The unseen power of Digital Marketing

It's the second semester of my Digital Media Marketing Course in #DKIT and having passed my written exams in Jan (phew) we are now digging into the power of Digital Marketing. As a 50 year old back in college I think I am pretty savvy around all the tricks of the trade employed by marketers to influence me. I grew up in an era where Fast Food, Fast Cars and Guinness being Good For You were all marketed in a pretty full on - the "in your face" kinda way. If you didnt drink Coke then you drank Pepsi so they got you one way or the other.

Fast forward into the modern day and the power and sophistication of marketeers to reach and influence an audience is truly staggering. Most people think they are immune or intelligent enough to make their own decisions without being really influenced. People think that they see ads or hear commercials and it briefly resonates with them but at the end of the day they can make up their own minds. That is absolutely not the case. Marketeers have the power to influence your thinking, spending habits, political and social views without you even knowing it. By the time you see the ad you are probably way down the purchasing funnel and there is about a 50% chance you are going to buy something at that point.

How so? Well, the game changer has been Digital Marketing and the reach of digital into every aspect of our lives. On average we probably spend about 3 hours per day on mobile devices and on average we check our phones about 50 times per day. Each time we do that we kick off a whole series of algorithms that track our behavior to either make us engage with the platform for longer so ultimately we will see more ads and generate revenue for the companies. Its a pretty simple concept for the digital platform providers like Twitter, FB, Insta etc and the only question is how deep is a marketers pockets to reach you with content/ads.

But there is a darker side to all of this technology. The ability for social media companies in particular to harvest data on you is something that doesn't keep most people awake at night - but probably should. When was the last time you read the Terms and Conditions on a website? Are you sure that data collected on your likes, clicks, shares etc is not being collected and sold to marketing companies? How would you feel if that data include information on your home address, political views, childrens names, etc. How often do you click "Accept Cookies" on a website because you couldn't be bothered to read a Privacy Policy. I can tell you for one - I never accept and I make websites for a living.

A discussion took place in class this week about Fake News and for the first time in my life I actually heard a person (not a online post) deny vaccines and that the Irish Gov are deliberately lying to us to keep us all under control. Its quite something to hear that from an actual person and I found it very unnerving. When probed the person said all this information "was all online and there to see". Personally, I find it hard to believe that any Government which can get a rail link from an airport to a city centre is hardly capable of mass control but that's another story. It made me wonder hard about the negative and sinister affects of digital marketing when tools and techniques are employed for fake news.

Our discussion turned to Cambridge Analytica and for anyone who hasn't seen the Netflix / Channel 4 documentary "The Great Hack" it exposes the weaponization of marketing for influencing political campaigns for US Elections and Brexit campaigns. It's quite an eye opener to realize that social media campaigns have thousands of data points per person that could be used to influence their political views through adverts. Particularly, when these data sets were taken and offered as a "service" by Cambridge Analytica. The impact of this service on the campaigns is still in dispute - so watch the documentary and make up your own mind.

At the end of the day - there is no getting away from the fact that Education is the only tool a society has to counteract subversion tactics. In simple terms teach people how to learn and let them make up their own minds instead of being told (falsely) what the truth is about any topic. If you want to broaden your mind then you might consider going back to college - check out - www.dkit.ie

END.