Category: Articles

Not everyone cares about pop culture or celebrities, which is fine. But when a particular celebrity supersedes what we think of as a celebrity, when she is a veritable brand master of the first degree ‘ perhaps it would serve us all well, whether pop culture devotees or not, to take note. Aside from the talent, the insane work ethic and the fact that she is considered by many to be one of the greatest entertainers of all time, Beyonc’ has a perfectly crafted and maintained public image. My Microsoft Word, my web spell-checker, and my iPhone all autocorrect regular no-accent-aigu-Beyonce to properly accented Beyonc’, and I never had to tell any of them to do it; her supremacy is so undeniable, she’s dictionary.

Over the weekend she dropped her latest album, Lemonade, on HBO and on TIDAL. We haven’t heard much from her in between this release and her previous album, which surprised everyone at the end of 2013. In a time of over-sharing on every platform imaginable, Beyonc’ has demonstrated a master class in restraint. While other celebrities throw out every photo and personal detail of their life, expound on their ‘everyday’ activities and attempt to seem ‘just like us’ to some extent ‘ Beyonc’ delights in setting herself apart and refusing to compromise her standard. Instead, she drops hints and clues. Nothing is given away that isn’t part of an overarching narrative and hasn’t been tailored to suit the moment in which she chooses to reveal whatever it is that she is revealing. Her silence is just as powerful and telling as her presence. She demands to be studied and analyzed.

The Business

The Beygency. The Illuminati. There are many names (and rumours) for the team that works to protect Beyonc’s image. No one knows for sure how they operate, but their influence is vast. Beyonc’ dabbled in ventures here and there ‘ she and her mother started the House of Dereon in 2006 ‘ but it wasn’t until she launched her online presence that Beyonc’ the business really became apparent.

It started with Tumblr. Tumblr is a blogging platform that has been around since 2007. In 2011, it was home to Barack Obama’s blog, and in 2012, it was home to Beyonc’s. Tumblr is a culture unto itself. Depending on the blogging topic, it is mainstream or incredibly insider, it is weird or deeply personal, it is spontaneous or highly curated. Tumblr bloggers can follow each other, so it’s also a social networking site. Unlike other blogging platforms, it allows for a lot ‘ both content-wise and format-wise. It is home to polished blogs and messes of images, gifs, and haphazard text, but mostly, it represents a lot of personality. Beyonc’s blog (beyonce.tumblr.com, which obviously outgrew the platform — you can still see what it looked like on iam.beyonce.com) was a revelation because it was unexpected.

And here Beyonc’ showed how one should partake in social media: engaging on the every person’s platform, but engaging in a way that only furthers her distinctiveness. Does your Tumblr look like Beyonc’s? Of course not. Does Beyonc’ use Tumblr the way you and your friends do? Don’t be ridiculous. So why is Beyonc’ on Tumblr? Ostensibly, to reveal a more intimate side of herself. In actuality, it’s to show you just how good (and therefore, how much better than you) she is at Tumblr. Now, obviously, being Beyonc’ is beyond aspirational, but being distinctive isn’t. The purpose of social media isn’t necessarily to be relatable, but to be somewhat personal, so capitalizing on what makes your particular organization or cause unique is exactly the point. For Beyonc’, that particular thing happens to be that everything is curated to the smallest detail of an exactness only she knows. For us mere mortals, it means how is what you are doing and how you’re doing it, different from what anyone else is doing. Basically, what about it is inimitable, and therefore, memorable.

Her husband didn’t do quite as a good of a job. Around the same time Beyonc’ went for Tumblr, Jay-Z created his website, Life + Times. Even then though, Beyonce’s site was better and Jay-Z’s considered a mess. Jay-Z’s site was referred to as the new GOOP (Gwyneth Paltrow’s site) because it seemed to be full of content that only other rich people would actually want to consume. It can be a fine line to draw, but it’s there. Inimitable is a quality, or a feeling, or a perspective. And it’s consistent, because it’s inherent to you, your issue, or your approach. In 2013, she took this to the next level and dropped a surprise album. The delivery and absolute secrecy surrounding the event were the exact opposite of what everyone else did or was doing with any new release. While others have followed, it has become her trademark.

The Big Picture

The Elevator ‘ if you are unaware ‘ is an infamous event in Beyonc’s otherwise immaculate public image. For years, there were low-level rumblings about her husband’s (Jay-Z, aka Sean Carter) infidelities, but they had been only rumours with nothing real to substantiate them. Then in May of 2014 after the MET Gala, elevator footage caught Solange Knowles, Beyonc’s younger sister, attacking Jay-Z in an elevator while Beyonc’ stood to the side. Word on the street was that the altercation had to do with how Jay-Z treated his wife.

Regardless of what did or did not go down in the elevator, it became The Elevator with a capital ‘T’ and ‘E’. There appeared to be a crack in the otherwise flawless surface of the Carters’ reputation. Whatever Beyonc’ posted on her site, on her Instagram, on her Tumblr, was all in service to the larger story that she wanted to tell about the incident. At times, Beyonc’s relentless curating of her self-image shows through ‘ such as when she forced outlets to pull down “unflattering” photos from her performances. But her selectiveness with her sharing has made her all the more enigmatic and her pull that much more powerful. With the knowledge that her weighing in would give credence to the speculation, she waited until she knew how she wanted to throw her full weight ‘ the weight of say, a full-length visual album ‘ into the situation.

Patience is a virtue. Beyonc’s patience has to do with quality ‘ and at no point does she sacrifice the quality of her messaging. Now, situations don’t always warrant patience, and not everyone has the luxury of time. But the fact that Beyonc’ always has the big picture in mind is important to understanding how to control the narrative. It’s 2016 and we’re still talking about The Elevator, but in no way is Beyonc’ a victim, and the volume on the discussion has just been turned to max with her latest album, and it’s the volume for her voice and her voice alone. It’s that kind of management that has taken her to where she is today: Beyonc’ has reached such a level that she no longer gives interviews. Her latest album is called Lemonade and she has been hinting at it for over a year – dropping images of lemons on social media with no explanation. Not only is every move part of a larger construction, when the final product is delivered, you appreciate just how constructed and meticulous that product is. She does not deny that it takes work, and planning, and that when done well, it all pays off.

The Beautiful

Visuals are important. Things that look bad do not get as much attention from people — especially not people online. But more importantly than that, the visuals don’t have to speak to everyone. If you’re representing high quality, if you’re representing elite, or if you’re representing a specific point-of-view, and you’ve created something that speaks to everyone, you have a problem.

It’s clich’, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and being beholden to the irrelevant has never been a concern for Beyonc’. With her first single of 2016 and her Super Bowl halftime performance, there were threats of boycotts, riots, and there was’confusion from people who did not understand her point ‘ and her point was, and is, that she is not aiming to please. There are stakes and there are messages and there are causes. Rubbing people the wrong way is to be expected, and in fact, desired, if you are picking a side.

If you watch her latest visual album, the images are certainly not for everyone. The album, and everything it’s saying, is multitudinous. The visuals and references tell a particular story and have a history — a history whose unpacking takes novels. Aiming to please the masses would detract from the power of her narrative and negate the point she is making. Her messages fly over the head of the uninitiated and they run smack up against the prejudices of others. They resonate deeply with their intended audience and she doesn’t care about the rest.

Bow Down

She has grown and grown her fan base with her. We know details about Beyonc’s life, but they have been communicated through her voice alone. There have been other voices along the way ‘ she’s had a group, she has family members who are active in the media, she has a husband who, at one point, was more respected within the music industry and more famous. But no one is waiting on bated breath for what any of them say. When she is involved there is one, and only one, person for which people are waiting, attempting to schedule free time around predicted release dates, and whose every appearance is scoured for the tiny clues and nods that all signal a crafted and calculated story being told.

As she says herself on her latest album: She worth every dollar and she worth every minute. And she’s the one who made it that way.

If you are a Facebook user, you have certainly become acquainted with its new ‘On This Day’ function, whereby Facebook shows your activity from that date from years previous. Aside from looking back at your questionable fashion choices and reliving vacations, the feature demonstrates how our use of the platform has dramatically shifted since we first logged on.

Much of the change in our Facebook use can be attributed to our familiarity with social media, upgrades in functionality and the wide adoption of the smartphone. When Facebook was first launched in 2004, we didn’t have the ability to snap a picture, post a video or host a live broadcast from our phones. This meant that the very nature of Facebook use was more deliberate; early users had to be sitting at a computer, not waiting for an elevator, to use the platform.

Along with technology, our personal networks on the channel have also evolved. For early adopters, our Facebook friends were classmates (in its infancy, Facebook was restricted to students with university email addresses), but now, they likely include your close and extended family, former coworkers, travel acquaintances and, maybe, your current boss.

Further, veteran users know what sort of posts are likely to receive positive engagement from their networks. You may have been very keen on promoting a band you discovered, but if your friends didn’t share your enthusiasm with likes and comments, human nature dictates that you are less likely to share something about that band or your taste in music again. In contrast, phenomenons like the Ice Bucket Challenge of 2013 would not have taken off if user networks did not pick up the challenge as a fun, shareable, and popular endeavour.

As Facebook matures and an individual user’s network includes many years’ worth of acquaintances, the social channel invariably becomes less intimate. Social media is certainly less social if you are deterred from sharing an article on oil prices because you are concerned someone in your network will bomb the comments with conspiracy theories. And it is certainly less social if you are wary of posting photos of a late Wednesday night at a Blue Jays’ game with beer in hand. Unsurprisingly, Facebook just isn’t as fun when you know your mother-in-law or boss could be watching and your news feed is dominated by the same loud people.

Further, early adopters of Facebook are now in their late 20s and 30s and are perhaps now too busy with their careers or young families to endlessly indulge in the medium. This is worsened by the fact that younger millennials are taking to Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat to share their personal moments away from parents’ prying eyes. Regardless of the motive, from 2014 to 2015, ‘original broadcast sharing’, posts with a user’s own words or images fell by 21 per cent, while overall sharing dropped 5.5 per cent.

Facebook is aware of this fact, with insiders dubbing the decline in user sharing as ‘content collapse.’ To combat this, Facebook tweaked its news feed algorithm (how it decides what to display to its users) to favour user-generated content over posts from brands. This pushes marketers to use paid advertising to reach users, while ensuring that a post from your university roommate is not weighted the same as an organic one from a local pizzeria you might like.

Despite these operational updates, Facebook understands the days of users dumping 30 pictures from their vacation are over and personal moments are migrating to Snapchat, Instagram (owned by Facebook) and messaging services (Facebook owns WhatsApp). That is why the company is rolling out prominent notifications on Mother’s Day or Siblings Day (apparently that’s now a thing) to encourage user participation. Together with its ‘Memories’ function Facebook is trying to have users associate the platform with warm feelings of family, friends and nostalgia.

In addition to these engagement initiatives, Facebook is launching new features, like virtual reality and chatbots, to stay competitive and keep users from clicking off the site. These changes will better position Facebook for the long term, with the clear aim of transitioning Messenger into an ecommerce platform. At its F8 Conference this month, Facebook touted the ability to order flowers or clothing all within Messenger. If successful, developers may abandon their own apps and instead latch onto Facebook as the primarily tool for transactions, much to the chagrin of PayPal, Amazon and others.

Combined with Instant Articles (third-party articles that load instantly without leaving the Facebook app), these efforts all act to prevent users from clicking off Facebook in the moment, curtailing usage, or deleting their accounts all together. As Facebook moves towards publishing and ecommerce, users will become more dependent and hard-pressed to write off the platform as frivolous social media.

The ‘Hotel California’ effect of being able to check in but not being able to leave will certainly be good for Facebook’s bottom line and reinforce the need for marketers to stay at the edge of the platform’s features and best practices. Buzzfeed’s live Facebook broadcast of an exploding watermelon attracted more than 800,000 viewers, demonstrating that although user sharing is in decline, it is still possible to engage at a large scale. No matter the medium, audiences will always have a taste for entertaining or emotive content; smart campaigns will just have to keep up.

 

Photo credit: Rodion Kutsaev

Any good marketer worth their salt will develop a campaign that gives you mind-blowing conversions. In our line of work, most of the campaigns involve building online armies of activists. To assemble that army, we need to compel people to join the cause—we need them to convert. That’s why our conversion rate and the cost of those conversions is one of the most important metrics I look at when we’re running campaigns. The proof is in the pudding: if our conversion rates suck, our campaign sucks. It’s that simple. And if conversion costs are too high, we’re not running the most effective campaign possible. We also pay attention to conversion rates because in reality, conversion rates are a measure of persuasion. It’s a measure of influence.

How the brain works

So, what does it take to run a persuasive campaign? It takes a bit of psychology. To persuade someone, we need to know how the brain works—how people think and feel. Thankfully for us, there is a huge library of academic research to pull from to analyze the science of persuasion. Here’s what we know.

1. We’re naturally cynical

Our cynicism starts at a young age. We learn as early as the age of 4 that we cannot take what someone says at face value and we need to analyze the speaker’s own interests to evaluate the validity of their claims. In fact, young children are less likely than adults to give people the benefit of the doubt. Despite conventional thinking, we actually get less cynical as we age. Imagine what grumpy old men were like as kids!

What it means

Lead with motive and be completely transparent about it. It’s pretty tough to BS people these days, so don’t bother. Our messaging needs to be as raw and as honest as possible. We must acknowledge why people might be cynical with us and our motives head on. By doing so, we may even get the benefit of the doubt.

2. We coalesce in tribes

We all live in our own bubbles to some degree, and embrace the echo chamber, exposing us to the false-consensus effect. We selectively expose ourselves to opinions that align with ours. We start to assume everyone else shares the same opinion, and with time, we begin to think that the collective opinion of our tribe matches that of the larger population. With time, It’s tough for us to respond positively to a dissenting view. When we see it, we assume the person disagreeing with us is defective, if not a complete idiot.

What it means

Realistically, our campaign can’t reach every tribe, but we can certainly speak each tribe’s language and use it to get our message across in a persuasive manner. We wouldn’t use Parisien French when trying to persuade people who have spent their entire life in Saguenay, for instance. We wouldn’t talk about carbon taxes when speaking to oil workers in Alberta. We need to mind our tribes.

3. We can distort reality

Whether people are emotional or logical thinkers makes a difference. The Amplification Hypothesis states that displaying certainty about an opinion will harden that opinion and have a stronger chance of persuading. If we express uncertainty, we achieve the opposite effect. The type of message we use also plays a role in how we harden or soften an attitude. Using a logical (cognitive) argument on someone who is emotional (emotive) will have little impact. The reverse also holds true. If you want to impact an emotional person, use emotive arguments. If the person is a logical thinker, use a cognitive attack.

What it means

In practical terms, this means that if we want to persuade someone, we need to align our projected attitude with theirs. If we’re not aligned, we’ll only cause friction and fail to persuade. That’s why no one message fits all. When communicating to our target audiences, we need to use the most precise and affirmative message, targeted specifically to the right group. If we miss the mark, we’ll only create resistance.

4. We can move the masses even if we’re in the minority

It might be tough to admit it, but humans easily go along to get along. According to Conversion Theory, ‘in groups, the minority can have a disproportionate effect, converting many ‘majority’ members to their own cause.’ Majority members may be going along because it’s just easier, or they don’t see a legitimate alternative. There are at least four factors that give the minority its power:

• Consistency: never wavering from your message.
• Confidence: knowing you’re right.
• Unbiased: being fair and reasonable.
• Resistance: holding true to your convictions in the face of opposing social pressure.

What it means

We have no chance of winning if we’re not fair and reasonable. Even if we’re in the minority (the losing side of the campaign), we need to develop clear messaging that positions our side as the voice of reason. It might not win the day instantly, but a methodic and measured execution of this strategy will undermine the opposition. When we’re the target of minority attacks, we need to mobilize with lightning speed to expose the minority’s methods and verbalize their message.

5. We can temporarily speed up the persuasion process

Academics call this ‘priming.’ Priming involves putting out a stimulus that influences in the immediate-term. With this method, we introduce new thoughts or bring old ones to the surface as a reminder, offering a poignant argument that drowns out other arguments, even if for a limited window of time. For example, researchers Bargh and Pietromonaco showed some people neutral words and hostile words to others, briefly on a computer screen. Both groups were then asked to assess a character with ‘ambiguous’ behaviour. The group primed with hostile words interpreted this character’s behaviour as being more hostile. It’s the same effect that has us noticing other cars just like the one we bought.

What it means

Used ethically, we can subtly influence a desired outcome. Subtlety is critical—obvious priming will cause the adverse reaction. But if we have a relevant story or anecdote to point to when making our case, it may open up the mind to our argument. We have to remember, however, that priming is a temporary device. To persuade for the long-term, we need to use the other methods I’ve outlined in this post.

As campaigners, we need to provide people with value. We can ask, ask, ask without giving something in return. Some of the Internet’s top solopreneurs have mastered this skill, always providing a free download or content upgrade before asking for someone’s email address. While that’s just one practical implementation, the opportunities are endless. We need to pause and think about what we can give our supporters or consumers in return for their favour.

