirect connections that create intense engagement.

Intense connections mean more engagement, more time on site, more ad views. The efficient algorithmic engine drives business growth but also drives intense controversy.

Dr. Wu explains that the primary issue gets down to this: Within this network effect, what is Facebook actually accountable to fix?

Which network can fix Facebook?

Focusing on the nature of the networks provides a framework of what Facebook can reasonably be held accountable for. Unfortunately, it doesn’t present easy solutions.

If Facebook inserts itself and disrupts connections that people want to freely join — even if it is distasteful or controversial — it could be seen as censorship.

Adjusting a Facebook algorithm to stop encouraging people to join conspiracy/hate groups is within their control, but ruins their business model based on “intense connections” that make the most money.

When Facebook became a public company in 2012, I wrote a post predicting it would become the most dangerous company on earth, and perhaps I was right. The primary resource used by the company is our personal information. As a public company, it is on a mission to increase profits every quarter, without excuse, without exception, forever. The only way Facebook can do that is to leverage our personal information in riskier ways. Disaster seems inevitable.

Facebook cannot be a successful public company and also provide ethical algorithmic guidance, which explains why Zuckerberg has buried these issues — every time — until he gets caught.

So what can be done to fix Facebook? Dr. Wu suggests a few areas where progress can be made:

1. Transparency

The documents released by the whistleblower show how Facebook must be more transparent about the fundamental tradeoffs that come with a free social network. By freely releasing research that documents issues like body image and Instagram, the insights can guide regulators and put Facebook in a better position to move regulation in a favorable direction for the industry and consumers.

Regulation is inevitable. Facebook needs to stop resisting it and help the process.

2. Ramp up moderation

As of 2020, Facebook employed 15,000 human moderators to view hundreds of content items daily, but it needs many more, especially in non-English-speaking countries. To fix Facebook this will cost billions of dollars, and, perhaps more painfully, force it to decide what content to restrict: curating for one person is censoring another.

Avoiding this investment in moderation resources and technology is the primary reason Facebook is in the mess it is in today.

3. Be accountable

Facebook needs clear boundaries on which aspects of its platform it wants to — and can be — accountable for, and clearly delegate accountability to governments, independent agencies, and users where it doesn’t today.

On algorithm-originated connections, it will be impractical to delegate accountability on what is often a black box process — and this technology is a core piece of intellectual property for Facebook — so Facebook needs to be ready to take responsibility for what connections their algorithm promotes.

But to fix Facebook, it needs to go further …

Dr. Wu is a faculty member of both Harvard and The University of Pennsylvania. There are probably lines of decorum and controversy he cannot reasonably cross.

But I can.

Nothing is going to change within the toxic Facebook/Meta company culture without a change at the top. So let’s say what needs to be said …

4. Eject Zuckerberg

The ultimate and final responsibility for this state of affairs rests with CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who holds dictatorial power over the company.

Any change at Facebook has to start with the ejection of Mark Zuckerberg. Many years ago when the company was being investigated for who knows what, a Zuckerberg email emerged where he claimed that he can be “unethical without breaking the law.” I’m convinced that is still his personal code for running Facebook. In fact, he’s proved it.

But Zuckerberg has an ironclad hold on Facebook. He owns the majority of the company’s voting shares, controls its board of directors, and has increasingly surrounded himself with executives who don’t appear to question his vision.

In the name change announced last week, Zuckerberg affirmed that he intends to be the face of his company’s past, present, and future.

But he has so far been unable to address stagnating user growth and shrinking engagement. Employee morale is in a freefall. The company is losing the attention of its most important demographic — teenagers and young people — with no clear path to gaining it back, its own documents reveal.

Facebook under Zuckerberg seems to only do the right thing after it gets caught. That is no way to run a company but unfortunately, Facebook’s long-term demise will continue until it loses so much value that they have no choice but to find a way to pull the plug on its CEO.

5. Hold the algorithms accountable

Zuckerberg has long hidden behind an argument that Facebook is not a publisher. The content, true or false, is coming from other people, so how can Facebook be responsible for that?

