I was commenting on YouTube and the conversation about influencers being upset about FTC guidelines (not wanting to disclose they received products for free or have a pre-existing working relationship with the brand whenever they discuss the brand or use the product—which is to protect the audience and not to “punish” the influencer—if you don’t want to be bound by business ethics, the simple solution is don’t accept free products) and it reminded me of something. So I’m going to repeat it here. And it’s going to boil down to: cut corners are cumulative.
First, and fairly obviously, I do not like the flippant way influencers regard marketing and business ethics. It’s three red flags on top of each other in a trench coat, ensuring me they’re professional and can regulate themselves.
It also sucks for the influencers, because they don’t realize how much they’re shortening their careers by cutting corners and trading in information they made up. Because, again, cut corners—they’re cumulative.
Recently, and this is such an easy example, my husband and I were watching a video on something tech- and drama-related (the intersection of our two interests). He really loved the video. He kept “yes, and”-ing the information, so obviously very excited. Then the video ended. I knew going in that it was going to be short and it seemed like a newer, mid-sized creator, so I was really prepared for anything. There’s a lot of competing information about intros and outros. My husband was not. He just… forlornly kept repeating, “that’s it? Video over?” Because there wasn’t an outro or credits or anything. It just stopped. And then he started to cranky as autoplay kicked in. Since I’m not opposed to watching the channel again (no obvious red flags) and he clearly now was, I figured it was better to distract him than let him memorize the channel name and developing a petty grudge (he learned this from me). I decided to make this a lesson in marketing.
I said, “yeah, seems like they probably believed that advice about avoiding intros and outros, even though that’s ridiculous.” That’s not what viewers don’t like about how most channels do intros and outros. “And now it’s so jarring you probably wouldn’t watch them again, even though—up to that point—you really liked the video and you had nothing bad to say about it and you even agreed with all their points!” Because they listened to some bad advice, they completely lost goodwill gained in 15-20 minutes in a couple of seconds. “But, you know, the video left you wanting more, so it was a good video!”
Then his shoulders relaxed, and he thought about it, and agreed with me.
That advice is given because someone assumed overly simplistic about how either they or other people react to certain behaviours. This is hilarious to me.
And this led me on to a rant about how important focus groups and test audiences are to marketing and product development, because it helps with figuring out the real reasons for the reactions. Most people have no idea what they want. They know when something is what they don’t want, and they assume they know why (which may or may not be true). Someone watching videos is watching them to relax.
They’re probably not going to interrogate their feelings, they’re just going to interpret them. So, “I found this intro and outro annoying and a waste of time” becomes “all intros and outros are annoying and a waste of time.”
Anyway that’s not true and I know that’s not true because if it was, shows wouldn’t have ending credits, opening credits, titles, or theme songs.
People like being eased into and out of what they’re watching, but they don’t like to notice it. What audiences don’t want is the same thing every time (it’s a YouTube video, not a television show) unless it’s for a specific series (then they will treat it like a television show), and they don’t want recycled material from within the show (bloopers are fine and encouraged). But that’s nuanced and potentially difficult, since you might end up having to find a related tagline to the topic at hand for every video (a lot of people handle this by thanking the audience and including Patreon credits). You need to add more creativity and develop specific skillsets and tones and it’s just one more thing to do. So the advice gets boiled down to something easy and digestible, whether purveyors realize this or not. And then someone “beats the system” and the advice changes.
But this is a short term solution because audiences can tell when corners are cut, even if they can’t articulate why.
And if the problem is social media doesn’t compensate influencers enough to be thorough, I wonder what kind of future it could possibly have.
TL;DR: cut corners are cumulative. And audiences can tell whether behind-the-scenes stuff is done or not. I really don’t like the modern day social media landscape.
Also not wanting to flaunt existing business relationships is, just, such a red flag. Are you not proud of your career milestones???
