Hold the Click Frenzy flame emojis: Thoughtful marketing is crucial during catastrophes like bushfires
As bushfires were ravaging the country last week, brands were sending out Click Frenzy emails featuring flame emojis. As Erin Morris explains, it's this insensitivity that can impact not only a brand's reputation, but their customers, who could be in the middle of a tragedy.
Last week, thousands of Australians living in New South Wales and Queensland were facing catastrophic bushfire conditions that have taken lives, destroyed homes, wiped out 970,000 hectares of natural environment and left communities far and wide completely devastated.
Simultaneously, marketers around the country were rolling out Click Frenzy campaigns with email broadcasts, social media posts, and SMS and advertising campaigns, carefully planned and scheduled in advance. All were rolled out without consideration of what their audiences were experiencing; some even featured insensitive flame emojis.
Some Click Frenzy emails featured insensitive flame emojis in a week where bushfires ravaged the country (Supplied by Young Folks Digital)
As marketers, we work on campaigns months in advance and implement them in the blink of an eye. We’re fast-paced, hungry for results, and constantly strategising the next big thing. Our superpower is the ability to think in the future and execute in the present.
But in times of crisis, like during these fires, we need to slow down, be aware of our audiences, and think through marketing activity more carefully than usual – or else our superpower becomes our downfall.
As compassionate humans, carrying on as normal can feel strange. But as marketers, we know that, in order to comply with relentless marketing schedules and balance sheets, we must continue with commercial activities, against a backdrop of trauma and tragedy.
However, allowing campaign communications to be published during a time where serious news is unfolding can appear disrespectful or insensitive. People waiting for emergency updates or evacuation notices don’t want unsolicited text messages telling them about a sale, or emails with flame emojis in the subject line.
During times of tragedy, brands must communicate compassion carefully, as it can easily be seen as newsjacking to bolster revenues, or ‘purpose-washing’ through hashtag activism. Failure to act with awareness and empathy can be incredibly damaging.
Instagram influencer Sarah Stevenson (Sarah’s Day) received a torrent of criticism after pledging to donate $1 from from every product from her La’Bang Body skincare collaboration to the St Vincent’s Bushfire Appeal. Following the announcement, her fans turned against her, calling it a ‘cop out’ and a ‘cheap trick to boost profits’.
Today’s high tech marketing environment allows us to communicate and interact en masse, and automate and pre-schedule at the click of a button. Yet the marketing technology that empowers us to accomplish so much can also disconnect and desensitise us. We can’t allow that to happen, because the result is evaporated empathy that impacts our communications (and, therefore, our customers and our reputations).
Accordingly, it’s crucial that marketers consider the context in which communications are received, and craft strategies that are sensitive to those impacted by traumatic events.
Press pause on pre-scheduled activity, take a moment to remove the flame emojis, and add a little empathy instead.
Erin Morris is the founder and strategy director at Young Folks Digital, a digital marketing agency based on the Mornington Peninsula
How about stopping the new petrol and diesel car advertising, loaded in your pages, as well?
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Sorry but I think you’re looking at problems that don’t exist. Snowflake generation.
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I agree its a bit of a far reach – almost like they tried to expand two sentences into an opinion piece.
We certainly arent all snowflakes though and the majority of us wouldn’t have even remotely drawn the line between fire emojis and the bushfires.
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yeah but the sales are on fire too!
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You don’t think there’s something a wee bit insensitive about blasting “hot deals” to bushfire victims? Or a bit icky about seemingly leveraging tragedy to boost profits?
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You’ve certainly raised something for us all to consider in future so if nothing else you’ve started a discussion.
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I don’t think any right-minded person would interpret a flame emoji or a ‘hot deals’ subject line as “leveraging tragedy to boost profits”. Only those looking for an issue, or those looking for an opinion piece to promote their digital agency on Mumbrella.
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Nope, I don’t.
I think anyone with a skerrick of thought would know that it is a completely different context and not leveraging tragedy to drive sales.
But that’s just my view. Best way to know is whether or not sales actually dipped or unsubs lifted.
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I love your alternative take on Click Frenzy, and the oftentimes great disconnect between what is happening right now and what goes on in marketing board room meetings.
Agree that we can be doing a lot better marketing wise, and as influencers of what consumers think, feel and do in Australia, we need to display better empathy to these people as well.
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Oh honestly Erin. Fire/heat/redhot/whatever has been used as a metaphor for value deals since we’ve all been alive. To suggest a fire emoji is leveraging a tragedy is simply outrageous. Grow up.
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Its about as minorly distasteful as a fellow commuters BO in the morning – annoying, but you get over it in 2secs.
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Couldn’t agree more with this piece. Emojies must be used with MUCH more sensitivity.
