PLATFORMS : shifting audiences, changing purposes and outrage
With recent events in our world of critiqued rebrands, a surge of popularity on twitter/X alternatives, and fit-for-purpose media considerations, it felt like time to address the system we're in!
Happy November.
Like many emails you are probably processing in this crazy month, I am a little behind the curve on this one. Still, we are sitting just inside the monthly commitment I set.
So in the interests of all of our times in silly Black Friday/Christmas season (which I have consciously decided NOT to write about again this year), let’s get straight into it.
Platforms. Old & New
By a platform, I mean a place where users, consumers, and from a marketing perspectives, audiences, actually sit.
There is likely a life-stageonal / generational piece, where we typically go to the medium/style that we are accustomed to. For example, a lot of old school Twitter users and within my network are migrating to Bluesky, for that comfortable UX of Jack Dorsey’s OG twitter, where almost reasonable discourse could take place and isn’t yet the preserve of hate speech and 100 x ROI hustle bros.
But generally there is a fit for purpose. Very basically put, LinkedIn is your B2B social, and let’s be honest in recent years has become the preserve of the business smart arse on the feed and the promise of 20-30 leads a week in your bot-heavy DMs. X/Twitter and perhaps now Threads/Bluesky (whichever is your microblog dose of choice) covers both the personal and professional, and (generally) users on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook is a place to share their highlight reels to ‘friends’ and followers. They are the safe generalisations we can make. But within which there are always changes of use, demographics, consumption habits, context and mediums that must be reconsidered regularly.
People have their habits, they do shift though
There is no dogma of platform and place. The habits may remain but the specific platform/consumption may amend. e.g. 40-45% of YouTube watching has grown on Smart TVs for those used to watching stuff on the box.
If you want proof that there is no pithy hard/fast rule on platform usage, just take a long hard look at your own action. If I was to look at a made up histogram of my usage (purely for illustration/fun usage, I would guess it was something like this). Here’s one I made earlier…
Point being - that is just me. A 41 year old male in the UK. I doubt homogenised or representative, albeit I imagine similarities (doubt anyone is using MySpace right now). I just missed out on the Snap TikTok era, though one always fears they will eat their words!
The point I make? No promotional / media plan can ever credibly be a cut and paste from Previous period. Look at your target audience, look at the numbers, the engagement, and cut your planning cloth accordingly. Your target customer may have moved on, or still there but showing up in a different way, on a different device.
The other shift, to the outrage we must fight
Platforms have given rise to outrage so much, it is almost a miserably accepted default of our online peers. There are also forums of utter ruthlessness, from snarky Reddit aficionados to the infamous YouTube comments. None of this is in any way acceptable, but we must also accept and recognise what appears to be the default setting. So brand safety as a wider thought is important, and a separate article in itself.
In the past week too, there is potentially a 200% chance you have seen chat about the Jaguar rebrand. I have my personal opinion, (note words personal and opinion) but me conveying feelings and thoughts on others’ work here is not the fundamentals focus nor the positive intention I wish for Front of Mind.
I do know however that we have an inward facing issue in our industry. Nobody cares as much about stuff as we do, and your marketing never matters as much as you think it does. We need to remember that consumers generally don’t care. Also, as marketing folk we constantly parrot our mini-MBA’d gleaned virtues of market orientation and customer-centricity. But indeed the moment a font hurts our eyes we blow up into a knee jerk frenzy and cry to the longing of yesteryear. Yes, there is a fundamental truth of brands wearing in, ad fatigue being a red herring etc, and I will extoll such insight. BUT things do change, and generally, after initial dips things do find their way. Reserve the knee jerk take and let time heal, and let data reveal.
In light of all the outrage and crazy, divisive algo-fuelled problems, surely as marketeers it is kind of our civic duty, well for the good of our industry at least (one that is so driven by ads on said platforms), to suppress some base urges and treat each other with a little more respect and maybe not add to the issues?
FINAL THOUGHTS : 3 questions to ask yourself
So when you log on today as an individual, think to yourself honestly.
Q. ‘How have my own habits changed?’
If you are an absolute hoot too, you should do one of the above cursory self-analysis of your social media consumption, and be honest. Makes you think we aren’t in a dogmatic, fixed segment eh? So why would anyone else be?
Q. ‘On commercial platforms, am I adding to the industry voice, or just throwing my emotion and punches into it?
Nobody is saying you should not be yourself, but perhaps we need to remember the disconnect between, say, what LinkedIn enables us to do and what is probably right for the platform. It’s back to the old just because you can, doesn’t mean you should consideration. You have the chance to become a positive guardian for a sector that has lacked credibility, not to mention the chance to actually sell yourself or your company to others. Don’t be the marketing equivalent of the annoying parent you are somehow still friends with on Facebook who checks in at the hospital with their kid. Asking yourself if it is absolutely necessary beforehand is never a problematic filter!
THEN - when you get into office / on to your laptop/workplace, with your commercial or marketing head on , ask yourself,
Q. ‘Realistically, do I know where my audience is and what they are thinking’
By having one foot as a user who has clearly evolved their habits, and another as marketing professional who understands these shifts, you help the other live a better life and career respectively, all the while doing your bit to fight the noise. That is all.
Speaking of noise, good luck this week with Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas comms, and all that tense stuff. Will be back in December for annual roundup :)
SA
P.S. I really hope you are getting a semblance of value out of this. If so, and you think any other marketer or business owner would, feel free to share/forward this to them. Also, follow me on LinkedIn, The place formerly known as Twitter, or even my company page. If you want to discuss anything, you need some marketing advice, or you just want to discuss something I’ve said, drop me a line. Thanks and happy reading/marketing!