There’s a problem which affects us all. We’re living in a media landscape where the truth is deliberately manipulated, trust has been catastrophically devalued and organised disinformation is a growth business, says Sean Pillot de Chenecey
The effects of a post-truth world are being felt everywhere, from the electioneering around the 2020 US Presidential Elections, to angry rows over Brexit, to debates about climate change, to the ‘reputation capital’ of brands.
This is crucial because all businesses want to have strong and long-lasting relationships with their consumers, and that brand-consumer relationship is built on trust.
But in a post-truth world brands are faced with a serious challenge: so much of modern life is defined by mistrust. Because, if a brand isn’t seen as credible and trustworthy, then when choice is available it’ll be rejected in favour of one that is, by people who are increasingly viewing themselves as being ‘informed’ as opposed to ‘passive’ consumers.
Fake news and digitisation
On a truly macro level, the issues pose fundamental problems for democracy. Indeed, the World Economic Forum noted that due to ‘hacking, leaking and disputing the facts, it’s never been easier to distort the truth. Fake news and digitisation present a major threat to global democracy. Social media in particular has changed the way we consume and share news and information and accelerated the spread of inaccurate and misleading content’.
This issue has been illustrated by the raging controversy swirling around the giants of Silicon Valley. A disastrous fault-line in their seemingly unstoppable rise as the most powerful corporations in history is that their technology tools, which initially seemed to offer nothing but positivity, have morphed into machines that are destroying truth and trust.
That point is further complicated by a lack of trust in mainstream media organisations. A poll from Gallup noted that Americans trust in mass media peaked in 1976. America is hardly unique in having a population that mistrusts the media, but according to the Financial Times: ‘In few countries are views of journalists more defined by party allegiance and in no other has a president so weaponised that mistrust.’
Why is this important, in a business context, for readers of this magazine? It’s because, as the political sphere plays such a major part in shaping people’s trust in the world around them; it’s vital to understand the impact of that lack of trust on the brand-consumer relationship, for the simple reasons that ‘truth and trust’ impact brands of every type.
And while the managers of any successful brand also understand how important the ‘emotional relationship’ is that consumers have with it, the same goes for politicians of every variety, for whom an emotional connection is an absolutely intrinsic element of their voter-appeal.
Meanwhile a common tool used by populist politicians is to leverage the lack of a ‘trust connection’ in the coverage of politics by the mainstream media. While Donald Trump didn’t invent the idea of mainstream reporters being left-wing, elite bogeymen who hate America, he’s rebranded it masterfully for the #FakeNews age, according to author David Neiwert. Regarding people with this attitude, in his book Alt-America he states that they cannot believe any kind of official explanation for events, actions, or policies, but instead seek an alternative one. This alters – or rather distorts – their relationship to authority.
And in terms of ‘genuine changes in public discourse’ what we’ve seen from President Trump has been his ongoing attacks on one of the key foundations of democracy, a free and independent press. Those actions have become a hallmark of his behaviour from the time he began campaigning.
Changes in public disclosure
This is a key point to consider, because to quote the journalist Evan Davis: ‘In 2016, the great political schism to divide Western societies switched from being a left-right one to being about liberalism and populism; each with different priorities, values and tribal allegiances. It’s not hard to see why the term post-truth emerged; there were genuine changes in the way public discourse was conducted’. This polarisation can also be seen as dividing between polarised stances such as ‘openness and change’ vs ‘authority & order’.
Taking this to a level of partisanship unseen in the mainstream media in recent elections has been radically biased, hyper-partisan news that tells niche audiences gathered in so-called ‘filter bubbles’ or ‘echo chambers’ what they want to hear. This classic case of confirmation bias is bought to them c/o media falling either side of the political spectrum; which includes right-wing ones like Breitbart, Infowars, and the Drudge Report; while on the left these include Slate, NPR and Mother Jones.
This was noted by Yale historian David W Blight, who points out that millions of Americans on the right get their information from selective websites, radio shows and news networks, possessing all sorts of conspiratorial conceptions about liberals. Many on the left also know precious little about the people who voted for Trump; coastal elites sometimes hold contemptuous views about people they ‘fly-over’.
And just because these audiences are niche doesn’t mean they are small; in fact, quite the opposite. These are the days of ‘massive niche’ groupings, so beloved of marketers who find them ideal targets for branded messaging, and from organisations like Cambridge Analytica, who famously targeted voters on a mass-individual level via psychographic profiling. Political parties love preaching to the converted, when it’s often niche voter-groups that win elections due to generally falling mainstream voter turnouts in elections.
This is a serious problem if you consider for instance that, according to a Pew Research Survey 67% of American adults rely on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat for news. Many of these people are accessing information via specific-interest groups that have wildly skewed worldviews, views which are duly spread around on a viral basis.
That approach is the opposite of the one taken by, for instance, the renowned weekly ‘curated list of political podcasts’ supplied by The Venn or the website AllSides.Org which ‘provides balanced news, perspectives and issues across the political spectrum. There is no such thing as unbiased news or truly non-partisan coverage – AllSides use technology and the crowd to provide balance.’
This isn’t to deny everyday reality in some sort of utopian fantasy. Politics will always be a tough, and less than entirely clean environment. Lies, half-truths, wild exaggerations and total hypocrisy have always been part of public life; alternative facts and fake news have been part of the everyday world of journalism and politics for aeons.
Deepfakes
However, what is causing ever-greater concern, regarding elections around the world, is ‘more real than real’ deepfake technology. This development, which made the headlines only recently in a case involving Nancy Pelosi (a ‘fake news’ event that was remarkably effective, despite only the crudest type of manipulation being used) can mean that the differences between what is real and what is not are virtually impossible to detect.
As the saying goes, voters will be confronted with videos of politicians giving speeches they never made, in places they’ve been, saying things they’d never say. The end result is that recognising fake news is only going to get much harder; meaning that we now need to question not just what we read in the papers, but things that we see and hear in the online and broadcast media.
The impact of all this societal-level mistrust is being felt round the world, and brand foundations are being shaken in an era of ongoing corporate malpractice, advertising lies and management misdemeanours. A result is that many brand-consumer relationships are on rocky ground, and something fundamental needs to change.
According to The Economist: ‘Consumer trust is the basis of all brand values, and therefore brands have an immense incentive to retain it.’
And as that immensely powerful business-figurehead Jack Ma, CEO of Alibaba, stated so succinctly: ‘Once you have trust, the rest is easy. When you don’t have trust, that when things get difficult.’
Those inspiring statements are set against a harsh reality illuminated by a much-cited industry report from the Havas agency, which noted that ‘much of the trust, respect and loyalty people had for many brands has disintegrated. You see it in the level of cynicism, scepticism and indifference that people have towards them.’
Company strategists are finally realising that consumers are increasingly judging brands by how they actually behave, as opposed to simply believing the stories they tell. Thus their brand credibility needs to be based on fact, not fiction.
Brands therefore have to raise their game, particularly when it comes to brand behaviour. This is because behaviour is a vital element of a brands’ reputation capital; which is itself made up of the ‘honest, competent and reliable’ values that play such a vital role in the foundation of attractive, successful, enduring brands. And a straightforward reason why successful brands have longevity is simply because they’ve built up their credibility by being trustworthy.
The results will help reconnect brands and consumers, something they increasingly need in our distrusting era. Welcome to the Post-Truth Business…
Sean Pillot de Chenecey is an insight/innovation/strategy consultant, who’s worked for some of the world’s biggest brands. His book The Post-Truth Business, published by Kogan Page, was the first business title to connect the vital issues of trust / transparency / privacy / fake news / empathy / ethics. www.brandpositive.org
