Amplified Authentic Opinions Transcription
Wait What Really OK With your host, Loren Weisman. This is a fully licensed theme song for the show about stuff that makes you say, wait, what? Really? Okay. This is Loren Weisman. This is the brand messaging podcast. Wait What Really Ok. And this episode is titled Amplified Authentic Opinions and Intelligence to Consider. We’ve come into a time, and this is not just in recent years, it’s over decades, where opinions have been shifted and pushed into facts and at the same time, some weak opinions where somebody feels personally very strong about them, they flip the switch and all of a sudden the subjective becomes objective. Now take it one more step. We can buy and we have bought. And this goes on the spectrum of products, to services, to message, to missions, to beliefs. We can buy opinions. And we’ve lost that sense sometimes when we’re listening. Many times in the newspapers, it was an op ed, an opinion editorial. And in that, people began to, and have, in especially recent years, they jumped down the throat of a given company or a given news station saying, this is wrong. You’re reporting fake news. Now in that, are they reporting fake news or are they reporting their opinion? Are they finding themselves in a time right now where with that blurry line, with that toxic communication that opinions are seen as facts, and because they’re seen as facts, it is turned into a massive mess because, well, in the end they’re not. Now, the other side of it is this the influencer, the celebrity, the ideas where people can vote for something and then it’s an award or this view of the best of. And that’s what it’s supposed to be, and that’s what it originally was. The best of this newspaper or the best of this company, it doesn’t make it the absolute best. Art is opinion, food is opinion, music is opinion. Why do we need to. And it’s for many of us, not all of us. Why do we need to get so incredibly offended? And why do so many people need to shift and push opinions over to the level of facts? We can take an authentic stance, we can respect and have an argument, a debate, a disagreement about opinions without all of a sudden saying that, well, your opinion is this. So you suck. You’re terrible. You’re an awful person. It’s gotten insane. It’s gotten insane on social media. There’s a quote, and I tied it into the content of this podcast where I am an advocate that social media is not toxic. I don’t see it as being toxic at all. I see aspects of people making it toxic. And then when somebody feels that it’s toxic. Oftentimes it’s because they’re continuing to listen, to pay attention to, to follow, to read, to comment, to engage things. Now, I’m not that old, but I remember when there was a dial on the radio station and there was that whole thing inside of talk radio, and if you didn’t like what they were saying, yeah, maybe you shot a few negatives across the board, but overall you came back and you just turned the channel, you turned the station, you stopped listening. People not only are listening that much more, but they’re turning it into a war. Now take this over to awards. It’s a problem with awards if somebody is being awarded something and you can vote dozens to hundreds of times. Some of these are stating the best of this. And really it’s a sense of popularity. It’s a count. So somebody has nothing to do or they’re stuck at home. They can go on if they want to be reminded and vote every hour or vote twice a day or vote as many times as they want. Where does that bring the authenticity of opinion through? It brings the popularity of opinion and it’s a linearized opinion. If you can vote that many times, where is it fair? Now we also people say, oh, we have artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence can track where you are in a given shop and it can see where you’re standing. And from there it can help to make decisions and give data and give intelligence to certain companies based on your moves, where you stop, where you freeze, what you buy, and so on and so forth. There is some truth to that, but it’s not complete truth. So in a sense, the data is skewed. Let’s look at it this way. Let’s say you are walking along with your child. He trips, falls over, spills his cup, you know, unties his shoe, whatnot. So you stop, you go there to lean down to tie his shoe, to check if he’s now in certain stores that are geo fencing. They have now made a decision and a conclusion that you are stopping and you are potentially interested whether you buy anything off of the aisle on the point where you stopped or not. That’s exactly why it’s artificial intelligence to a certain extent. Yes, it has a place in the marketplace, but it is artificial intelligence. It’s not authentic intelligence. The same element happens, let’s say your company, the company you work for, is going under a massive shift and they’re going to require you to fly a whole bunch of times to a corporate base, which is somewhere where you never fly because you work from your Given office, wherever you live. So now for a period of let’s say six weeks, you have to do a whole bunch of back and forth again. The artificial intelligence, the data that comes through, it’s for this one time moment now you’ve broken the one month mark. It’s six weeks now. Data, data is being sent based on that six week period that