It's time to STOP the manufacturing of positivity around your brand!

I begin this post with a plea to corporate brands, events, and causes:

Please...will you STOP measuring marketing performance by sentiment around hashtags and brand mentions.

YOU ARE DAMAGING YOUR BRANDS...

Let me explain this appeal.

Of course companies want positive messages around their brands. There is a strong correlation between sentiment around a brand, and intention to purchase or adopt an idea. But this correlation only stands where that sentiment is genuine, and not manufactured.

While peer pressure might shift an attitude around a brand slightly, the more a brand is uncritically lauded, the weaker the positive effect is on networks. Indeed, frequent and glowing plaudits for a brand actually can have the effect of reducing trust in the brand, as well as the people posting these positive messages.

I am desperately worried about the state of agency practices in influencer programs, in particular. There have been growing instances of network influencers being asked not to post critical messages about brands, events or causes, in return for access to products, campaign celebrities and speakers, and related events.

This attempt to control influencer voices around brands is a direct result of marketing agencies gaming their own performance metrics, manufacturing volume and sentiment of commentary around a campaign in order to appear ‘successful’ in the assessment of their clients.

But if you then compare the ‘success’ of these campaigns to actual changes in sales, there is little, if any correlation. Even in terms of brand awareness, the impact of uniformly positive messaging around a brand can result in improved recall, but it can actually reduce trust. As the Edelmen Trust Barometer research has demonstrated, only a genuinely, critically informed public is likely to trust a brand, while the masses are left behind in a mire of distrust.

This distrust is CAUSED by campaigns of undifferentiated positivity and uncritical thinking.

Both the brands and the influencers who engage in these acts of manufactured sentiment are working together to destroy the potential impact of genuine positivity around brands and experiences. Instead of a favourable experience being celebrated, and the brand rewarded for customer service, relevance, and quality, the sharing of positive experiences around brands is now being treated with cynicism and contempt.  

And where influencers are involved, that contempt is entirely justified. Any influencer who agrees to only prepare positive posts, and fails to think critically about a brand, is damaging not only their own reputation, but that of the brand they are there to represent. That is a betrayal of their audience, as well as the organisation to which they have agreed to be affiliated.

It is important to note here that there is a massive difference between ‘thinking critically’ and ‘being negative’. Undifferentiated negativity is just as untrustworthy and unproductive as positivity. But acknowledgment of the weaknesses of a brand, its products or its spruikers (and there will always be weaknesses), is an opportunity for change and improvement, as well as a yardstick by which the good things about a brand can be measured. It generates trust. It facilitates education around a brand or its causes. It allows armies of advocates to develop without the rose-tinted glasses that marketing agencies like to place over the eyes of the masses. 

Of course, it is possible for an influencer or a customer to have exceptional experiences of brands. These should be celebrated. (Indeed I have one to share later this week.) But these exceptional experiences need, by definition, to be exceptional. They can not, and should not be recorded as perpetually superlative, because they won’t always be so sublime. And where there is room for improvement, it will only help a brand to discover these instances of less-than-perfect performance. Brands should be encouraging the expression of ideas for improvement, and accepting that not everything they do is matchless.

The way that brands can facilitate constructive criticism from both influencers and customers, is to stop measuring the performance of marketing agencies in terms of sentiment around hashtags and brand messages on social media. Brands need to keep a close eye on the behaviour of agencies to prevent them from manufacturing positivity, taking a stand against these inauthentic and potentially deeply damaging online commentary campaigns.

The way that brands can facilitate constructive criticism from both influencers and customers, is to stop measuring the performance of marketing agencies in terms of sentiment around hashtags and brand messages on social media

For marketers, is very easy to slip into the tactics of propaganda. For influencers, such tactics will bring down a name. For brands, they will raise distrust, and stifle advancement. It is time to take a stand against undifferentiated positivity. By all means, facilitate online commentary around a brand. But let it be authentic.

Let me know your views below...