Consumer Control Myth or Reality?
Growth Hacking: Consumer and Voter Control is this just a Marketing Myth or a Hidden Reality? And who is in control, the consumer or the marketer?
As digital consumers, we are constantly being asked to give our preferences. To accept terms, conditions and cookies all under the guise of improving our experience. Of delivering a more personalised web service and it works. To a point. If we set our preferences and start allowing cookies to monitor our every move and by engaging with some content more than others or filtering out what we don’t like we start to get a more and more of what we like, prefer and want rather than the bombardment of what we don’t.
Of course, it doesn’t always work out that way and often the “targeted” advertising media experience could be no further away from the truth of “what you might like” than Elvis Costello is from walking on the moon. But of course, putting Elvis aside, you can sort this out with a few simple clicks, anti-pokes and dislikes.
We are told more and more that we are in control. We have a vast array of choices and a multiplicity of devices and platforms to engage with digital marketers fall foul of us at their peril. No more are we the captive audiences once swooned, beguiled and fornicated with by those barmy men and women of Madison Avenue. At least that is what we are told.
Switching back to my digital marketeer persona for a minute. I take and engage with endless marketing courses that spout the same truth. Courses that yearn for the enclosed areas of yesteryear where the customer was less informed, sat passively by as they were force-fed a garbage truck full of advertising junk food at every available opportunity.
These courses talk about consumer digital overload, being spoilt and bombarded with choice, so much so that more and more discerning consumers are switching off and filtering out what they don’t want and deciding what they do.
Putting aside the arguments of this causing segmented silos in political and social debates and being the cause of the most recent shock elections and votes in the UK and USA, as well as elsewhere in the globe for a minute. Yes, that is right I did just put aside one of the major contributing factors to the potential destabilisation of the western world.
Putting this aside, we are sold on the concept of Consumer Control. Not only is the customer now the king or queen but they are the judge, jury and executioner of the digital marketing campaigns of so many businesses and organisations.
So much so that as digital peddlers of spin we are told that we now need to be in the entertainment business. This is when we see so many desperate attempts to get people’s attention and make “digital noise”.
People who were once shy retiring office marketing nerds (Yes I mean me) are forced in front of a camera, or to the end of a microphone in the vain hope they might say something ever so slightly engaging. To add that real human flavour.
But does this Consumer Control, for what they see, hear and experience, really exist? Or is it just more marketing spin to take focus away from the fact that they, the consumer, are really the product being sold, through access to them and their data, to the marketeers?
If we take into consideration the power of big data, marketing analytics, machine learning, and psychometric profiling used in behavioural economics and persuasion marketing. If we add in the ability to target consumers in real-time with programmatic advertising based on not only what they are currently looking for but, with machine learning and AI, the ability to market something to them moments before they even know they need it. But is this really control for or of the consumer. Or just a smart way of being influential over their decisions.
If we take on the fact that a lot of digital businesses have social media war rooms (because they believe they are in a battle for your time, money or vote) that crunch data, and profile and target consumers. War rooms that contain data scientists, analysts, Don Draiperesque creatures, psychologists, behavioural and social scientists, anthropologists (in the most diverse) and occasionally the office window cleaner all focused on the same goal, with the same targets and KPIs. then how much control does the consumer really have over what they see, hear and experience.
We are more analysed and profiled than Freud's misogynistic addiction edifice would be inside Crackers smoke fused whiskey spitting secret interrogation cell at the heart of the FBI behavioural science unit. If then this analysis is poured into the beautiful minds of the big data teams and the creatives department to fuse together perfectly timed engaging and emotionally triggering advertising and marketing, what chance does the consumer have?
In the 20-plus years, I have been involved with marketing I have seen it go from the creative art of advertising, marketing and copywriting to the realm of the scientist, mathematician and metrologist. For me, this has been an intriguing and enjoyable journey as I have always been both very creative and analytical. Even the behavioural element, the profiling of the consumer and gaining a deeper understanding of who they are and how to influence them can be very addictive and attractive to the marketer. Who doesn’t want a better understanding of our fellow humans? When we consider that big tech and big business are leaps ahead of the game, with bigger budgets and more resources than the average marketing department. People like Cambridge Analytica used these techniques to sway elections we have to ask ourselves where should we draw the line?
Whilst the premise of consumer or voter control may be an overstatement it is surely an area as both digital behavioural marketers and consumers and voters in our own right, that we need to ask some questions.
The worry for the marketer is that these technologies and industries become over-regulated by government laws and bureaucracies or worse they start to get used by them. The same government that set up Behavioural Insights teams like us to believe they don’t use this knowledge acquired in any form of propaganda or social engineering. Even though they release case studies of them doing so for increasing tax payments and other areas where they are looking for more citizen engagement.