But he cannot dismiss the impact of his algorithms as a distribution network for enabling and promoting hate and falsehoods. It’s like this: What if the Ku Klux Klan were meeting in the Facebook cafeteria? He would put an end to it because the company is enabling hate, even if it is not actually causing the hate.

But Facebook won’t address this because provoking hate is good for business.

People engage more when they see content that enrages or misleads them. This helps explain why low-quality, outrage-baiting, hyper-partisan publishers do so well on the platform.

As reported in Wired, one internal document from September 2020 notes that “low integrity Pages” get most of their followers through News Feed recommendations. Another recounts a 2019 experiment in which Facebook researchers created a dummy account, named Carol, and had it follow Donald Trump and a few conservative publishers. Within days the platform was encouraging Carol to join QAnon groups.

A presentation from April 2020 notes that Facebook algorithms were reducing graphic violence by just 19 percent, nudity and pornography by about 17 percent, and hate speech by about 1 percent. In a file from March 2021, company researchers estimate “that we may take action as little as 3-5% of hate and ~0.6% of [violence and incitement] on Facebook.”

Facebook must be held legally accountable for the lack of effectiveness of its algorithms. Haugen and others have recommended the idea of public representatives to oversee Facebook from the inside, similar to Federal Reserve examiners for large banks.

6. Take the company private

I agree with Dr. Wu that there really is no solution to this very complicated problem as long as Facebook is a public company.

So what if it wasn’t a public company? What if it was taken private?

This is a big and crazy idea but I don’t see any way Facebook can emerge as a sustainable and ethical company as long as it has to make quarterly growth objectives to please Wall Street.

In 2013, Dell Founder Michael Dell took the company private. He explained that the company had to reinvent itself away from the pressures of Wall Street earnings expectations. Five years later, the company was publicly traded again but it had been completely overhauled and reimagined for the digital age.

Would it be possible for Facebook to go underground for a few years to right the ship? Maybe what emerges is a smaller company with different revenue streams and a new vision to connect people in a way that is responsible.

I realize this is a VERY complicated scenario. But how else can the company be reinvented?

7. Introduce subscriptions

When Ev Williams founded the blogging site Medium, he moved it to a subscription model. At the time, he admitted that an ad-based model drives all the wrong behaviors. If Medium depended on ad revenue, it would lead to decisions to elevate hateful and controversial content that drives time on site and ad revenue … like Facebook.

As long as you have an ad-based business model, conspiracies, hate, and controversy will drive the business.

In its current form, Facebook would never offer ad-free subscriptions because it reduces ad views, revenue, and growth. A subscription-based model would depend on delivering quality and value instead of controversy. That would take time, and it might not be possible as a public company (see point 6 above!).

Conclusion: Can we fix Facebook?

In short, there is no scenario to fix Facebook in its current form, even with legislation. As long as the current leadership, culture, and business model are in place, the company will simply morph into even more imaginative and destructive modes of operation.

I don’t think it has to be this way! I wonder what Facebook would be like if it were run by a brand like Disney or Apple or Patagonia? I don’t think the mess Facebook is in had to be inevitable. It is a product of corrupt intent. If the corrupt intent can be removed — as a start — I think there is hope.

The company is betting its future on the virtual reality of the metaverse. But there will be more than one metaverse. Will there be a Google version? Amazon? Apple?

The Facebook version of this alternate reality will simply be an extension of the unethical practices we see from the company culture today. In fact, it might even get worse as employees trying to fight for ethical practices leave at a more rapid pace.

And of course, this is not just a Facebook problem.

Social media will continue to destroy trust, harm individuals, and jeopardize important democratic institutions unless we elevate a bold dialogue on radical solutions.

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of some of the world’s bestselling digital marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.

The post Is there any way to fix Facebook? appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

This is an exciting week because I’m re-launching The Marketing Companion podcast with a new twist.

