#19. Those Damned Biased Bots
No Fuglies Allowed
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Hey there!
Despite not sending out this newsletter as regularly, I've still managed to be pretty active with publishing content to my website.
And I recently published two similar articles about the topic of marketing bias.
More specifically how marketers and advertisers don't like ugly. Or much diversity either apparently.
I was inspired to start researching this topic after a conversation with the head of marketing at stock photography website Pexels (owned by design tool Canva), Enrique Hoyos.
He mentioned they're working to improve diversity in the images used by brands for marketing and advertising campaigns.
So in general if you do a search on Google for a basic search term, like businessman or business woman, you're going to get a generic image of a White man or woman. Because that's what the algorithms have been programmed to serve up.
And then you and I as Internet users click on those images because they're at the top of the results. So the algorithm says, "OK, people really like these images. They must be the best images to serve up for this term."
So our behavior reinforces the existing algorithmic bias. It creates a never-ending loop.
Pexels is trying to solve for that in multiple ways:
1. By switching up photo search algorithms
2. Adding a human element to photo curation
They aim to serve up a diverse variety of photos for searches to avoid always serving up the generic photos that feed into our biases.
So last year for PRIDE Month, they started serving up more LGBTQIA+ content for search terms like "couple" and "love."
The result was that they saw a huge uptick in downloads of this material.
On one occasion, I was leading a project to create recruitment marketing ads for a tech company.
I was tapping some of our actual employees to participate.
There was one employee in particular who I often asked to join in photo and video shoots because she was beautiful, smart, successful and had great presence on camera.
One day I was pulled aside by a supervisor and told that I needed to pull in different people for the campaign.
Because execs didn't want people thinking we had a bunch of "Indians" working for the company. I guess the implication was that it would look like we outsourced our services to an offshore team.
But man, that interaction left a very sour taste in my mouth.
(And it was indicative of some other underlying culture issues, but that's beside the point here.)
I've worked on a lot of campaigns over the years.
And I always am mindful of the visuals. Especially when it comes to the people featured.
When I was working in hospitality tech, I was constantly being reminded of execs to rein in my Millennial mentality because industry decision makers were largely conservative White men (as were all the executives where I worked).
Visuals matter SO MUCH in marketing and advertising.
In most cases, they're going to help customers and potential customers create their first opinions of your brand and whether they want to do business with you.
So there's huge responsibility to pick the best ones.
Research by Google says we take MILLISECONDS to form an opinion of a brand based on just the visual appeal and complexity of the website.
In most cases, we're using our gut to select visuals for any marketing channels. Which means our preferences and bias as human beings come into play.
We also like to pretend that marketing data or research gives us a leg up in this area.
Unfortunately it doesn't most of the time.
Because data, artificial intelligence and tech have been proven to carry the same biases we humans do.
And with all this in mind, I wrote up two separate pieces on this topic complete with research and anecdotes and a reference to one of my fave MTV shows, Catfish.
The Ugly Business of Visual Bias in Marketing
A general review of how visual bias and beauty standards impact marketing (and many other areas of society).
[Read it now]
Influencer Marketing & the Issue With Social Media Algorithms in General
We've heard a lot lately about how the cards are stacked against influencers who don't fit a certain mold. There was even a study of the top Instagram influencers, complete with a photo composite of the "perfect" social media influencer.
[Read it now]
Hope you guys enjoy! Next time around I'll be sharing some of the things I've learned about successful paid ads now that they've given me control over a few million bucks of spend to manage, and how I'm turning around the SEO fails on a website to grow organic traffic at the same time.
<3
Chantelle
P.S. I'm starting a support group for marketers to get together and talk about all the challenges we face. The goal is for us to have a space to vent and uplift each other once a month or so. If you're interested, shoot me a DM on Twitter or LinkedIn, and I'll send you an invite to join! The first meeting is coming up soon.
Been to my website lately? I work really hard to consistently post useful marketing content, including my lists of the best free marketing tools, best free stock image sites, and best free digital marketing resources. Click the button below to check them out!
Bonus: Stuff That Caught My Eye This Week
The amazing content strategy team at Foundation, led by distribution master Ross Simmonds, created a write up on how B2B SaaS company Gong is killing it on LinkedIn.
My podcast is still going strong! Check out interviews with former Indie Hacker Rosie Sherry, House of Wise founder & cannabis aficionado Amanda Goetz, Wattpad Head of Marketing Emma Brooks, and BlackPlanet founder + Oprah homie Omar Wasow.
A little advice here on how all you social media professionals can leverage branding to your benefit, from earning power to career opportunities.
If you're on the job hunt (or know someone who is), Dooly is filling a bunch of marketing + other roles, Haus is looking for a Brand Designer, hims has some openings for ecommerce marketing positions (remote), and Naked Wines in Denver, Colorado needs a new Director of Digital Marketing,
Here's an interesting Twitter thread I came across on how Zapier growth hacked SEO to expand its users.
Free workshop coming up to help you onboard to HubSpot and get the most out of the CRM and marketing automation tools. Register here!
And just for fun, here's a cover of Rihanna & Drake's hit song Take Care by Ariana Grande & former Victorious co-star Leon Thomas III.
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