What does the Super Bowl and Trinidad Carnival have in Common?

Spoiler Alert: The Social Media Algorithm

When I’m heading into Port of Spain at 6.30 am in the morning I’m forced to sit in slow-moving traffic that can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours. My route on the Churchill Roosevelt Highway is paved with Billboards that range from Sun Mix snacks to a football disproportionately positioned next to a child. Their messages rarely land because my focus is placed on navigating through the hundreds of cars that are trying to head to the capital before their respective parking spots are taken. I also own a 20-year-old car that has a radio that doesn’t work, and I’ve never seen the need to repair it because the airwaves are filled with ill-informed radio personalities who do not take their craft seriously. I have not bought a TV since returning from London in 2009 and I spend so much time looking at screens for work, I read books in my spare time. To give you a better idea of my disconnect, I have not seen a single movie on the nomination list for the 2020 Oscars.

Facebook post from my personal profile

Therefore, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that at the time of writing of this blog, I cannot tell you with confidence who won the Super Bowl. I know it happened a couple of weeks ago because Jlo’s preparation for the performance popped up on my Instagram feed and her announcement that she will be sharing the stage with Shakira made it to my Edge homepage. I thought someone on my Facebook newsfeed would have shared it the following morning, but lately, my interactions on the social network have been a combination of triathlon and black hair related content, and as expected, nothing has changed after such a big event that was watched by millions. Even my Youtube homepage was filled with moving tiles of content that include, Golden Girls, Family Guy, Jeffree Star and Jackie Anna but nothing about a football game.

Trinidad Carnival 2017

Fast forward to the week before Trinidad’s biggest event for the year and my knowledge of the festivities is summarised by the snippets of Soca I heard while walking through Pennywise. After a 2-month sabbatical in Asia, I decided that 2020 will not see me in a single Carnival party because I need to spend any spare resources I have on my business. The potential for its growth is my biggest responsibility for this year and spending USD200 on a fete seems like a distraction. This is not to say I’m giving up on my culture, but it will be irresponsible of me to ask someone to invest in AC Marketing while I’m gallivanting in a Private Ryan foray. With such a focused, it was unsurprising that I was scheduling a meeting around the Savannah and I had to be told to postpone it because Carnival Friday is not a day to be caught around Port of Spain.

I have built my business on the benefits of Social Media, however, it’s a double-edged sword that can shape my view of the world based on the content I’ve engaged with. This is also how we treat marketing in Trinidad and Tobago, we based decisions on our internal algorithm. Too many of us are creating images, radio ads, videos, etc. on how we feel about the brand and not based decisions on what our customers are telling us. Websites like Facebook allow companies to build an audience by creating content and using that data to make business decisions. It’s easy to point fingers at what Mark Zuckerberg can do better or at the Agency that did not get your colour scheme right, however, are you underutilizing the potential of Marketing because you are not open to using the resources available?

Image from Digicel Group Website

With telecommunication companies like Digicel offering Social Media plan packages, most of us have a tailored version of what is happening in Trinidad and Tobago. This is amplified by how humans process information. Professor Matthew Jackson, an economist at Stanford, said it best in a Freakonomics interview, "People tend to associate with other people who are very similar to themselves. So we end up talking to people most of the time who have very similar past experiences and similar views of the world, and we tend to underestimate that. People don’t realize how isolated their world is."

We consume media differently, with newspapers and radio becoming something that interrupts what we value the most, our smartphones. Companies who persist on using traditional media and ignoring behavioural changes will be trapped in an internal dialogue that negates a growing audience within the algorithm. 

AC Marketing specializes in business communications that build the bridge between companies from all over the globe to the growing market that is the Caribbean. Sign up here for our e-newsletter.