will probably never happen again for you. This is where artificial intelligence is off and in many cases it’s false. And when people are out there with AI stating this is authority, it’s not necessarily the whole story. When we take a couple steps back again and we think about what is this culminative effect and in knowing that, in knowing a greater level of authenticity, it can allow on the other side of it, companies to make better decisions. Advertising, not to be that much more pinpoint, but to get a better finger on the pulse. Because beyond the skewed thing of you traveling, let’s say six, over six weeks to Omaha or bending down in front of a product inside of a Target style store that you never plan to buy anything from, there’s the other side where focus groups can be focused to give the answer of the individuals that are looking for it. Focus groups are never clean, at least most aren’t. When we used to do certain focus groups in Los Angeles, New York, Boston, wherever we could go after it was, oh, we’re going to get information. If we wanted information, we knew how to format that focus group. You could always insert someone, you could insert someone attractive if it was an attractive woman, if it was more men. There were elements in the ways that you could skew, adjust and falsify data to get the answers of what you want to push it through. And not necessarily saying the sale isn’t going to work because we pay influencers as a whole. We’re paying certain influencers, they have X number of followers and so we’re going to pay them to say what they like. And it’s cool because there are some new influencers coming up that are saying, you know what, I do want to get paid, but I’m not going to touch anything. I genuinely don’t stand behind. And I really applaud that. It’s a rarity, but I applaud it greatly now. In the same way, inside of the music business, record labels, managers, music investors, music moguls have spent a lot of time working the system. And some of them in a very authentic way, some of them in not so authentic ways to try to find out things, to build and create trends. And yes, trends can be created. Hit songs can be made in the studio with the marketing plan behind it to figure out how this will go out, how it will attack the audience that viral out of nowhere, success. More often than not, there was a success plan behind it. Now, I’m not saying that that would completely change or that will completely change, but what if the music industry as a whole had the intel, the data and the intelligence of people not that they could vote a hundred times, but that they could only vote once, that they had to listen to a certain part of the song, that they were able to give a certain level of feedback. And from the sixth grader to the person with 6 million followers, that they are both accounted for in their vote and in their opinion. All in all, we’ve lost that authentic aggregation to popularity. It’s this idea of we’re going to put this in front of an influencer, we’re going to create this tone, we’re going to receive this, we’ll push this kind of marketing, we’ll get this person to like it, we’ll get that person to like. And I’m not saying that’s necessarily going to stop because it’s not. However, a shift inside of and will start in music. And let’s say that it goes to books, let’s say it goes to cars, let’s say it goes to sports, where people are respected for their opinions and that data collected in respect becomes aggregated and it amplifies and which is the name of this episode, Amplified Authentic Opinions could be some of the best intelligence and the best data that we take into 20, 21 and beyond. And what I mean is getting that person that has that thought, they’re able to add their thought. And yes, it’s still to a certain extent a popularity contest, but at least inside of that popularity, it’s organic, it’s authentic and it has integrity to it. Many of the biggest award shows are fixed. Many of these award shows where people say, well, I’m a voting member, okay, your vote doesn’t really count. Maybe your vote counts for X, but it doesn’t count for Y. Many people will go out when it comes to awards. They will buy a nomination, they will buy a nomination to be awarded. And many of those people that you see online, on social, with certain business awards too, as well as music, as well as books, they’re buying their way into nominations, they’re buying their way into wins. On Amazon, you can purchase a best selling book and it’s not a best seller. I’ve mentioned it a couple episodes ago. You can spend a certain amount of money, your book will move up the ebook, not the physical by any means. It’s a giveaway. And during that time in a series, air a series element, middle of the night, whatever, you’ll get a screenshot that a whole bunch of robots and a whole bunch of people that were on at that time will download that book. And in turn, you were not really a best seller. You were a best giveaway to a whole bunch of robots. But now you have a best seller ranking for a minute, they give you a snapshot of that. And just as quickly as that shot is taken, that ranking goes away. And many people are beginning to recognize that inside of books too. So when we step back from being the best song here, from a whole bunch of people where they were buying the likes and these buys go all the way up