Instead of a regular co-host, I’ll have six different marketing geniuses rotating through that co-host slot over the next year …

The Marketing Companions

• Mathew Sweezey is a director of marketing for Salesforce and the author of The Context Marketing Revolution.
• Dennis Yu is former Yahoo!, former American Airlines, CEO of BlitzMetrics, AdWeek contributor.
• Keith Reynold Jennings is vice president of community impact for Jackson Healthcare.
• Brooke Sellas is the founder of B Squared Media.
• Amanda Russell is a professor at Northwestern University and the University of Texas and the author of The Influencer Code
• Jay Acunzo is former ESPN, former Hubspot, podcast guru, author of Break the Wheel.

Yes, this is going to be great.

We kick off the new Marketing Companion Era with Mathew Sweezey. A few months ago, Mathew visited me at my home in Tennessee. For hours, we sat by a fire pit overlooking the lake, solving the problems of the marketing world. Every 10 minutes I said, “I wish we were recording this!”

Well, we finally did.

Our first show is wide-ranging, covering TikTok, getting stoned with customers (or not), and the latest Facebook doo-doo.

But the door swings wide open when our conversation turns to the future of influencer marketing. In short, it might be everything. We brainstorm what the intersection of retail and influence might look like and you won’t want to miss this crazy discussion! All you have to do is click here:

Click on this link to listen to Episode 230

Other ways to enjoy our podcast

• Try this! “Alexa, play the latest episode of The Marketing Companion.”
• Click here to download the latest episode or subscribe on iTunes
• Listen to us on iHeart Radio
• Find us on Google Play
• Find the podcast on Stitcher
• Complete Marketing Companion Episode Guide
• The Marketing Companion YouTube channel

Please support our extraordinary sponsor. Our content is free because of their generosity.

Understanding your marketing video’s performance can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Vidyard’s online video marketing platform is a magnet for your needle. Host all your videos, measure their impact and integrate them into your email, content, and digital marketing strategies. This is the video CRM solution! All Marketing Companion fans can click here to try Vidyard today, for free.

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In our new episode of The Marketing Companion podcast, Brooke Sellas and I discuss how technology is opening new marketing opportunities for senior living, virtual meetings, healthcare, real estate, insurance, and other industries.

Some of the new marketing opportunities include:

• How technology is creating changes that open new “seams” of opportunity for business innovation.
• Practical business expectations and applications for Elon Musk’s robot announcement.
• The reality of VR conferencing systems. Is it the next killer productivity app or just a new version of Second Life?

You won’t want to miss this episode …

Click on this link to listen to Episode 227

Other ways to enjoy our podcast

• Try this! “Alexa, play the latest episode of The Marketing Companion.”
• Click here to download the latest episode or subscribe on iTunes
• Listen to us on iHeart Radio
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One of the themes of this blog over the past few months has been that in marketing terms, the pandemic was a re-set. I choose this word carefully. It is not a change, an evolution, or an aberration. We are re-starting from a new base level of consumer changes in buying behavior and expectations.

There is NO WAY to look at historical trends and project what might be next. A new study from Facebook provides a glimpse of what I’m talking about.

The report, called Industry Perspective: The Evolving Customer Experience, features insights into how customers are shopping after the pandemic. One might believe that such a study by Facebook could be self-serving, but the research looks solid and I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

A few consumer changes highlighted in the report:

• A staggering 81 percent of consumers admit they have changed a shopping habit since the start of the pandemic.
• 92 percent say they will continue their new behavior in the long term.
• 66 percent of consumers say their mobile phone is their most favored shopping tool.

Another eye-opener:

… the implication is that most internet purchases are impulse buys … or at least unplanned purchases. I think this suggests an important consideration for marketing strategy. For some product purchases, content marketing and SEO would be far less important than digital advertising and influencer advocacy.

This brings up another interesting data point:

Although this is new research, I don’t think this trend is necessarily pandemic-related. It’s been brewing for a long time. I recently read a report from GWI that showed the NUMBER ONE reason Gen Z visits social media is to seek content on the latest trends from their favorite influencers. That is a “wow” revelation. Influencers rule the internet.

Can you imagine seeing statistics like this five years ago? Even three years ago? Marketing is being turned on its head! I find that incredibly energizing and fun.

And this is just the beginning. We are entering an Era of Unintended Consequences. If you’re creating a new marketing strategy based on an iteration of previous years, it’s time to blow the thing up and re-think everything.

