by Jonathan Dalli, Founder & CEO
We all agree 2016 was a year dominated by loss. We lost legends like Muhammad Ali, David Bowie, Prince and Leonard Cohen. Most of all, the past year has seen the loss of trust.
Trust has been eroding for years, but has reached a climax in 2016. So much that The Oxford Dictionary made “post-truth” as its international word of the year.
So why are we losing trust and what are we losing trust in exactly? In an era where the President of the United States puts fake news on the agenda, this is a time during which we should be worried. The reason why fake news is fabricated is because they generate traffic and traffic naturally generates dollar signs via advertising. Alongside, above, or below every piece of fake news there is an advert sitting around.
Ironically, on the other hand, we see real ads running on fake websites that are cosmetically enhanced to look like they generate millions of users, fake views and fake clicks. There are a lot of people losing a lot of money by buying media without proper consultancy.
Thus, in 2017 we must make trust the centre of every client meeting, campaign strategy and marketing message. We must do so by asking these questions:
1. What shall we do to earn your (client) trust?
2. How will we manifest in real terms this trust to our clients?
We must then revisit these answers every quarter to track progress.
The industry must trade post-truth for truth and fake news for news and impressions that are tangible and truly capture our target audience. Now that’s the best KPI we can set for ourselves for the new year! Cheers!
