Original article written by Austyn Allison, Middle East Movement
Brian Solis is Salesforce’s global innovative evangelist [previously principal analyst at Altimeter Group in the US], Where he studies disruptive technologies and collaborates with companies around the world on business innovation and digital transformation strategies. At the OMD Predicts event held in Dubai last month, he was introduced as a “keynote speaker, digital anthropologist and futurist”, and he has always been concerned about how technology affects society.
His career began by looking for ways to bypass the media that most people consumed in the early to mid-1990s. “I moved to Silicon Valley in 1996,” he said.The Internet has become more and more common, “We are beginning to see the beginning of consumerization of technology, which has led to many experiments. Many experiments are: Can we bypass traditional intermediaries and directly pass [chat forums and message boards]? “
This idea spread throughout Silicon Valley and gradually gave birth to social media. Today, most of people’s news and information are not obtained through television, radio, and newspapers, but through platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.
People use these channels on their mobile phones during the journey, and Google likes to call them “micro-moments.” Solis said these micro-moments “really break the balance between marketing and brand democratization.”
He explained: “In our research, we found that when people pick up their phones to make a decision [about where to go to dinner, for example], At that moment, 90% of people were looking for information without considering the brand itself. 73% of people decide who to work with or buy based on the information they find. “
He added that this information does not necessarily come from the website, “it comes from YouTube videos or Amazon reviews.”
Today, Solis said that marketers should be wary of trying to keep people away from the contact method of their choice.
“You can judge the phone as being over-immersed as you like,” he told the audience at the OMD forecasting conference. “But it won’t change it.”
At the same event, marketing consultant Martin Lindstrom lamented that now that we have smartphones, we rarely get bored. When we have downtime, instead of looking around, thinking about it or talking with strangers, we are more likely to check our screens.
Solis was also worried. He told Campaign: “As we heard Martin Lindstrom say, boredom and downtime are now full of connectivity, which allows us to move on, move on…” He snaps his fingers on each “next”.” , But when he said: “I think we need time to reflect. After all, we have other things to define who we are, and we must bring it back online. “
We need to relearn to better connect with people. On the day of Mexico’s major earthquake and hurricane hitting the continental United States and its Puerto Rico territories, he said: “I have a good friend who lost all of her property and home in the Houston flood. Seeing our friend community help her and take her Going home, you can see that humanity becomes better when you use technology.”
Even in the less selfless world of marketing, we can use cutting-edge data processing to make things better. “Imagine if we use the same technology on a scale, or brand promotion on a scale, it will be more humane or more ambitious,” he said.
This transformation begins with “understanding who we are, and then bringing it back to how we control information, and don’t let information control us.”
On the stage, he suggested: “If a brand is built on body marks, build on what you feel and share with you, because what do they mean to you?”
He added: “We are now living in an era where experience is a product; more important than things.”
For this reason, smartly designed retail stores are more suitable for Instagram.
Kodak is generally regarded as a brand that has not kept pace with the times, but the reason for its decline is often its failure to adapt to the old film technology that has been surpassed by digital cameras and smartphones.
Solis went further, saying: “What happens at Kodak all the time is that we…stop taking these photos and use them as memories. Now our pictures become real-time experiences…or they become short-lived Yes. But they are just examples. Kodak and Kodak have always lost touch with what they mean to a new generation of customers.”
He quoted the Canadian scholar Marshall McLuhan, who declared: “The medium is information.” Today, this applies not only to the selfie culture of smartphone photography, but also to social media in general.
“About 10 years ago, I wrote a paper for a secret government entity, discussing how to use social media to create information at some point—going back to bypassing traditional intermediaries—that can directly reach people and influence their perceptions and opinions. Behavior,” Solis said.
Most of his expectations ten years ago have been adopted by companies such as Cambridge Analytica. This psychological marketing company helped Donald Trump win last year’s U.S. presidential election through micro-positioning of voters, and may help guide Britain to leave. European Union.
“My attitude in writing that paper is positive, and we can benefit the world,” Solis said. “But I would love to know how it is [Trump’s] The exact script is the opposite, because we use fake news, we use consumer data and psychological data as a way to create content that can be manipulated [voters] Based on their weaknesses. “
However, he said that using psychological data to sell products or influence voters is morally different. “I think at the end of the day [the social networks that colluded] If you want, like its revenue and show that Facebook has its own Internet prowess.In these situations, there are ethical challenges, and I think this is related to [selling] A glass of soft drink. “
Understandably, people are now more cynical and suspicious of the manipulation of marketers through social media and the dissemination of false information.
“But the problem is [people] I don’t know when they were manipulated,” Solis said. “I don’t want to say that, but [the techniques] So compelling, so efficient, so effective, so frightening. And, as I said when I wrote the original paper, this technology brings a huge responsibility. “
People know that fake news exists, but not necessarily when marketers and promoters manipulate them through social media. “Unfortunately, no one really united against it,” Solis said. “There are many different little things, but we understand the depth of Facebook every day. The Facebook team met with the Trump campaign team. They helped guide the strategy, and the YouTube team helped guide these strategies.”
But Solis still insists that he is an optimist.
“We need to learn and forget what is happening, and be more open, and perhaps accept more critical thinking, which is difficult to do,” he said.