to the top tier artists. You may have seen in the news about people like Beyonce. And this is not defamation of character. Whether it was her or her management or whatnot, stuff was purchased to make more likes appear, more comments appear, more downloads appear, more streaming appears, more streaming appearances. In that it gives this sense of just look popularity, popularity. And this is where another part where when we shift to authenticity, couldn’t we all, regardless of your business or your service, consider moving some of these awards, some of these claims, some of these hypes below the fold and amplify your message and authenticity about what you’re sharing, about what you’re giving to people. This is a best selling book. I’m a critically acclaimed. This I have this many followers on Twitter. We see this every single day. But. But we can change it to go to authenticity, to go to integrity with our businesses and our products and our services, to invite with the lead about what that product is, what that business is, what that service is, to not buy the reviews, but more so to ask to go to that authentic aggregation to ask people what they think and share. These are the reactions that we’re getting and that at the same time, not oh, I’m so humbled to hear this but a little bit more of, you know, being able to put out and this is for the company level to be able to put out marketing that consists of an organic, authentic, amplified aggregation of opinions and not bought opinions. Bot views, bot likes, bot salespeople, you can still market, but you can do it with a heart and with a moral compass that could draw that many more people to you. And at the same time from a corporate level, how much money could be saved Inside of that authentic opinion data to be able for, you know, get away from the book thing for somebody to begin to ask questions and ask in the wider scale. Reaching out you may get, you know, and really setting up kind of a campaign system where at certain times you could ask certain people. Okay, I want to get a sense because I think this may be the market. It’s not just like vague everything, but asking people and respecting people for their opinions, allowing people to feel a part of something, allowing them not to get that little box. And you know, if you’re listening to this when it just came out, this is shortly after the holiday season. I don’t know how many people ordered from Amazon, but this new model of you have a $5 credit, you have a $10 credit as long as you go on and review this. So now you have a 5 or a $10 credit because you were forced to review. I want to read the reviews that were not forced. I want to hear the opinions of people of what they genuinely think and they were not set to say. This is that I want to see resources and a hub where artists, chefs, authors can break out with their art, breaking a hit, breaking through, giving a sense of the journey so that not only does it give them the right kind of data of where they should aim, where they should aim. Are you going to be more college audience? Are you going to be a high school audience? Are you going to be an adult audience? What are the reactions that are coming back? Yes, there are focus groups, there’s all sorts of stuff out there, but the authenticity is oftentimes shoved down for the popularity. The number and the count is what makes the difference. And that’s why the numbers are off and the counts are off. And it’s why people are spending more and more money on marketing, because they’re shoving it into people’s faces and a lot of these faces don’t want it shoved in their face. Flip the switch. That marketing, that investment, that advertising going toward a group of people that really has organically, authentically been tested or asked or requested and at the same time respected for their opinion. It may be a more gentle engagement in. I think this is a two way thing. I think there’s an aspect of this organized aggregator of authentic opinion being just as great as it respects the individual, the consumer. But what a wonderful tool for companies, for products, for services that want to take the step to choose authenticity, to choose integrity and to not try to hype something, to put it in a certain direction that in the end may end up Sending them in the wrong direction to the wrong audience. I believe aspects of the popularity card are going to die out to a certain extent. I believe that we’re coming into a time that people are starting to see through the hype. This past year, from the quarantines to all of that, some of the light shows, the laser, the smoke, the stuff on stage, what people were able to do, some of that’s been revealed unmasked for what it isn’t, for the lack of truth. And I believe from music to the arts to books, to products, to services, the authentic message and an understanding of the authority of data that comes from an authentic opinion could be everything, could be the nourishment of these companies and the respect to the people that are sharing to get that authentic message. I know I’ve said the word authenticity or authentic a dozen times, if not more. Okay, more. But in this. Haven’t you ever had that moment where you were looking up and you just. You went through that Amazon review and then you finally realized, wow, here’s one negative review, A couple threes, couple fours, and