Chapter One - Growth Hacking and Campaigning for Truth
Digital, data-driven and direct behavioural marketing and communication
In this book, we will look at digital, data-driven and direct marketing together with behavioural communication to help you both decode truth and enable you to promote your message to be heard in a world of noise.
Creating noise, segmenting user experience and creating sticky content have long been staples of digital marketing. Add into this big data science, behavioural science and machine learning and marketers, campaigners and political groups with enough funding can target the most, and the least, vulnerable of all of us.
Digital platforms, governmental bodies and data brokers can boast extremely accurate knowledge, surveillance and influence over the people of the world. More knowledge in fact than those people, you and I, have of themselves and their loved ones. Advertisers, marketers and business leaders foam at the mouth to get their hands on this influence and no one in the industry seems to be standing up and saying “just because we can do this doesn’t mean we should”. And of course, those that do take a more ethical approach can, and will, be left behind by their competitors.
So, the questions become; how can I campaign ethically and still get my message heard in a web of noise. And, how can I differentiate between truth and lies to protect myself and my family from undue influence? All whilst not going off-grid and disappearing from society altogether.
I will now break out this book into the following sections within marketing and communication
- Digital
- Direct
- Data-Driven
- Behavioural
- Bringing it all together
In each section, I will break out the main points and techniques that are the best of my knowledge after 20 years in the industry. I will aim to show you how you can use them ethically, things to look out for to keep you on the right track and how-to break down when nefarious uses of these techniques are being used to unduly influence you and yours.
From my point of view I have worked in B2B, business to business, marketing throughout my career. The lure of B2C, business to consumer, has been there but I have always felt that there wasn’t enough safeguarding within this sector to protect the vulnerable. Within B2B there are usually a number of decision-makers and gatekeepers to get your message through, all of whom serve to safeguard the company from undue influence. This can make your marketing and communications more difficult and less targeted but at least from an ethical standpoint, it feels less like manipulation or undue influence.
That is not to say that business to consumer marketing cannot be ethical, it can but there needs to be a culture of safeguarding within the business, social enterprise, political party, charity or campaign group to ensure that this is maintained.
This book is a mixture of theory and experience from practical application. By day I work as a Sales and Marketing Operations Manager within manufacturing selling within the B2B market space. The company I work for is a global market leader in its field and has a strong ethical approach to its sales and marketing. But the experience I bring here doesn’t just come from my current work position. It comes from 20 years of study and application. It comes from starting off in the world of SEO and direct marketing having worked myself up from a working-class novice without degrees or qualifications I had to prove myself by results. I have since gone on to get my diplomas and postgraduate diplomas in strategic data-driven and digital marketing, SEO, data science, behavioural economics and communication psychology and it is this fusion of hands-on experience combined with study that has shaped my thinking.
As the majority of marketing and communication training is aimed at B2C I have been concerned, if not alarmed, by the continual pushing forward of technologies, techniques and development of platforms without any real mention of ethics, if at all, in this field. It is therefore that when considering writing this book, which was originally just going to be a how-to marketing guide, together with the changes we have all witnessed in the last 10 years or so within the digital ecosystems we all rely on, that I have decided to focus this book on ethical marketing and communication with also an additional focus on how we safeguard ourselves and our love ones from those that do not play by an ethical rule book.
The latter has an obvious reason for existing as an idea however the former may beg the question as to why bother. Why bother attempting to write a book around ethical marketing and communication aimed at campaigners, activists and social enterprise? Some may say that there is an obvious answer to this = to establish more ethics within marketing and communication. But it is not just that. It is also because time and time again I hear of campaigners, activists, artists, small businesses and social enterprises that are fearful of advertising and marketing because they see it as filled with the Don Draper types. Or because it feels dirty, manipulative and wrong. I love the quote attributed to Gandhi “be the change you want to see in the world.” However, for our purposes, I would like to add to that statement with my own core value of “don’t just be the change you want to see in the world but also influence it.”
One last point to make on the content of this book. I will not in this book go into detail on particular platforms and how to use them setting this or that up. The reason for this is that by the time you end this sentence dear reader the technology may have moved on. Instead, the content of this book is designed to be evergreen as much as possible. I may in future decide to create some videos etc on YouTube that go into more detail on how to do x, y and z on various platforms. I may indeed do that as part of the marketing and promotion of this book but that is yet to be seen.
Two final thoughts for this chapter before we get into the nitty-gritty of the subject matter; one, if you are new to marketing don’t worry I won’t use too much jargon and where I do I will aim to break this down with a clear explanation of what it is and what it means etc. And two, if you don’t want to apply ethical marketing and communications to your campaign for whatever reason then please don’t buy this book, it is not for you.
This is a live book writing project. Copyright is protected. It is a first rough draft so I would love to hear any feedback from readers. When the book is launched all that are signed up for this substack project will be sent a free Kindle copy of the book as a thank you for subscribing.
This project is part of the SleeplessDystopian.com writing projects.
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this book/newsletter will be written live and published first here on my substack
Written by Sam from SleeplessDystopian.com where we aim to do exactly that - Campaign for truth and sensemaking in a web of lies.
Photo by Dominika Roseclay from Pexels