Marketing In The Uncanny Valley

Trick question.  What does marketing look like?  Is the answer the same as the U.S. Supreme Court gave on obscenity?   “I’ll know it when I see it”.   Or, is it something more definable and concrete?

As most of you know, this week Twitter released its long-anticipated advertising platform called Promoted Tweets.   It will start, simply, as a way for advertisers to reach the Twitter universe through the Twitter Search platform, as well as those that follow a particular brand.   Then, the “magic” comes if promoted tweets start to get re-tweeted organically.  Theoretically that’s the only way that you or I would see an “ad” in our Twitter stream from a brand we don’t currently follow.

In the announcement, one quote from Twitter Founder Biz Stone caught my eye – and it was this:

“…there is not a single ‘ad’ in our Promoted Tweets platform that isn’t already an organic part of Twitter.  This is distinct from both traditional search advertising and more recent social advertising.”

Now I understand that Biz was most likely trying to stave off FTC interest in this new platform since the gov has already taken a position on disclosure of Search Advertising.

But boy is that comment interesting…

We all know that marketing is going through fundamental shifts.  Content and the underlying social platforms are becoming increasingly important as a way to engage with both prospects and our customers.   By now, we all know that we need to be (or should be) more conversational, and engage and that it’s a two-way street and all of that right?

But I wonder that, as the organic content that makes up that conversation starts to include more and more “marketing message” when will we start to creep people out?

Welcome To The Uncanny Valley

If you’re not familiar with the uncanny valley – it’s a term, coined by roboticist Masahiro Mori.  It’s most often associated with robotics – but also now applied to CGI graphics in movies and video games.  The concept is this: if you graph human comfort-level and on one axis you have the concept of human familiarity (e.g. a human face or body) with approached realism (e.g. how authentic it really looks) then you run into a big challenge.

Think of it like this: at one end (the lower left end) of the spectrum (think Elmer Fudd or Super Mario).  You have the depiction of a human that’s cute or silly or exaggerated and your brain identifies it as such.   On the complete opposite upper right end – think replicants from Blade Runner – where robots are, literally, indistinguishable from humans.  On both ends of this spectrum, as humans, we’re okay with it.   We accept it.

But, toward the middle there’s this giant dip where we get really creeped out (think the movie Polar Express or the video game CGI frame  pictured in this post). There is a valley.  In this valley, the attempt at the re-creation is realistic enough to fool your eye because it’s *really* familiar – but somehow you know it’s not real – and it really skeeves you out.  This is the uncanny valley.

Content & Marketing In The Uncanny Valley

So, I’ve been watching the trends in Content Marketing and Social Media Marketing – and I wonder if we’re beginning to approach our own Uncanny Valley.  I wonder if we’re just starting to get to the point where the technology is giving us the capability to embed our marketing so deeply into content, that consumers are going to start looking at our advertising – and get an uneasy feeling about how closely it resembles normal content.

Now, at some point, you have to figure it exits the valley and it becomes indistinguishable from regular content.  And, that’s of course really the ideal that we would all strive for as marketers, and which is often talked about as a goal of content marketing.  Can we produce a piece of content of true value, that also works as a marketing piece.

But where is that cutoff?  Or is there one at all?

Can Robots Be Trusted?

If there is something to this (and I think this is still a question) it strikes me that the valley is likely to affect the effectiveness of the marketing.  One of the main theories behind our revulsion of the human likeness in the Uncanny Valley is that it’s a violation of human norms.  In other words, when you look at a robot or CGI generated person that’s in the Uncanny Valley you don’t judge it as a robot or character doing an acceptable job being human.  You, instead, judge it as a robot or character doing a horrible job of being a person.

Might the same be true of these new “organic” ads that we’ll start seeing across Twitter and the Social Media Universe?  Might we look at them and see that they aren’t great pieces of content that are also advertising, but rather as ads doing a horrible job at being content.

That, of course, goes beyond the advertising’s effectiveness – and could seriously affect our brand.

And, how will the FTC’s take affect all of this.  They’ve taken a fairly heavy hand in the past when they defined how sponsored search should be disclosed.  So, Twitter has named it’s Promoted Tweets “organic” and therefore are not really advertising.  Really?

As Danny Sullivan over at SearchEngineWatch points out “the fact that they are elevated above other Tweets is what turns them into ads”.

Walk Slowly

In short, I really think Twitter is doing the right thing by stepping into this slowly.  I think this is more expansive than even just Twitter though – and spreads across all of our Social Media and Content Marketing strategies.   As we begin to experiment with these new ways of engaging consumers we will be well advised to tread slowly and carefully.   Monitor and measure the effect of spreading our content as marketing.

Be mindful of which side of the valley you’re on.  It will be very interesting to watch Twitter’s new ad platform – and those that will assuredly begin to copy it.   I look forward to the first case studies from advertisers and the effectiveness of those ads.

Most importantly – what do you think?    Are you finding any interesting surprises in your content marketing – and trying to balance a marketing message within it?