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Social Media & Digital Marketing: A Reflection

Kimberly Waldbillig for AMFI Fashion & Branding weekly October 2015

CLOSE your eyes and breathe in. Feel the cool breeze of the ocean whispering up the back of your neck and see if you can taste the salty air. Watch as the warm wa-ter starts to wash up onto your feet. And then, take a picture. Add a filter. Add a hashtag. And press Submit.

HOME is where the WiFi is. Our love for the internet knows no bounds. It opens up a whole new world for us. We can do things we otherwise might not be able to do, with each other. And marketers have been capital-izing on our needy relationships for a very long time.

BUT wait, you think. This is indeed not all it’s cracked up to be. A bunch of salesman and snake oil. ‘Social media’ and ‘digital marketing’ are just new ways to make a quick buck on the backs of the masses. Let’s dig deeper into this issue.

DESPITE huge fifteen-year growth rates, still only an estimated 42% of the world has access to the Internet. But the newest generations of internet users, especially in developing economies, are skipping cable television and desktops and are using mobile screens instead.

RIGHTFULLY so. We can broadcast live to the world in real time. In snack size fragments, with Emojis, form the front row, in virtual reality. We use these social media to connect with brands, and brands depend on these interactions to be part of our everyday lives, or at least the lives to which we aspire.

DENYING the growing sophistication of digital ex-periences is impossible. More user-generated content is being produced than ever before. How can brands make the most of their presence online? How can they understand how to take appropriate risks in the digital, social ecosystem?

IT’S NOT easy. The digital marketing landscape is frag-mented, especially considering the number of plat-forms which have blossomed to serve our insatiable avarice. As consumers of internet content we are con-ditioned to overload and anticipate brands to take an intelligent and informed omni-channel approach.

THERE are many salient examples of the power of net-works. Changing lives as did the fund raiser for ALS that spread like wildfire through the U.S., the ice buck-et challenge, even nerdy celebs like Bill Gates joined in. While social media are engines for non-profit causes, and politics, they’re also breeding grounds for stunts.

EVERY second of every day, sixty minutes of video is uploaded to YouTube. That’s eighty-six thousand, four hundred hours of video per day. Swedish hipster PewDiePie has 31 million subscribers, which is more than Rihanna, and made 4 million dollars last year up-loading videos of himself playing video games. Beau-ty vlogger Zoella’s first book sold more copies than JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter.

WHILE internet celebrities may be raking in the Ben-jamin’s from their latest content ‘going viral’, viewer be-ware: an online identity doesn’t always need to match up with one IRL. Heard of a Catfish? Like this cartoon says: ‘on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog’.

IT SEEMS this to-be-interrogated identity is part and parcel to being an internet user. Some of us ob-sess over this identity, using tech to make it beautiful or track everything from pulse to sleep, to behaviors, to thoughts. The quantified self. Reminiscent of Jean Baudrillard’s ecstasy of hyperreality.

BUT AMIDST this ecstasy is the all-seeing eye of con-stant surveillance, Bentham’s panopticon, always work-ing as if you’re being watched. But many are truly il-literate about how they’re being watched, how their information is being used online. Participating means dealing with dynamic privacy terms in exchange for the promise of ‘we’re providing you a better experience’.

SO WHAT about our children, my future children, and social media? We all know someone who uses Facebook like a baby book. When these babies are old enough to create their own accounts, will the machine serve their newsfeeds a baby picture posted long ago by a family member asking... ‘Is this you?’

WE CAPTURE moments like objects and process visual information faster than ever before. These are average AMFI students. Average brands are still exper-imenting with media and figuring out how to ride the social media tides. Designing FOR and participating IN experiences that actually matter is getting more dif-ficult.

ATTENTION spans are short and selfies abundant. Some of us live in fear of digital media, others find it frivolous. A paradox, we have: get clicks and engage-ment to create brand value, and avoid negativity that will destroy brand value. How can we harness the pow-er of digital for good?

FIRST GET a baseline. But how do we measure? Do we use number of unique sessions, or average length of time per session? What’s the CTR, or the ROI, or the conversion rate? In digital marketing, if you didn’t measure it, it didn’t happen. Analytics allow brands to tie dollars to clicks and to eyeballs.

BUT IF we only used metrics and statistics, they wouldn’t paint a complete picture. Analytics may tell us the what, but they don’t always explain the ‘how’ or the ‘why’. Some soothsayers believe the digital world to be only a reflection of the physical world, the glowing screen a black mirror. How can we know what is the real truth on the internet?

A QUOTE from Huxley’s Brave New World: “The per-fect drug. Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache.” Anno 2015: But track or be tracked, program or be programmed. In today’s reality algorithms and artificial intelligence govern our experiences in exchange for our data.

I ASK MYSELF, will the concept of ‘going off the grid’ ever cease to exist? Can we escape from our devices? Maybe we in this very room are part of the last gener-ation who lived ‘without’, the generation who doesn’t devote 8 or more waking hours transfixed to a digital screen. We can not escape the need to be online.

WHAT WE CAN do is promote awareness about how to develop self-control and healthy behaviors online. To be more responsible with our own data as it comes to social media and the internet in general. Think back, about six minutes ago we were at the beach. Let’s all close our eyes again and take three whole minutes to relax.