HOW FACEBOOK BRAINWASHED A GENERATION OF MARKETERS

I remember the day like it was yesterday.

My team and I were greeted by a digital screen that asked us to input the person's name we were there to see and then printed out what could only look like some branded party name tags. Our overly enthusiastic (human) host then gave us a short tour of their offices, where we patted dogs and grabbed some snacks along the way to an auditorium (or as he called it, "where the magic happens") filled with beanbags, graffiti walls and fake grass floors.

He began the presentation in his unique tech-bro manner while his tiny dog sat right next to him studying our demeanour. Each slide was carefully crafted with beautiful statistical graphics, backed by years of data, revealing the most sought-after industry secret, the Lost Ark of the marketing and advertising industry: how to capture our audience's attention. It sounded easy, promising, and, to be honest, incredibly boring.

In retrospect, what Facebook was (and still is) selling is a strategy marketers have been using for a very long time. They are selling the magic pill, the 15 min abs, the five easy steps to satisfy marketers' short term thinking.

It's human nature. We aren't good at imagining the future. We are impatient and want a quick return on our effort because it's dull and scary to do some work now and wait for it to pay off.

If given a choice, we would rather do something now and expect an immediate return. We want proof that our actions will have an effect. We are insecure about ourselves, our actions and our thinking. We want excitement, not just any kind of excitement, just the safe kind, the "new and proven" kind.

That was Facebook's promise. It gave marketers, and the average person, the ability to measure their marketing actions and get some proof that what they were doing was working (or not). They got hooked on chasing conversions and measuring the number of clicks vs sales. When in doubt, they shouted, looking for ways to hack their way into gaining their customer's attention. They made the logo bigger; they showed it in the first 3 seconds. They AB tested, measured, and re-measured, hoping these numbers reassured them that they were doing the right thing and for a while, they forgot what it meant to be marketers.

In a Black Mirror-ish way, Facebook turned Brand Marketers into Direct Marketers.

Direct marketing is action marketing and is the concept behind infomercials. It´s the marketing of measurement. You put an ad in front of somebody that fits a specific condition, and then you are able to measure if they engaged with it or not.

It's the kind of marketing designed to pay itself every time you run the ads. It's measured, tracked, and targeted. If Direct Marketers had their way, exciting content would disappear because the only thing direct marketers care about is who will click and who will buy.

That was Facebook's "magic pill". Facebook ads measurement system gave a false sense of security by giving marketers the sense that they were in control until they didn´t.

Facebook began losing an average of 500.000 active daily users in the last quarter of 2021, which has generated a loss of $500 billion in its market value. 

Apple changes made in iOS 14.5 have allowed the masses to opt out of letting Facebook track them across the web, so marketers can't be sure if people are buying their products after seeing their ads.

But most interesting is to see how digital marketing has impacted a digitally savvy generation, forcing them to be more receptive to traditional media. When Gen Z are targeted digitally, the experience feels invasive. Only a third actually like online ads. And most actively avoid them, with 70% skipping pre-roll video ads and 52% using ad blockers. 

All this highlights one thing: people no longer care. They got tired of being spammed and lied to, but most importantly, they realized they were never the customers; they were in fact, the product.

So now what? Who is going to guarantee marketers success, excitement and safety?

I'm sure other products will offer the same promise in a different package (that's a lot of what the Metaverse is based on). Still, there's another more valuable option for marketers centred around creating human connections.

It requires marketers to define what kind of impact they seek to make, how to improve culture and most importantly, remind themselves that marketing is an act of service. It's a generous act of helping solve someone's problem. It's centred around the idea of being missed if you were gone, bringing more than people expect and creating tension.

It calls for marketers to go back to being brand marketers. Switch their short-term thinking and consciously choose a more unpredictable and challenging path that can't be instantly measured—the path of building brands by being empathetic to people's world views.

I acknowledge that the Apple of now probably stands for something else, but back in the day when a computer brand decided to create products that would help people realize their dreams and change the world for the better, they did it bit by bit and it shaped culture.

When an outdoor clothing brand decided to inspire people to experience a life of outdoor adventure, they did it bit by bit and it shaped culture.

When a financial institution created a product to empower a minority, they did it bit by bit and it shaped culture.

You can’t build a brand on metrics. Building a brand and creating change in culture doesn't happen overnight. It happens by consciously deciding to build tension by doing something unique, different and unproven and doing it bit by bit, over a long period. It requires that we switch from short term thinking and start thinking about the future.