I’m at The White Rabbit in Church Street. It’s filled with 40 something divorcees and some possibly currently married, for the time being, girls. I can’t quite tell the difference, although I’m guessing the ones who are smiling sideways at my friend Rob are possibly the divorced ones…but it is Brighton.
The noise is a couple of decibels more than I can take. It’s a ramble of one-upmanship spewed across the room with an apparent attempt to give everybody the drum. I catch snippets about real estate prices, car prices, clothing prices. Oh, the depth of thought, the bias towards money, that is typical of the Braaaaghton resident.
Rob (not his real name, derr) is one of my favorite ex-clients. He may be a client again if he gets the right gig, or he could end up a supplier, that’s how marketing life goes. I must emphasize that Rob doesn’t live in Brighton. Neither do I, I rush to add. We are here cause it was halfway for the both of us. We are catching up after a few months.
We get around to a company Rob used to work for and a particular share arrangement they had, and may still have. A large media concern bought into what is now a very big advertiser. They may have spent some millions buying in, but their pay-back is they want the brand to spend a significant percentage of its media spend on their stations/sites.
Now this is not exactly kosher. It’s believable, but it’s not in any way efficient or remotely ethical. Rob explains that a board member who sat on the boards of both businesses rang him several times and said he had to spend X amount on the media who’s board she also sat on. Rob says that to be compliant he started by trialing her media several different ways. It was not working. (One of the things about living in today’s internet driven world, is that you can tell in a red blink what’s working and what’s not, so why would you spend money where you don’t get a return?) Then she gets angry and wants more of the media budget.
Keep in mind that his responsibility is to his formal employer, and the full board of his employer, and he’s also getting some of his remuneration that is connected to the overall sales of the company, so he’s got a vested interest in getting the formula right. In sheer marketing professionalism. Which is one of the re-current themes of this, the most demanding, hopefully vaguely entertaining section of Marketing Magazine.
Anyway, she insists that he spend the equivalent of a Brighton house on her media. This is only part of his media budget, but a much bigger part than a media that can be proven not to be working should ever get. And here’s the rub. This behavior, of him refusing, polite as he no doubt was, is the reason we are able to have lunch on a Tuesday.
She spent some serious time getting rid of Rob, cause he wouldn’t play the game according to her twisted, irresponsible, possibly illegal, set of rules. She had him sacked.
A guy who’d built a brand from zero to a household name. A guy who could have grown it to being one of the big 100 in Australia. All because he wouldn’t do something that was patently indefensible, to anyone but the biased demander.
Do you ever get yourself in a position where you have to decide on something that involves a fair bit of bias balancing?
Bias in OZ is mostly associated with our news. Is it something that runs through your mind when you watch it? It think there’s good reasons why half the population seem to get their news from facebook and twitter. It’s unfiltered, raw, real, now and from someone you respect and trust – your mates.
Does anyone in mainstream media think they are doing it well?
How could you look at rapidly falling levels of listenership and think you were being successful? You can’t simply blame the rise of alternative media. You have to say to yourself ‘We are failing’. ‘We are not giving them what they want’. Or worse ‘we don’t actually know what to do’.
Can they be less biased? What is a non-biased way to report the news? Is it impossible not to be biased? Which bias is legit? Which is the truth? Which is spin?
What the fuck is bias anyway? Who defines it? What’s an interesting press release for a mining company but not a massive disaster for the EPA or Greenpeace?
I can see a really obvious spin. Like Julia trying to put a good angle on a poor electoral result. Tony or Malcolm trying to make something look worse or better for whatever reason. But the real news? The events as they are reported? I listen but struggle to believe the twisted nature of the Australian versions of world news.
I watch the news from other countries because I do not believe the news we get here. I regularly (and I mean 4 times a week) sit up late at night listening to Radio Deutsche Welle, or the BBC, or the Russian English broadcast, or go on the web, just to hear someone who cannot have a vested interest in bullshitting tom us, cause they are not even thinking about we little citizens of OZ.
Our news is often filtered dramatically by news teams with do-gooder middle–class values and agendas, so great slabs of big news never gets to Australians and often that which does, is twisted by the reporters/celebrities interpretation to end up giving us a very different understanding than the people of China or Russia or Canada have of the same event/situation.
And why do I also not trust the news here? Cause bastards like you and me create it. That’s why I don’t trust what I see on the box, or hear on the radio as I drive to work. You and I have been all over it, manipulating the message, destroying the content.
Are you concerned about media bias or is it something you take into account each and every time you see the news? Do you care?
Media Bias
Virtually everything that is put forth by the big media groups is someone’s biased version of the truth.
It happens like this. You’re a journo. You need to fill up 2 minutes and thirty-seconds of prime time and you have not got a story the editor will approve.
Option one is you go home early and try to get yourself a good night’s sleep. This does not pay the mortgage.
Option two is you go through your afternoon’s two hundred and thirty-three emails and you look for one that sounds interesting. Interesting by definition is one that has all the footage attached and only some minor need to check with one player to get up in the 47 minutes you have before airtime.
So you go with the spun bit. Supplied by the spin doctor. And there you have it, the last part of a normal working day for the normal working journo.
That you may have changed the opinions of millions of viewers to what is arguably not quite correct, is small change compared to you not supplying a story for the evening news. And the effect it might have on your family and what they call their home.
Oh, you media people reading this are going to get all angry and say this is not what happens. That your members all get up at 5am, hunt down stories, deftly interview every participant and report as absolutely accurately as is humanly possible. But the rest of you marketers reading this will know they are full of shit.
But it’s not just the media. There are many other kinds of bias we live with as marketers.
