Andy Lark: Online anonymity breeds ‘irresponsibility’
Outgoing chief marketing officer of the Commonwealth Bank, Andy Lark, has declared “anonymity breeds irresponsibility” and is ruining the opportunity for “meaningful (online) conversation” between brands and potential customers.
“As the old saying goes ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant’, and it’s the bold that revel in that sunlight” said Lark in a Ten-Minute at the Mumbrella360 conference.
“I don’t think bold is big, I don’t think it’s big budget… more than anything I think we need to be bold in the conversations we have,” he said.
Lark challenged the spending models of marketers in the age of new media, particularly those favouring older, passive models of advertising, as opposed to those he believes “truly engage with the customer.”
“The problem is 90 per cent of your spend, 90 per cent of your actions, 90 percent of your activities are exactly what you did last year.”
“We’re going to have to be incredibly bold in how we resource and fund… and in reallocating our spend. It took about 12 years to clue on to “search” being a big thing, and for it to finally reach 10 to 12 per cent of our spend. Do you think you’ve got that long to do mobile?”
“We’re driven more by what’s in our palm or our lap than by what’s 13 or 14 feet away from us on a screen… [and] it’s these connected customers that are going to challenge our brand, or playbook, and our rulebook. These customers are the ones communicating in these new networks, they’re communicating inside Facebook, they’re communicating inside Twitter”.
These networks, Lark claims, are those that favour “transparency over opacity.”
“We need to know who we’re talking with, we won’t speak at but rather speak with, the conversation will be more important than the premises of winning the debate or the smart-arse comment we’ve coughed up.”
“Too many of the networks that serve our profession have become irresponsible feeders of gossip, misrepresentation, drivel and poison.”
“As I go out and talk, particularly to young marketers in schools, they watch the conversations we have and live in fear of the jobs they’re about to take”.
Julian van der Zee
I wasn’t there but it would seem an outstanding effort of Mr Lark’s to make and substantiate at least five different points in a ten minute talk.
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Anonymity isn’t going away. I don’t think it’s going to change just because marketers aren’t getting meaningful conversations. And I doubt it’s having that much impact on potential customers anyway. I reckon that’s overstating how much people care about brands, particularly in the digital space.
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13 or 14 feet from your telly? You must have an awesome living room. I’d be sitting outside watching through the window if i sat that far away.
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It’s a fallacy that anonymity breeds irresponsibility. Poor community management and reputation systems breed poor behaviour – and the internet is littered with examples. Far too many brands/websites wait until they have a community before investing properly in managing it.. by which point it’s too late. If you have a very small community, it’s precisely when you should be creating the tone & culture of the space.
The largest and most successful online communities in the world – many which have run for decades – are anonymous (well technically they’re pseudonymous but I suspect Andy’s not an advocate of this either). I wrote a mumbrella piece on this last year: https://mumbrella.com.au/why-using-your-real-name-will-not-mean-better-behaviour-online-121487
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