I was horrified to be sent an eggplant emoji just yesterday, followed by a splash of water emoji.
At a time when 73.2% of the world’s population can’t even access fresh food or water, this is not just insensitive, but a completely thoughtless waste of fresh eggplant and water emojis.
And i don’t even like eggplant.
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Hey, Erin made a content!
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Hey Hans,
Yup. Totally get that red/hot/flames are creative devices that are traditionally part of promotional marketing.
Despite the headline, which I’m sure you know is the editor’s call, this piece examines communications in times of crisis more broadly including influencers leveraging bushfires as an opportunity to push their new product ranges.
As for Click Frenzy, receiving a slew of emails from brands that had no consideration for the fact that the majority of the east coast was burning did feel a bit icky.
Perhaps our brand of capitalism is one where brands are so entirely hitched to the relentless marketing machine that they can’t stop for a moment and consider their intended target audiences?
And that’s a kind of sad reality, isn’t it.
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While the headline zeros in on the ol’ flame emoji, the article more broadly discusses thoughtful marketing in times of crisis.
That SMS with deals on white goods may seem a little insensitive to someone who’s lost their entire home — white goods included, no?
If this is too much to ask of marketing, I guess I have to wonder if our brand of capitalism is one where brands are so entirely hitched to the relentless marketing machine that they can’t stop for a moment and consider their intended target audiences?
And that’s a kind of sad reality, isn’t it.
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Completely agree that there’s sometimes a disconnect. And it’s not entirely on marketers either. We’re totally hitched to relentless promotion and technology and automation have made marketing en masse easier than every before but also disengaged us from our audience more than ever before. Love the way you think, Tim.
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Completely agree, Henry. The stats will tell the story.
When researching for this article I posted in numerous Facebook groups and was met with a barrage of examples from bushfire victims.
Whilst these examples were not published in this piece (editor’s call, and all that) it did make me wonder if these brands might find themselves in a negative light — or, perhaps we’ll all be over it in 2 seconds.
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So thousands of people in two states being affected by bushfires means that millions of people across Australia shouldn’t get to hear about ‘Click Frenzy’ deals?
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Completely understand that red/fire/hot are creative devices used in promotional campaigns. However, I wonder are we so completely hitched to our marketing calendars that we can’t adjust messaging to demonstrate a little consideration for our audiences? Do we operate within a brand of capitalism that doesn’t make space for empathy and sensitivity?
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Yes. Discussion is a good place to start — marketers are smart people, and we’re custodians of the brands that we work with. Surely, it’s our responsibility to consider the audience and avoid alienating or offending them? Influencers peddling deals with $1 going to bushfire Victims did seem a bit off (and wasn’t well received). As a very wise person once told me: tragedy as a Trojan Horse for sales is truly awful.
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Any hero commenting an actual victim of the bushfires?
I know you’ll likely claim you are given it’s easy to be a keyboard warrior and lie… but I call bullshit.
The article reads: “it’s crucial that marketers consider the context in which communications are received”. I find this hard to disagree with.
That isn’t being a ‘snowflake’ it’s actually giving a shit about people.
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No no no. Empathy, sensitivity, sure.
But ‘leverage’ is a strong and meaningful word for you to use in this context. It implies they are using the bushfires to their advantage and are using emojis as a reaction to the event, rather than simply not seeing how their use could be offensive in context of the event. Two VERY different things and you have accused them of both. The difference is intent vs. ignorance.
They are slightly insensitive yes. But leveraging a tragedy with emojis? That’s laughable.
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Mate, you’re a total legend. It is 100% about giving a shit about people. And with all the marketing technology we know have at our fingertips, it really shouldn’t be that hard. If I knew who you were, I’d buy you a beer/coffee/bevvy of your choice to say thanks.
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I’d like the full story… I enjoy eggplants and splashes of water!
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This has nothing to do with the media community trivialising the bushfires and everything to do with a (very) far reaching opinion piece.
I’m going to submit one soon titled “MRECS Gave Me Cancer” and would like to hear your thoughts in the ensuing comment section.
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You wouldn’t use a water emoji in your comms going out to an audience who can’t access fresh water?! Erin’s article is basic content marketing 101. Know your audience, personalise your messaging. C’mon. You guys are being morons for the sake of being morons. And if not, it’s good to know that the majority of competition doesn’t know what they’re doing ??
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Who wants to explain the eggplant and water thing to our resident social media genius?
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A quick CTRL + F shows neither “leverage” nor “leveraging” are used in the article.
The first time this word appears is in the comments, and it’s in reference to influencers who offered to donate profits/money to bushfire victims if their audiences bought more of their stuff.
Whilst donations to worthy causes is admirable, my point is that it needs to be done sensitively to ensure it doesn’t backfire — as it did for Sarah’s Day.
