Future Marketing in a Fake World

The reputation of Marketing as an industry is reportedly at an all time low, ranking below politicians by consumers when it comes to demonstrating trust. But as marketers, can we actually trust the consumer, or which consumers should we trust? Along with fake news we now see the rise in fake consumers. These imposters are driving up the cost of campaigns and creating inaccurate statistics that in turn falsely drive new campaigns creating yet more cost.

In the past we have all heard of paying for Facebook likes and Twitter followers. Thousands of people paid a small amount to like pages they are told to but have no interest in.

Now with the advent of cheap cloud computing everything is automated and on a much larger scale, in fact a scale so large that its creating a whole world of fake people, websites, accounts, relationships, engagement, you name it.

One area to consider is PPC; impressions, clicks and interactions that are being paid for. Can you trust the origin of all the traffic and if not where is it all coming from? When do we start to measure and report on actual human contact? Why do we continue to take comfort from these figures and then base future plans on them? We want to find out how widespread is the problem, what is your opinion? Are you ready to retire the reporting, remove the vanity stats and look at how to measure real human actions?

Get in touch to discuss this further, or if you want to be involved in this project contact Sara Watts, Chair, DMA North – sara@dmri.co.uk or Simon Hill, Vice Chair, DMA North - shill@extravision.com

The North Council meet every six weeks, stepping outside their normal day-to-day business zones, to bring together like-minds that discuss regional and national news, recent successes (and in some cases losses) and enjoy spending time in one another’s company with the common thread being… a love for marketing. They are always on hand to welcome input from members whether it be a request for help on a challenge, recommendations for events and speakers or simply a desire to join one of their meetings as a fly-on-the-wall observer (perhaps they’ll even talk you into joining them)!

To view the upcoming events click here or for more information about the DMA North Council contact the DMA North Community Manager, Anna Lancashire.