Bias we have to work around
There are people out in marketing land who are biased in virtually every aspect of our business lives. Here’s a few:-
Boards
So many people playing with marketing like it’s a holiday from real work. So many assumptions. So few research projects. So many mistakes. So few experts and almost no people who actually care about marketing professionalism on Australian boards. And virtually no marketers. A moonscape of intellectual rigor.
Suppliers
One criticism of small time players is that they fail to be realistic about the pros and cons of their media, product or service and often try to sell you stuff that simply cannot fly for whatever reason. Better to be blunt and scientific and gain respect, so that when things do fit, you’ll get the gig cause they can trust you.
Government
I used to like it that Labor stood for working class, caring, teaching, green and the collective community. I liked it that Liberal stood for individuality, business, a safe Australia and infrastructure. Now they are both racing towards the same swinging voters in the same marginal seats and I just don’t have a clue which side believes in what or who the real Julia is.
Families
Your family hate the people next door and your cousins from Moe, and that’s fine. Want to see/hear real bias in action? Have Christmas with your rellies.
Assumptions about normal
If you get to 40 and people think our normal, frankly, you have failed life. Normal is only in the mind of the observer. Hippies think other hippies are normal.
Professionalism
The most professional person I know is a bank manager and they have no qualifications and no brains.
Academic
A person who spends five years focusing on the sex life of orange vegetables so they can get the moniker of PHD is an idiot. But I’m biased against wasting intellect on pointless exercises.
Media sellers
Anybody who thinks that their opinion is more important than stats to back it up, is fair game for you, powerful reader of Marketing Magazine. Go for it.
Competitors
I love bias from competitors. It’s like knowing the enemy has guns that are bent. You feel like dancing and going ‘na na na’ in front of them.
Researchers
Far too many researchers become purveyors of a process instead of solvers of problems. If they specialize in groups, they say groups can do everything…..pathetic.
Bias in the workplace
Bias is everywhere. It controls a lot of people’s thoughts. Many of us will only consider certain lines of inquiry, certain attitudes, certain positions. This may be because we have tried other things and they have failed. It may be because we have little imagination, or are too stressed to consider other things. It may be politics.
The government is enforcing upon us bias that is driven by politics. The politics of equality, which I do agree with, but I’m not so sure how workable they will be. New equal opportunity laws are coming into force on 1 August this year. Unconscious bias in the workplace happens everyday – towards mature-age/Gen Y workers, part-time/full-time workers or based on ethnicity, disability or sex.
Every single person, whether we realise it or not, has certain biases towards certain groups of people. Of course there are some clear lines that shouldn’t be crossed in workplaces but what one may consider an acceptable workplace behaviour can be tagged immediately as discrimination by another employee. It’s going to be a very difficult task to decide where the lines are drawn and why.
How do define discrimination in different workplaces/industries?
For example, does anybody who wants a particular modelling job deserve it? Are they not people? Are they not an example of the target market or of the employees we are trying to portray?
How do you legally decide that red-head is OK, but strawberry blonde is not. And why shouldn’t a blonde person be as acceptable for a role as a brunette? What do you mean they don’t look right? They are not pretty enough? Who decides? What me? I wouldn’t dare. I’d get sued.
So a lack of bias in a practical sense often also gets very messy, very fast. You often need some, but not a lot.
The problem with bias
Is that it doesn’t reflect the truth and that means it is normally hopeless when things actually have to work. Bias is not going to get you any result except a short-term dumb, save my ego effect.
Very few of the business people around us are forced to be brutally accurate, because very few people in business are as subject to raw measurement as are marketers.
Yes, people making widgets go through cost-efficiency assessment. But they are not judged if a product doesn’t sell. They made it in less than 23 minutes. They are therefore Ok.
But you Miss Marketer? You have to get a return regardless of whether the government has upped the interest rate by 50 basis points this week or whether your direct competitor has decided to conduct a winter sale.
In marketing professionalism sense, if you can’t move beyond bias and do the effective, most professional thing, then you are doing yourself and your career damage.
Maybe not now. Maybe now you can survive for the next few weeks. But when you have to talk about your working life, say when you’re going for another job, it’s the sort of thing you’ll remember not to mention in the interview, isn’t it? Cause you’ll be ashamed of yourself.
How to avoid bias
Seek frankness
Look for people who do not mince words and who are prepared to say things you may not wish to hear.
Look for vested interest
It’s often the case there’s a financial reason behind bias
Probe
Ask people to explain jargon and, please, constantly ask Why?
Research
Do desk, qualitative, quantitative, validate, track.
Observation
The most basic of research. Often free. Rarely used.
Test
Until your CEO loses her temper and says ‘get on with the roll-out’.
Spread your ears
The more diverse your information sources, the more likely you will be to find the truth about anything
Use science
The basic scientific principles, like experimentation, measurement, repeatability, while you can’t use them in all circumstances, all of the time, are definitely worth using as often as possible whenever you can. You won’t learn if you’re not trying to track what is happening. That’s as much the case when you’re doing a web site as when you’re running a TV campaign or conducting a twitter war.
Independence Of Agency
If you’re being paid to send profits back to a concern based in America or France, you are logically doing their bidding. It is patently the case that overseas based ad agencies must be biased to the country in which they are owned.
I here confess my worst, or perhaps best, bias. I am an Australian and will always be biased to help our people over others. Sue me.
I don’t give a stuff if overseas owned ad agencies find it offensive that I mention this, as if it’s too low. Ie. There’s nothing they can do about it, so why mention it? That’s like saying “It’s just a great white shark. Just cause others have eaten people, doesn’t mean it will eat me.” This is true, you could survive, but do you really want to put your head in it’s mouth to find out?
If your company competes with an American or British one and they represent it over there, ask yourself, would they have a conflict of interest? Could they transfer facts and patterns? Could it even help their overseas partners on-line operations here? Would you know?
If you want less biased advice, use Australian owned agencies.