Over-regulating the technologies or the platforms will just drive the problem underground. The dark web is already an area that is attracting more attention. But putting aside the dark web. The tactics used by some will never be fair or transparent but our being made aware of them and highlighting them does more to equip and protect the public than banning them and sending them underground. Along with this, a watchdog that really understands the technology and techniques would be a wise investment for any nation.
The very technologies that were designed to free us have been our tombs. The digital technologies industry needs to rethink the role of technology in the lives of its users and instead of just putting up firewalls we should innovate to improve the lives and free the technologically enslaved masses. Ethics needs to be built into the systems from the start. They need to be checked and analysed by independent panels so that coders, marketers and business leaders’ biases are not embedded in these systems, as sadly we see today.
Is it really such a big deal?
You might think it is not such a big deal. What am I wittering on about? But you only have to look around the world today and you see people glued to their screens walking down the street, driving their car, or on the train.
Real social interactions are dwindling. but if that wasn’t bad enough the new generations grow up to know this as reality. They don’t get to see what the world is like and how people can really interact. People see their smartphones, on a subconscious level, and their social media identities as extensions of themselves. If you don’t believe it removes either from a teenager or 20-year-old for a couple of days. It might do them some good but not before the meltdown begins.
Growing up in segmented profiled bubbles and echo chambers that they have no conscious awareness of. Where they are fed one worldview that only reinforces their own biases and can be steered in any direction by the manipulations of the behavioural marketer. Opposing views are filtered out or only the extreme, triggering, versions of them are curated for their view so that they end up with a warped view of the world and those on the opposing side of an argument.
Even the older generations are sucked into this, despite living lives before when these technologies came into being and knowing how things can be different. So many people had become sucked into their own bubbles and echo chambers that the Brexit vote in the UK and the vote for Trump in the US were big shocks to them. So many thought neither could ever become a reality, not based on what they had been seeing.
After all, when you think the entire world, or the majority of it, was on your side and then you realise more than half is against you it can be a real eye-opener.
Because of the neuroplasticity of the brain, this segregated digital reality becomes their reality and this, in turn, affects their physiology, psychology, feelings and emotions that can become manipulated through the triggering of chemical reactions produced by what they see, hear and read. We are effectively letting strangers into our homes to market and influence ourselves and our families. Strangers that might not have good intentions. At best they want us to spend our hard-earned money at worst they want a lot more than that.
Watch the below video of the now-disgraced CEO of Cambridge Analytica and ask yourself do you want this man influencing your children?
So, in conclusion, does consumer control really exist. Well, that kind of depends on your definition and whom we are asking has this control; the consumer, the marketer or the big tech platforms.
Does the consumer have control? Yes, they have some. There are many things the consumer can do to gain an element of control over what they see, hear or experience. But this does take a lot of time, action and sometimes money by the consumer to be sure their data is protected and that their digital footprint is minimised. That said, even with this there will always be some kind of digital profile and footprint. Even if they are not on social media. Just Google Facebook shadow profiles if you have any doubt about this.
The consumer can take some action to, in the words of the platforms. ‘improve their online experience.’ Which will mean that they can have some control to filter out what they do and do not see. This can work in their favour. But it can also work against them as they become more segmented and easily targeted around those likes, dislikes and filters. This only makes it easier for the marketers to target them. It also helps to create the echo chambers we hear so much about. This, in my opinion, is a key reason we see so much division in the world today.
For me, the best way for consumers to take control is to become educated on how these systems are used. To understand the techniques, tools and technologies used to target them and to understand the triggers, that cause the emotional reaction the marketers so crave, are pulled. This might not stop them from seeing the content that is designed to get this kind of reaction but it might make them less effective.
As for whether the marketer, data or behavioural scientists or the big platforms they work for have control? Arguing control would be a step too far. Influence yes. Unprecedented influence even more so it today’s world. What we should consider is where the technology is and where it is going. So often we are offered access to these platforms, digital ecosystems and apps for free. But as I have argued so many times; free comes at a cost. If we consider the move the biotechnology and health monitoring apps and tools, like smartwatches. They are designed to monitor our health, our heart rates, our blood pressure and a heap of other bio data about us. What are we giving them access to? Would you want to be at a protest, a speech or an event with an elevated heart rate and for that to be monitored? What data is that giving out about you?
Many people will say “well I have nothing to hide or fear” and that may be true if you live in a free country today. But what if the tables were turned. We only have to look at China and the way these digital technologies are used by an authoritarian government to control the people to see where it might go. So seldom do the creators of these technologies consider ‘if they should do what they are doing they are more often or not considering ‘if they can’, the challenge and the money are a bigger draw than the consequences.
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-photography by Edmond Dantès: