If you work in what is today considered a modern digital economy (who doesn't?) the pervasive level of 'risk' around your brand is probably greater than ever before.

Today's digital landscape has in some respects made a marketeers job slightly easier in relation to 'getting the brand message out'. But with it has also seen the rise of an omni-present stress ridden risk mindset. 

The bigger company (brand) danger constantly lurks around every corner with ad fraud, brand safety and data breaches presenting increasing threats, managing financial risk is now a key also a responsibility of marketing.

If a data breach causes an organisation to lose just 1% of its customers it will cost the business on average $2.8m (£2.1m), according to the IBM 2018 Cost of Data Breach study. Lose more than 4% of the customer base and the cost is closer to $6m (£4.7m).

"Marketing ain't what is was" is the new mantra. 

Today's seasoned marketeers now need to have a view on all kinds of company wide risk and for some it's creating burn out at best, along with unrealistic expectations from the board around what can/can't be done by historical silo based thinking, and management.

Just like the coal miners who carried 'Canaries' into the deep dark recesses of those coal mines in order that the early signs of danger could be spotted it seems that marketers are in need of their own digital canaries.

If you're a huge global player with a long way to fall maybe it's worth investing in a 'Chief Risk Officer' as per the article below, but what if your simply an ambitious brand who've experienced amazing growth - how do you keep abreast of all that danger, or better still look to mitigate some of it?

I read that 1 in 4 post on FB and Insta are now Ads, I also read that in order to maintain demand (and revenues) that Insta is now ramping up even more of those intrusive ads, and if you're one of those people who've clicked on an ad before, then hold onto to your digital Insta pants because your feed will no doubt get flooded with even more adverts. 

Facebook’s own documentation also makes clear that ads are served based on a user’s engagement across its platforms — not just your engagement on Instagram alone:

Ads are shown to you based on your activity across Facebook companies and products, such as:

  • Pages you and your friends like.
  • Information from your Facebook and Instagram profile.
  • Places you check in using Facebook.

You have to ask yourself the obvious question which is 'WTF' is all this doing to the user experience at the expense of short term revenues?

Ad Tech is currently made up of over 7k+ different companies, all of them are involved in the digital ad buying eco-system, this is a system that allows brands and marketing companies to bid in real time to get their intrusive message in front of you and me, time, after intrusive time. 

Even if you, the marketer, doesn't buy the existence of ad fraud or think that it is under control already, consider the portion of your dollar that goes to what is known as the "adtech tax." Multiple studies over the years from different organizations have shown that 40, 50, 60, 70 percent of your dollar gets extracted from the supply chain by adtech companies (for their own profit); that means only a small portion of your dollar goes towards "working media" - i.e. placing the ads on the publishers' sites. 

How about revisiting some of the thinking that went behind many of those great ads from yesteryear, the creative was pretty awesome because the really good ones did something we can all relate to, they told a story, which is something that now sadly lacking in this machine gun, shoot them out fast mentality of ad tech.

Content Discovery via Social Media is one of the ways you can open up new conversations, find groups of 'real' people who are genuinely interested in you, your brand, your employees, and your company.

To do this requires a radical rethink about how you utilise social media, and this rethink requires you to reduce your 'advertise and promote' thinking, and start to think about being social, which is really about listening, joining in, and creating conversations. And if done right, the people who really can add value to you will find you.

It will also save you from paying that 'Bad Tech Tax'.