The Death of False Advertising

The claim that social media will be the death of marketing has stuck in my mind for a while – it seemed exaggerated and melodramatic, but not altogether false.   It’s taken some time to sort through it, but I think I have separated the wheat from the chaff.

Primarily, the person who made this claim clearly does not understand what “marketing” encompasses – it’s far more than paid commercial promotion – and even social media is being used for marketing, so the claim that a tool will replace the very task for which it is used is entirely without logic or merit.

But I must concede that social media may be the death, or at least the near-extinction, of traditional advertising that is done to inform the public of the value of a product or brand, or to build the image of a brand or a company.   Arguably, that sort of advertising became pointless three decades ago – older generations may have believed that anything that they saw on television, including advertising, was true because they believed that the authorities would be proactive in preventing falsehood and disinformation - a publication or channel would not permit advertisers to deceive their audiences because it would harm the reputation of the channel to do so.  Younger generations have no such illusions, and recognize that channels are interested in advertising revenue and take no responsibility.  There are very few exceptions to this rule, and there is a suspicion that any channel that seems responsible has merely not yet been caught.

For all generations, word of mouth has always been more reliable than contrived posturing by those who stand to gain financial benefit for getting you to believe what they say.   That’s not to say word of mouth is infallible, as there are many people who enjoy manipulating others or being regarded as authoritative even when they haven’t a clue.   But relatively speaking, the solicited input of people who aren’t out to make money off of others is generally regarded to be less biased than the unsolicited input of those who are.   And social media, at least in regard to product mentions, is an explosion of first-person testimonials.

With that in mind, the kind of advertising that is meant to make the audience believe that a product, brand, or company is “good” in any regard has become largely pointless: consumers are sophisticated enough to recognize that firms attempt to give them a false impression in order to get into their wallets, and where the need is important or the amount of money is substantial they seek confirmation and are ready to doubt.

I would even go so far to say that social media is the death of a firm’s ability to make false claims about itself, to be the only voice anyone can hear, and to have no-one speak the truth about them.   And good riddance to that.

But at the same time, advertising will not completely die out.   An unfamiliar firm with an unfamiliar brand and perhaps even an unfamiliar product will find that no-one in social media is sharing information at all and advertising will be a way to start the conversation.  The message will be less about convincing the audience of your value and more about simply letting them know that your brand exists – in hopes that it will pique their curiosity enough that they will begin talking about it.

The rest of marketing will remain entirely relevant and necessary, and while social media may do much to inform virtually every marketing function, it does not have the ability to replace or even reduce these functions and may in fact increase them, as there will be more data to drive decisions about the product, service, and behavior of the firm in general.