Despite the headline, this is bigger than emojis. The point of the article is that brands must be sensitive/empathetic when marketing against the backdrop of trauma and tragedy so they don’t alienate their audiences or *appear* to be leveraging tragedy to boost sales.
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Thanks Erin.
The irony you pointed out is something I see far too often in our work. Had a look at Young Folks, love your brand and approach to digital.
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Appreciate you putting something out into the industry, that in itself takes guts to stamp your name on something but of all the fluffy nonsense pieces that ‘thought leaders’ submit to Mumbrella this one has to be one of the least insightful.
I appreciate as a smaller agency it’s important to put content out their to build your own personal brand and that of your agency but with everything that’s going on in the industry right now couldn’t you have written about something slightly less rubbish.
You could’ve easily done a nice piece about how influencers need to carefully manage their posts around times of crisis (especially when talking about said crisis) but instead you opted to demonize emoji usage. If it was a commercial of people burning from hot deals I would completely support a piece questioning that…but this is really just grasping at straws.
Realistically if someone has been impacted by these horrible fires a digital fire on a website promoting deals is hardly high on their list of concerns.
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Yesterday I received an email from a brand that had a smiley emoji. I wasn’t very happy that day and feel upset that the brand couldn’t be more sensitive.
My friends told me to get a grip, which I also found offensive as I have mild arthritis in my wrist.
On friend said I was behaving like a snowflake but as someone who once got caught in a very viscous snowstorm that led to a bad head cold, I found that an incredibly offensive label.
Erin, don’t listen to the naysayers. You are doing an amazing job. we need more people pointing out such transgressions.
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Agree on this one Hans. Honestly the audacity required by someone to create fake news out of something so minor and irrelevant, is testament to the crisis we face with the rise of the ‘offence culture’ taking over our ability to communicate with each other. The height of it all is then hiding behind some cop out justification of this article – honestly a fire emoji is all you need these days to get 5 minutes of fame – meanwhile shamelessly plugging her business at the same time.
What a waste of everyone’s time and another piece of content that is purely designed to drive an agenda, namely, the PR for a small agency. In the middle of nowhere.
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Wow if anyone ever doubted that marketers live in a bubble completely detached from their audiences, all they need to do is read the comments on this article.
Sure, from your trendy inner city co-working spaces, crises like the recent bushfires might be nothing more than a news headline, but for thousands of people in Queensland and northern NSW they have just completely upended their lives.
We are all smart enough (I hope) to realise that Erin’s point was not about an emoji – it was about displaying compassion and empathy when people are going through shitty times. Are our campaigns really that important that we can’t turn off certain segments for a couple of days to let people focus on much bigger things like rebuilding their lives?
It’s not about being a snowflake, it’s about being a human.
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I seriously, seriously doubt that a person whose home was destroyed by fire would be in any way concerned about the use of fire emojis in an online.
You say marketers are living in a bubble, but this reads like someone who is trapped in a bubble of triggers and transgressions, while the people whose interest you claim to speak for just don’t give two hoots.
They have much more important things to worry about. Sorry.
“I lost my home and business. But it was those emojis that really sent me under.”
Christ on a bike!
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I agree. This could have been reduced to one sentence about being mindful of context when you execute campaigns, which is self-evident anyway. The article adds no insight and no value. I’d call it fluff but there isn’t enough of substance here to satisfy that description.
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Well, there’s definitely an interesting, detailed and insightful analysis/opinion piece that could be written around what you describe. But this article offers nothing.
And Lisa, bonus points for resisting including latte-sipping in your city-versus-country insult-cliché word salad.
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Hi Erin,
A simple CRTL+F of “leveraging” points to you using the word in reference to the main article and Click Frenzy, with absolutely no reference to influencers.
You literally said “You don’t think there’s something a wee bit insensitive about blasting “hot deals” to bushfire victims? Or a bit icky about seemingly leveraging tragedy to boost profits?”
The comments you were replying to made no reference to ‘influencers’ either.
Just admit you were wrong and move on. It’s literally right there for everyone to read.
No reasonable person thinks they are even ‘seemingly’ were leveraging a tragedy. If you keep looking for outrage, you’ll find it everywhere you go.
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It’s important to put content out “their” using the correct spelling and grammar if you’re going to start critiquing.
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Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. How low the wits are of so many commenters here.
Whether your opinion is right or wrong, biting sarcasm certainly doesn’t improve it. Personal attacks don’t add to discussion, even if you vehemently disagree or feel it necessary to accuse another of transgression.
Anyone like to make a sarcastic comment?
(And that was irony, not sarcasm.)
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Reaching
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Nick, your comment is straight fire!
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