What's up brand builders! Stephen Houraghan here of BrandMasterAcademy.com and in this
video we're gonna look at the brand boycott of Facebook we're gonna look at
what's happening why it's happening and what this means for brands their
evolution their strategies and the relationships that they have with their
consumers.
now in case you've missed it which you probably haven't Facebook are
under massive scrutiny at the moment and they're on the receiving end of a
boycott from some of the biggest brands in the world who are pulling their ad
spend and this is all due to their mishandling of misinformation and hate
speech now this is all on the back of a post from Donald Trump saying when the
looting starts the shooting starts and this isn't the first time that Facebook
has come under scrutiny for their hands-off approach to the hate speech
and the content that shared on their platform and Mark Zuckerberg himself has
really taken a hands-off approach to the content that's shared on Facebook and
has suggested that it's not his role or Facebook's role to filter the content
going through because of freedom of speech now this has given birth to the
Stop Hate For Profit campaign where individuals and organizations have been
calling on brands to stop Facebook profiting from this type of speech in
boycotting their advertising platform and this has led to major major brands
over the last week or two pulling their ad spend from the Facebook platform and
really showing solidarity and supporting that Stop Hate For Profit campaign and
some of these brands include Coca-Cola Levi's Lululemon North Face Patagonia
Starbucks Unilever and Verizon now these boycotts are starting to gain a bit of
momentum and it's starting to have a bit of a snowball effect
and Mark Zuckerberg has since backtracked on his initial stance and he's come out
and said that Facebook will no longer allow ads claiming that people from a
specific race ethnicity religious affiliation sexual orientation or
immigration status are a threat to others and he's also said that
Facebook will hide or block content considered hateful or that could harm
voting with no exception to politicians and all of this is pointing to the fact
that brands have power and certainly big brands coming together have massive
power and they can instigate change and this is not being lost on the consumer
now no doubt you will have tons of videos that will get into the nitty
gritty in the political side of this issue but I want to focus more on the
branding side because there's a lot going on here there's a lot of changes
that have happened over the last 10 to 20 years that have led us to a place
where brands now are getting into the political arena so I want to have a look
at that evolution and what that means for brands going forward so back in the
mid 90s when we had this digital transformation and we had the Millennial
going online for the first time going into chat rooms and having conversations
on email and then social media came about and all of a sudden the consumer
had a voice they had a powerful voice and they had a powerful voice in numbers
and that was the transition and the power shift from brands to consumers so
brands had gone unchecked for so many years where they were able to just
broadcast information they were able to go about their business and have
whatever policies and procedures in place without really having any kind of
voice to answer to but then as I said the Millennial took that power from
those brands they went on to social media they went online and all of a
sudden they had a voice and they were making decisions and influencing brands
through their wallets now over time brands started to realize that the power
shift really had changed the relationship between them and their
customers and they needed to meet their audience on the front line they needed
to engage their audience with a human voice and that's where brand personality
has really taken off in the last 10 years or so and what we're seeing now
we're seeing the evolution of brands and we're seeing brands become much more of
a human entity and that's led us to where we are today
where these brands now have become an extension of the consumers consumers and
brands are now on the same team and all of a sudden the consumer has a
very very powerful voice in their brand to go out and represent them know where
this is going in the future what that future looks like I'm not exactly sure
what brands look like in the future I'm not exactly sure but they are definitely
becoming more and more human and they are representing now their consumer on
the front lines and consumers and the wider public now are realizing that they
have a very very powerful ally in the brands that they do business with so
this is a really important moment in the evolution of brands and the roles that
they're taking on they have really gone into bed with their consumers now and
they are representing their consumers on the front line and where people have
looked to religious leaders and political leaders for change now they're
starting to look towards brands but I'd love to hear your thoughts and opinions
on what this means for brands going forward do you believe that brands
should be entering the political arena and would you look towards the brands
that you do business with to go out and have an opinion in that political arena
I'd really love to hear from you let me know in the comments below what your
thoughts are what your opinions are what your questions are if you have any if
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that can help you but as I said I'd love to hear from you what your thoughts are
let me know in the comments below I'll do my best to answer all of those until
next time brand like a master and I will see you in the next video!