then it’s a onslaught of fives. Because oftentimes those were purchased. When you see certain people and they say, oh, I’m so humbled to win this award that I nominated myself for by paying for it, or I’m so humbled to have this best seller on Amazon that they lied about because they purchased a position and even in that they receive this bestseller tag, but it’s a lie. It’s false. Better so for people to get a chance to read. And yes, okay, certain products are going to have to be given away and maybe you might have to give a couple more away because you can’t just go to this small little audience to fake it anymore. It’s 2021. Let’s be real. Let’s differentiate and show with the authenticity in marketing. Let’s step away from these hype people that are saying how important it is to have that script, to have that format. You’ve got to push these people. They’ve got to know, like and trust you. I’m tired of know, like and trust. I don’t need to like the person that’s selling me a certain item. I don’t need to trust them. I need to know what that product is. I need to be able to know some of the vetting on that product. I need to know some of the authentic opinions on that product. The experience is on that product. And from there, I can choose off of that data to make the best decision. You could be the most, you could be the coolest guy in the world, the coolest girl in the world. I don’t really care about liking you. And a lot of people are starting to step away from that. It’s coming to a place of authenticity, it’s coming to a place of integrity. And we’re hungry for it. I believe we’re hungry for it. I believe we deserve it. I believe that we’re at a time where it’s not about spotlighting someone for popularity, but more so spotlighting a person. A book, a song, a record, a vehicle, whatever else you can think of. A restaurant, a product, a project, a service. Because it’s true to heart. And it’s not someone that just went in and five started and said this is the best, but someone with the authenticity and the subjective opinion to say it’s the best. And it’s the best to me, and here’s why. A game that ends in the hype of popularity that can be purchased and we flip the switch to this authentic aggregation of information that serves as the best data for the arts, that serves as the best data for products, that serves as the best data to get a pulse of what people are thinking, what they’re really thinking. Because a lot of people are afraid to say what they’re thinking these days. Wouldn’t it be beautiful to in the culmination, in the respect of people in their opinions, in the deflecting or the muting or the nulling or the turning down of all the hype, the popularity and the false stuff to try to create this presence that we amplify authenticity, that we amplify authentic opinions and we derive data and decisions and what we share and how we share it based off of that, instead of going to the latest motivational sales pitchy two minute scripty template. You need to do this on LinkedIn, you need to do that on TV, you got to do this on radio. Here’s how you do this, here’s how you do that. We come back into the half truth, expired truth, false truth and no truth examples of engagement. When we aggregate authentic opinion and we amplify that we are respecting the individuals who feel like their opinions matter, who will take the time. It’s not begging someone. Don’t forget to five stars. Don’t forget to do this, don’t forget to do that. But more so, we’d love to know what you think and here’s a place or here’s some places you can go where your opinion is taken into account and not just counted. And then the culmination of that gives the best data, the best intelligence and the best understanding. So that brands, companies, products, services, from the music moguls to the authors to the publishing companies to the car dealerships, to even inside of sports, can get their finger on an authentic pulse of what’s beating, what isn’t beating, how it’s working, how it’s not working, and it’s not dirty, it’s not nulled, it’s not turned down, it’s amplified with authenticity to deliver the authority data that I believe we’re all hungry for and I believe we deserve. And I believe based off of that, it could make marketing, it could make messaging, it could make advertising cleaner, crisper, full of greater integrity, and at the same time that much more enjoyable to experience and learn about new products, new songs, new books, new cars, and in a way that doesn’t feel so toxic and doesn’t feel so forced. I believe in taking these steps, even on the smallest levels or the biggest levels, could make social media a little bit more social, it could make marketing a little bit more engaging, and it could make learning about all of these different products, all these different services, and most about all these different people, what they authentically want, don’t want, like, don’t like, and really how they feel. That’s the podcast. That’s my rant for today. My name is Loren Weisman. This is the brand messaging podcast. Wait What Really Ok, this episode was titled Amplified Authentic Opinions and Intelligence to Consider. I hope you consider some of these things and more so I hope you find that there was a little bit of intelligence in this rant. Have a good one. Wait What Really Ok.
Amplified Authentic Opinions Transcription