Monthly Archives: June 2014

mediating, social media-ising, social networking

Weapons of Mass Contagion: why our amazement and anger at Facebook’s emotion experiment is misdirected

Featured image: a Wordle of Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities which “derives from the Facebook Principles, and is our terms of service that governs our relationship with users and others who interact with Facebook. By using or accessing Facebook, you agree to this Statement.” source

“We’re walking backwards into the future” observed Mark Holden as he introduced Jason Silva at PHD’s keynote at Cannes this year. his elegant observation describes how we can only see the future by looking at what has already happened, we project back over our shoulders to imagine what wonders are to come.

but every now and again we get to peek over our shoulder. occasionally the curtain that hides tomorrow’s world slips, and we get a glimpse of what is to come … and sometimes we come to suspect that our future may already be here. and sometimes we don’t like what we see.

such a slip occurred today when it was revealed that in 2012 Facebook collaborated with academics from Cornell and the University of California in an experiment to manipulate the news feeds of 689,000 users’ home pages … discovering in the process that – through a process known as ’emotional contagion’ the social network could actually make people feel more positive or negative.

they found that exposure to friends’ ‘positive emotional content’ led to fewer positive posts by those users. the opposite – an increase in negative posts occurred when exposure to ‘negative emotional content’ increased.

the reaction has been strong and has emerged from every side of the debate. Clay Johnson of the Barack Obama’s 2008 online presidential campaign commented that “The Facebook ‘transmission of anger’ experiment is terrifying”, whilst professor of law at Maryland University James Grimmelmann said Facebook had failed to gain ‘informed consent’ for the research. Even Jim Sheridan of Britain’s Commons media select committee, weighed in:

“This is extraordinarily powerful stuff and if there is not already legislation on this, then there should be to protect people … They are manipulating material from people’s personal lives and I am worried about the ability of Facebook and others to manipulate people’s thoughts in politics or other areas. If people are being thought-controlled in this kind of way there needs to be protection and they at least need to know about it.”

above quotes via The Guardian

it should be noted that the sheer audacity of a member of the UK Government criticizing data protection is the equivalent of the pot not just calling the kettle black, but hiring the Red Arrows to sky-write in big flashing rainbow letters “that kettle is black and this pot says so” in the skies above London. the UK Government’s (and silent Opposition’s) lack of response to the GCHQ Tempora revelations leaves them with little latitude to point the finger.

and yet they are pointing. and they’re not alone … in fact a small queue is forming around the block at Menlo Park to join in calls for “down with this sort of thing”.

the response is not surprising. its one of (1) our amazement that social contagion exists and is possible at such scale (2) concern that it appears to be so easy to manipulate and (3) anger at the revelation that as the curtain slipped, it revealed that as our lives, adventures, and hook-ups migrate online – we are more exposed, more vulnerable, more subject to the influence of (in the presence of doubt, assumed) dark forces.

if an algorithm can make me happier what does that say about me? if a social network can make me sad what does that say about my ability to self-determine who I am?

and yet this is the deal. this is the contract. every one of us who uses a social network does so with an inherent and reasonable value exchange. the problem isn’t the contract people have made with Facebook or any other social platform … the problem is that most people don’t stop to think about the fact that they’ve signed a contract in the first place.

until a decade ago our contract with media providers and marketing was one of an attention-based value exchange. brands paid for space that paid for content to which we gave our attention in exchange for getting that content for free. brands used that attention to generate reach which led to awareness and sales.

but the contract changed, its just that most people haven’t realised. the contract isn’t just attention based, its now also information based. a new generation of media platforms trade not in attention but information. Facebook trades in information about every aspect of our lives. Google sits on the largest database of intention information in the solar system. platforms sell this information to brands who use it to target, re-target, content create, segment, insight-generate and even start one-on-one conversations with us.

the information they’re using is ours. most people gave it away freely and willingly in a value exchange. an un-negotiated contract in which we handed over data for utility. and our data has bought us riches – Google’s search engine, Spotify’s music streaming, Facebook’s continual partial presence to everyone we know, or the credibility we get from the adulation of our #nofilter Instagram pic.

none of this came for free, we gladly paid for it with our information.

utility, information, education, inspiration, connection, entertainment, advice and Tinder swipes all paid for with information through a contract the existence of which most people are unaware. until the curtain slips.

people shouldn’t be amazed and angry by Facebook’s ability to unleash weapons of mass contagion. they should be amazed and angry that they rushed so headlong into a new contract without considering the implications. our anger is misdirected. Facebook and media organisations like them have created amazing utility in the world. if you’re going to get angry get angry with yourself for thinking that there was ever such a thing as a free lunch Instagram pic.

