The Digital Musette

I recently learned about something called confirmation bias - I found out about it from a blog called You Are Not So Smart (a great blog for the deep thinker) and it really got me thinking. First off, for those not in the know, confirmation bias is the tendency for people to favor information that validates their preconceptions and beliefs. For instance, if you’re a staunch liberal, chances are, you aren’t tuning into Fox News to get your daily intake of news. We tend to gravitate toward information that verifies what we believe. 

I think this behavior is really prevalent in advertising, we guide our research in the direction we think it should go. Questionnaires and polls are worded with an end result in mind and data is analyzed to reveal the desired outcome.

That’s one of the things I love about social media. It can really serve as an objective look at a brand. If you gather data in an unbiased way, it’s often reveals insights that smash preconceived notions in such a way that it’s tough to ignore. But even social media monitoring can fall into the confirmation bias trap. Consider this: if you were looking for the overall sentiment on President Obama, and you only went to Tea Party blogs and websites, well, you’d have the impression that the whole world loathed the President - obviously not the whole picture. 

Just being aware of confirmation bias is a big step to overcoming it. Besides, taking in all the different viewpoints on a subject can reveal some surprising insights. And, on a personal level, challenging your own beliefs will either make them stronger or open your mind to consider an alternate view - neither of which is a bad thing.

Risk is a huge part of marketing success. The brands, agencies and companies that take the big risks are also the ones that everybody envies as they continue to come up with the really big ideas. 

The general reaction after this happens is, “why didn’t we come up with that?” or “why didn’t our agency think of that?”. These are questions that need to be asked, but the problem is, the inquiries usually stop there. What follows is disillusionment, resentment and a changing of the CMO and/or ad agency. The question, “why didn’t we come up with that?” needs to delve further, even entering the realm of human behavior and how the brain processes risk.

Before taking a risk, it’s human nature to weigh the potential rewards. If the reward doesn’t match up to the risk (ie. jumping into a lion’s den to pick up a penny), logic dictates that it’s not worth it and typically the action won’t be taken. This is why organizations need to look inward - examine how your company rewards risk taking. Is it rewarded at all? Remember, “reward” isn’t necessarily financial, it could be recognition, or resource-related, time off, etc. The other side of this is the backlash if a risk results in failure. Are the risk-takers taken to task and punished? Or is a more constructive, learning-based approach taken? These are the questions that need to be asked.

So, next time a competitor comes up with that next BIG THING ask the questions that get to the root of the problem. How do we reward risk taking (or do we reward it at all)? And, what do we do to those that fail? 

The first time I heard this phrase, I was in a dead-end job, getting a lecture from my supervisor on how to improve my poor sales performance. She had determined, and rightly so, that my confidence (or lack of) was hurting my ability to bring in new business. “Just fake it ‘till you make it” (hence forth I will refer to it as FITYMI) was her only advice. Well, my skills at a faker must have been even worse than my salesmanship, since I was basically ousted from the job two months later. Since then, I’ve heard the FITYMI mantra muttered by several peers and supervisions. I’ve mulled over this nugget of wisdom until it was all smooth and shiny and I’m still divided on it.

On one hand, confidence can really take you far in the business world, especially when it comes to sales and marketing/advertising. These two business disciplines seem particularly fond of the trait, even if it’s coming from someone who has no idea what they are doing. As one who prides himself on his knowledge base yet never had the outspoken confidence of some of my peers, I’ve lived it (much to my detriment). Time and again, while I’m floundering to meet my sales goals, my more confident counterparts are breaking company sales records, or, more recently in the ad world, they are on the receiving end of promotions while I’m fighting to get a token raise. In these instances, it’s easy to see the benefit of “faking” your experience or knowledge to better your position. Where it gets interesting is once you “make it”.

I really wonder why there so many managers out there that are not qualified for the job and I think the FITYMI method maybe to blame. If you decide to “fake it” and just rely on ignorance and a false confidence to achieve your goals, what do you do once you are really challenged in a upper level position where the stakes are higher? You end up providing bad guidance and direction to your team and then hold them accountable when things go wrong. And because you faked it to get to where you are, you feel threatened by anyone who actually took the hard work and sacrifice approach and continue to promote fakers. That way, there’s no risk of being exposed as a charlatan.

So, here’s my challenge to you: let’s stop all this false bravado and rely on experience and know-how to move up the corporate ladder. Let’s learn lessons the hard way and take responsibility for our actions when we fail. This not only builds the experience and wisdom necessary to make tough decisions, it also builds something else: character.

An interesting query crossed my mind recently and I thought I’d share. Are open-minded individuals typically more indecisive than their closed minded counterparts? Perhaps I should explain my line of thinking.

When making a decision, the brain goes through a series of action-consequence investigations, where every possible action is examined and the corresponding consequences weighed. This process can get quite lengthy if the more options available.  

Think about it in the context of restaurant dining. Essentially, the closed-minded person has very few items on the menu to choose from, making the process of weighing the options a lot quicker than the alternate where the open-minded individual has a many different food options. 

I understand that there are many other variables that play into the decision making process (situational stress, emotional state, experience, etc.) but if all things were equal, would a closed minded person come to a decision quicker than an open minded one?

An interesting query, and one that always causes me a great deal of consternation.  On one hand, I want to be open and amicable to serving the client any way I can, but, and this is a big but, I also don’t want to get into a situation where I create unrealistic expectations or I’m taken advantage of.  So when do we push back? Do we push back? 

Working in the agency biz, it seems we are always pushing the boundaries of client expectations. Why is that? Fear? Ambition? Good old fashioned work ethic? Maybe it’s all these things or maybe it’s something that never crossed my mind. Whatever the case, I feel it’s something that deserves a bit of consideration each time we nod the affirmative to the client - what are we sacrificing?

Big things are afoot at Facebook. Just finished watching the keynote address from f8 and the big take away was “the open graph”. The basic premise: transporting your identity (your likes, dislikes, friends, where you live, what you do) to any site - for the purpose of greater relevancy and greater user convenience. This will be accomplished by registering on each of these sites through Facebook Connect. Essentially, Facebook Connect allows these sites to access your Facebook profile information which will influence the content that’s presented to the individual user, resulting in more relevancy. An interesting idea, for sure.

A couple things:

1.  All these sites will be required to use Facebook Connect and incorporate the necessary programing for this to function properly. Not a big deal but not everyone wants to play nice with Facebook…
2. Maybe I’m just a bit paranoid, but it seems like Facebook is almost laying claim to your personal social info. I’ll have to see how this all plays out, but it seems like there’s going to have to be some sort of opt-out or something.  Hey, I’m all for relevancy, but folks concerned with privacy are going to have a huge issue with this.

So, I figured this would be as good an outlet as any to compile some of the insights I gleaned from attending Future Midwest 2010. After the FMW well runs dry, I figured I’d just continue right along, posting any epiphanies I have as they relate to social media and marketing in the digital space. Oh, and the name, well it’s a cycling term referring to a rider’s feed bag that is handed to them during long races. Its contents provide sustenance to the racers over the 100+ miles they will travel to the finish. Not sure this will provide the same “social/digital sustenance” but hopefully you will find something to take away.

Yesterday I posted about Brand Control. It got me thinking. What is “control”? Well, if you boil it all down, control is merely having the power and ability to make choices. The greater choice available, the greater the control, and vice versa.  What am I getting at? Basically, that brands always have a choice, to engage or dismiss, to listen or ignore. Just know, that each choice carries it’s own unique consequences. 

Social media isn’t about relinquishing brand control. It’s about being open to a customer-driven and dictated relationship with the brand.