Digital Marketing and Disinformation: Are we marketing mayhem?

Ever since the Cambridge Analytica scandal came to light via the documentary, The Great Hack, I knew there was a direct link between disinformation and paid media. Having worked in digital and paid media for over 20 years, I have played an active role in being among the marketers leveraging the targeting abilities of social platforms to help identify and reach specific groups of people.

While I have been fortunate enough to NOT work on campaigns looking to spread disinformation to 'persuadable' populations, I have witnessed the birth of the ability to do so first-hand.

This ability to precisely target vulnerable populations and feed them falsehoods disguised as facts is not new, however, the often-violent end result of these campaigns has escalated to a dramatic degree. This trend along with a new Netflix doc, The Antisocial Network: Memes to mayhem, has fueled my re-examination of my profession and my role within it. The documentary provides evidence that the storming of the capital was born of online communities being deliberately and systematically manipulated with disinformation. The ease with which paid social media allows ANYONE to promote native content saying ANYTHING, can't be overlooked as one of the primary tools allowing this tactic to take hold.

I have found myself asking such questions as:

• Am I part of this problem?
• Are the social platforms I engage on making money on my content and indirectly supporting disinformation campaigns?
• Am I complicit in an industry that's not taking responsibility for misleading the public?
• How can I help to stop this trend?
• Is it too late to make a difference?

We'll be examining this controversial and difficult issue during May's XR/AI Pub Crawl - all through the lens of marketing and communications. I'll be joined by two leading media psychologists, researchers, and media literacy experts as they help us unpack how marketing impacts digital media disinformation campaigns.

Join the XR/AI Pub Crawl 'Are We Marketing Mayhem?' Edition LIVE on May 17th at Noon PT

Join myself, Pamela Rutledge, PhD, MBA and Jerri Lynn Hogg as we tackle marketing's role within online disinformation campaigns. We'll have a candid conversation about how marketing departments contribute to the problem and potential solutions. Learn more and RSVP here on Linkedin.

About The XR/AI Pub Crawl for Marketing and Comms LIVE Monthly Event

The XR/AI Marketing Pub Crawl is a monthly community event for enterprise and corporate marketers and communications professionals looking to better understand immersive technologies. Myself, and other guest speakers discuss the latest XR/AI marketing news, explore the latest immersive platforms and take a critical look at the work being done in the space.

You can join our XR/AI Pub Crawl LIVE the third Friday of each month at 12 noon PT via Zoom. Joining live allows you to experience the technology, ask questions, and build relationships with some of the most innovative marketers in the industry.

Join US at Augmented World Expo in June!

The XR/AI Pub Crawl community has been offered a generous 20% discount -XRPC20 - (thanks Nathan C Bowser ) off the full-access pass for AWE 2024 in Long Beach June 18th-20th. We'll be coming together for an in-person marketing focused PREVIEW of the show floor Tuesday June 18th.

Last years tour was the highlight of the whole conference, as we got to try out bleeding-edge technology and get an insider look at what's next for XR and AI within marketing and communications.

Stay tuned for the June XR/AI Pub Crawl invite as that will be your ticket to this exclusive event. Can't wait to see everyone and enjoy the sun and festivities of Long Beach!

Decoding generative AI: Top LLMs and the app ecosystems they support

The latest article in my series 'Decoding Generative AI: A Marketer’s Guide to Text-Based and Visual AI Content' provides a strategic framework for investing in AI marketing tools.

Learn about the competing AI platforms and the billion dollar app ecosystem they support. Don't be fooled by these 3rd party apps as most will be obsolete within months.

Now On-Demand: April's Sports Marketing & Fan Engagement XR/AI Pub Crawl

Gen City Labs was on hand to share their cutting-edge work in the space of sports comms and fan engagement and advise on best practices for sports-related campaigns. Enjoy!

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Thank You for Helping Us Reach 1K Strong!

I'm SO grateful to YOU for subscribing to and reading my newsletter - we are now a community of over one thousand innovative and supportive marketers looking to harness new tech. As always, please send me your comments, topic suggestions, and questions - I'm eager to connect and help in anyway I can. See you soon, Lisa