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of several best-selling digital marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

Illustration courtesy Unsplash.com

The post Five facts indicating dramatic post-pandemic consumer changes appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

By Kiki Schirr, {grow} Contributing Columnist

Once upon a time, the tech giants were buddy-buddy. You might even say they acted like family, specifically, the type of family that negotiates illegal salary limits with each other. (Remember in 2015 Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe had to pay out $415 million for agreeing on wage caps and not to out-bid each other for talent. Developer pay has since rebounded.)

But these happy Cosa Nostra days might be coming to an end.

Apple’s App Tracking Transparency policy, which notifies device users when apps or sites are tracking their data or using their camera or microphone, launched in April of 2021. Although the update undoubtedly alarmed Google, it was Facebook that took out expensive full-page ads in newspapers like the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and The Washington Post (owned by Jeff Bezos), to decry damage to small business owners and the free Internet.

When we look back at this year, we may view it as the first shot fired in the Tech Giant War. Also, I’m not above pointing out that Apple CEO Tim Cook and Star Wars hero Han Solo have the same number of letters in their names.

The Tech Giant War is already raging

Early this month, Apple announced scanning iCloud images against known child porn databases. The public outcry — against something that has been standard practice for most cloud storage providers like Dropbox and Google — has been suspiciously loud.

Quick aside: I don’t mean to suggest this is not an alarming announcement. Apple also intends to blur sexual images sent to children in Messages. Apple Messages are supposed to be encrypted (which means that only the sender and receiver can view the content.) If Apple is scanning for sexting between children, then obviously these messages are not truly encrypted. Anything with a built-in backdoor is vulnerable to hackers.

But the rumor that strangers will be eyeing your grandchildren’s photos is false. And yet, the chatter is there. Attempts to prove whether this chatter is being boosted would be impossible since only privacy-focused search engines were not angry with Apple over app-tracking updates, but now they’re likely angry at Apple’s privacy invasion. So comparing searches by brand won’t work. And should someone try to analyze search and topic surfacing by brand, they won’t get far. These algorithms are notoriously well-kept secrets within tech companies.

This is supposition, of course. It’s too soon to see the effects of recent hostility. But it’s worthwhile to watch the news for signs of escalation. Meanwhile, there’s another force at play. The government.

President Biden fuels the Tech Giant War

If the prospect of warring tech giant war didn’t scare you, let’s also consider U.S. politics.

President Biden appointed Lina Kahn, a leading anti-trust lawyer and professor, to head of the Federal Trade Commission. Amazon is particularly hostile to Kahn since she wrote the authoritative thesis on why Amazon is a monopoly, published in Yale Law Review. In July, he also added Jonathan Kanter as the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Chief. Bloomberg characterized Kanter as a “tech foe” in its headlines.

Big Tech has been putting out these fires for years through massive campaign donations. But despite the PAC pressure, Biden has turned the heat on. One reason is that fighting the growing power of the Tech Giants is something both parties seem to agree on.

While the Big Tech Titans skirmish among themselves, it makes them vulnerable to the all-out attack from the government.

This battle will have huge consequences for content creators and social media marketers.

The Tech Giant War and social media

Think that Google penalizes content duplication now?

As the Tech Giant War breaks out, the value of exclusive content will skyrocket. This war will be fought over content and creators.

Amazon-only Kindle books won’t be the outlier, they’ll be the norm. Google and Apple both produce books and might very well boost exclusive content programs of their own.

This year Mark Zuckerberg pledged to spend $1 Billion on Facebook’s Creators program. This focus on exclusive video content from stars who can import an audience is aimed at Twitch (an Amazon subsidiary) and its Partnership Program, which once held a monopoly on live streaming gaming stars. Microsoft once attempted to lure away this talent by purchasing Beam, rebranding it as Mixer, and hiring such talent as gamers Ninja and Shroud. However, citing their lack of market share, Microsoft shut down the service in July of 2020. Facebook might have better odds because they are not only focused on gaming content.

Of course, a billion dollars never hurts.

Marketing opportunities in the Tech Giant War

So how do brands thrive in a siloed social media environment? Watch how the battles are evolving and get ahead of it.