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advertising, branding, storytelling

What’s your Story?: a tale of two narratives, and a big lesson in the power of narrative via Jamie Oliver and Thank You Group

ah the power of the story.

take the above. a video from Thank You – an organisation that, on discovering that 900 million people didn’t have access to safe drinking water, came up with a bold idea to create a bottled water company that would exist for the sole purpose of funding safe water projects in developing nations.

that was 2008. and now, having diversified into muesli and body care products, an organisation faced with the job of communicating that change to new and potential customers. the solution … not the best video ever made, but a genuinely authentic, honest and transparent one. real people in a real situation with a little novelty, script and editing thrown in.

it comes only a week after B&T reported that struggling Aussie vegetable farmers were ‘pleading’ with Jamie Oliver to intervene on their behalf and encourage Woolies to refund the marketing levy they were being charged to fund his ad campaign for the supermarket.

where do you start? no really … the dominance of the supermarket oligopoly? the David and Goliath struggle of growers and distributors? the relevance of the UK-based Oliver (who is awesome and who has done genuinely amazing things for healthy eating efforts) in all of this? the scale of paid versus the engagement and authenticity of earned media?

well I guess like any good story you start at the beginning …

once upon at time there was the story. we told stories that saved our ancestors from being trampled by wildebeest or running off of a cliff. then our stories took on moral and ethical dimensions, they passed on information and knowledge and created archetypes to which we still relate.

… our stories became assimilated by nation states and groups of individuals to describe and define identity. they communicated our struggles and challenges and victories and journeys, on every media, in every society and community on the planet. language was our first technology, and communication – of our hopes, fears and ideas – has become a defining factor of the human condition.

and so we arrive at two very different brand and marketing stories, the dissection and evaluation of which is less important than the lesson their juxtaposition invites: stories are ancient, powerful, emotional and transformative things,

… make sure you’re part of a good one.

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adserving, debating, futuregazing, predicting, programmatic buying

Reunification isn’t going to happen so get over it: Why media is already planning for a future that’s here already. and why that’s awesome.

last week Adnews posted the above video from earlier this year in which the CEO of Cummins & Partners Sean Cummins lambasted the egos of agencies as the only thing stopping the grand reunification of media and advertising agencies under one roof. Cummins was rebuffed by both Henry Tajer “There is no going back, there is no return, there is nothing but forward” and Rob Morgan “With all the money media agencies need to spend on planning and buying, no ad agency has the cash or the clients to justify doing the same”.

the return to full-service debate is not only unfounded (there is no going back, silly) but misses the broader point that both Tajer and Morgan make (whilst still managing to disagree) … that, if anything, we’re set to see further diversification rather than consolidation of media agency offerings.

to get an idea of just how far media has moved on – take a look at this little puppy, and make a mental note of when you need to start really concentrating to track exactly what is going on.

OK so anyone with a bit of media know-how can stay on the tracks, but remember this is the Sesame Street version of what’s happening. this is programmatic buying for dummies, simplified so that even a strategist can understand it. just about. programmatic now exists at one extreme end of the spectrum across which media agencies operate – and I don’t think its what Cummins has in mind when he’s making his bid for reunification.

this spectrum across which agencies operate is reflected, I increasingly believe, in a bifurcation that now exists in how people consumer media. conventional wisdom is that media consumption is now a fragmented, disparate and diverse set of behaviours and attitudes that necessitates the need for a host of segmentation and profiling to understand the media footprint for a specific target group.

but I’m increasingly wondering if it isn’t a whole lot more simple … that people sit at one or other end of a spectrum of media consumption – and therefore planning. or, as the rather awesome William Gibson put it: “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed”. the future is here, and it’s distributed exclusively at the programmatic end of the media spectrum.

… the end of the spectrum at which people have now moved so post-broadcast that the very idea of appointment to view is something they associate with house rather than TV viewing. these are the platform-agnostics. the content-demanders. the subscription viewers, like the 325k who watched last nights GOT S4 finale (thanks for the heads up MCM). they are the digital natives who have only ever accessed the internet through apps (not browsers). they are the rampant social mediarites and twitterati, an army of instgrammers who get news from buzzfeed and buzz from newsfeeds.

it’s for these people that content, social and a host of other offerings including – yes – programmatic buying capabilities have been developed and deployed by media agencies. capabilities that will see further diversification not reunification into their ad agency houses of old. for these people the future is already here and they and their smart phones and TVs are reveling in it. do they expect more or brands? no. do brands need to radically adjust their comms strategies to market to them? yes … and that adjustment has barely started.

… we’ll get a glimpse of just how far we yet have to go in a little over three hours when PHD’s Mark Holden introduces Jason Silva to the Cannes stage. the session is designed as a complete paradigm reboot of the mind-set through which we see the (media) world. changes that, in Mark and Jason’s words, will open up boundless possibilities.

so let’s put aside our reunification talk. we’re well past that point of return. we all of us – media and ad agencies alike – are on the same trip to those endless possibilities … the perspectives are different but that’s only to be expected: after all, the future is here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.

you can watch Jason’s Cannes presentation live as it happens right here … enjoy the trip.

featured image – Jason Silva and his ‘come to future’ eyes, via flavorwire.com

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