If they want exclusive … give them exclusive! Share your video on Facebook. Write books for Amazon. Make short snippets of content in YouTube Shorts. And always keep an ear to the ground to adjust to the ever-changing goals of the Tech Giants.

A few years ago, Microsoft added “time spent on LinkedIn” to CEO Satya Nadella’s bonus structure. That was a big clue as to where content creators should focus to succeed on that platform!

Tp meet this goal, LinkedIn added video capabilities and became the only social feed that surfaces branded content organically. As a result, marketers, business coaches, recruiters, and other personal brands flocked to LinkedIn.

Look at developments on other platforms. YouTube established a creator fund to support Shorts. Amazon has Vella. TikTok launched Stories, which feels redundant, but we’ll bite.

Committing exclusively to a platform is high-risk. Recent launches like Instagram Reels and Twitter Fleets quickly flopped. In the more distant past, many of us were burned by Facebook Notes, Meerkat, Vine, and the ultimate platform failure, Google Plus.

But committing can also be lucrative, especially for creators. Those creator funds are bound to keep rising.

When a social network launches a “new” feature, instead of complaining that it’s just trying to be like another network, give it a shot. Brands are rewarded for being early adopters of new features, whether it’s a bump in reach or simply standing out because the space is less crowded. As the opportunity to be an early adopter of new networks becomes less common, shift the focus to exploring new features on old networks. Your curiosity and creativity will be rewarded and your brand will have another month of relevancy in a constantly evolving space.

The cycle never stops, new opportunities are always popping up.

How to hedge the exclusivity bets

High risk brings high reward and unless you have an unlimited ad budget, exclusivity is the highest payout gamble. Weigh your odds and choose your games carefully, but don’t be afraid to go all-in on a wise decision. The tech companies will reward your loyalty.

Just remember that they will never return that loyalty.

Prepare your brand to hop in the event of platform failure.

The most important strategy is to own your audience. Gather emails, phone numbers, or better yet, set up a private discussion channel on your website or a Discord server. If one of your content platforms tanks, you will have options.

Stats like audience engagement are fleeting. Tech companies are fickle. It’s human connections that last.

Be good to your customers and community, because they’re the ones that will matter in the end, no matter what happens in the Tech Giant Wars.

Kiki Schirr is a freelance marketer, writer, and former founder who enjoys new technologies. She believes success is a product of luck, tenacity, and chutzpah. You can email Kiki Schirr at her full name without spaces at Gmail. Just remember that she responds faster on Twitter.

The post The Tech Giant War is here, and there are opportunities for marketers appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

It’s been a while since we talked about Snapchat on The Marketing Companion podcast, and there’s a lot to learn! Arguably Snapchat has made all the right moves in the past year:

1) Ad uncertainty with other platforms forced businesses to take a new look at Snapchat

2) The company realized huge gains with a reorganized and improved sales force

3) Snap launched successful new products including Snap Games, a live multiplayer gaming platform, more augmented-reality features, and an expanded line of original shows

Snapchat has become a powerful entertainment platform and they OWN a demographic group — 60 percent of all internet users in America aged 13 to 24 use Snapchat. It’s the second most-downloaded mobile app in the world.

This is why my head always spins when founder Evan Spiegel keeps insistinging that Snapchat is a “camera company.”

The Snapchat dilemma

A couple of years ago, parent company Snap experimented with a famously awful wearable camera — Spectacles — and now it’s experimenting again with prototype AR glasses. They spent half a billion dollars buying optics provider WaveOptics. The new version of Spectacles pastes an AR world on top of whatever you’re viewing through your glasses.

Apple, Google, and Facebook are all working on AR glasses too. Snap obviously doesn’t want to be shut out, but should they really try to compete with those companies? Is Snap’s best role to move into hardware, or to put the best app possible into the Apple eco-system?

That’s our debate on the latest show.  But that’s not all!

Brooke Sellas and I also discuss how widely-used “emotional recognition” technology is badly botching the job and we look at some surprising Gen Z workforce trends.

Click on this link to listen to Episode 221

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