6. We feel a duty to return favours

Except for that one self-absorbed individual in your life (and if you don’t have one, it might be time to look in the mirror), we all live and die by this social norm. If someone gives something to me, or helps me out in any way, I feel obligated to return the favour. The Reciprocity Norm is so powerful that the initial giver can ask for something in return without waiting for me to offer it voluntarily, or ask for more than was given. How deep is this compulsion? Researchers Kunz and Woolcott sent Christmas cards to a random list of people they pulled from a phone book. All strangers. Most recipients sent a card back! Many continued to send cards years after the fact.

7. We want want few have

We really want to keep up with the Jones’. It’s that simple. It’s part of a convoluted process we use to ‘control our world.’ Choice is freedom, and if what we desire becomes scarce, we’ll regret not acquiring it, which only makes us desire it even more. And if we know others desire the same thing, our own desires increase. It’s a vicious cycle. So, the next time you’re browsing through your favourite retail store and it’s advertising a big sale that ‘ends today,’ you know it’s making use of the Scarcity Principle. How deep is this instinct? Researcher Stephen Worcel offered subjects cookies in a jar. One jar had ten cookies; the other had two. Guess which one subjects preferred? Yep, the cookies from the jar with only two cookies in it, even though they were the same cookies. We just can’t help ourselves.

What it means

This is another tactic some of the Internet’s top marketers have mastered. They’ll often sell a webinar, offering customers a very limited amount of time to join (e.g. 48 hours). It’s a play on the ‘you don’t want to miss this opportunity of a lifetime’ principle. This approach might not be appropriate in all circumstances, but when appropriate, it can be a powerful way to yield influence.

8. We can be influenced by low-credibility sources

This is a media relations tactic that Ryan Holiday mastered and outlined in great detail in his must-read book, Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator. The basic approach is this: get a story placed in a blog that doesn’t have the same journalistic standards as the major news outlets. The key is to target blogs that these same news outlets get their story ideas from. The news outlets then pick up and build on the story, resulting in your story running in news outlets with reputable names and large readerships. It’s a play on the Sleeper Effect. When the message gets separated from its low-credibility source, the message may gain more credibility.

What it means

The message is the medium. Where and when appropriate, we need to make the message more impactful—even more dramatic—than the vehicle being used to deliver that message. A good story is a good story, regardless of where it gets reported first. Our campaign needs a compelling story; with it, our campaign will resonate.

9. We have a lot to learn from politicians

Yale University conducted multi-year, multi-project research into persuasive communications and found that the source of the communication (the speaker) should be credible and attractive to the audience. The message should not appear to be designed to persuade and should in fact present two-sided arguments (refuting the ‘wrong’ argument).

What it means

You might shudder at the thought, but we can learn a lot by watching how politicians communicate. The good ones look good, talk through their opponents’ arguments, even acknowledging that their opponents’ arguments may seem reasonable before poking holes in their arguments. It’s a fight to present oneself as the most common-sense candidate of the lot. I know it’s convenient for me to argue this as a former political staffer, working at a firm comprised mostly of former political staffers (of all stripes), but when you’re in the business of building a brand in the space of months, or at most a couple years, you need to be persuasive in everything you do and say. You may not like politics, or politicians for that matter, but don’t be so quick to dismiss the value this industry has in teaching us how to run persuasion campaigns.

10. And yes, sadly, humans can persuade with manipulation and deceit

This is one of the worst ways to run a campaign, but it’s worth talking about because it is one instinctual method used by humans since the beginning of time. It seems to be the method used by those who have nefarious motives. And even though they always get caught, it doesn’t seem to stop them. Someone using this method to persuade is deliberately breaking at least one of these four conversational maxims:

• Quantity: The information presented will be full and free of omission.
• Quality: The information will be correct (i.e. the truth).
• Relation: The information will be relevant to the debate at hand.
• Manner: The information will be presented in a clear and easily understandable fashion.

Yikes. It’s no wonder people are naturally cynical about government. How many governments are guilty of violating the above maxims? Ugh, let’s not answer that question. Moving on!

What it means

Let’s remember our first point – we’re all naturally cynical. I’d wager we’re more cynical than ever before. It’s in our blood to question what we’re told, especially if what we’re being told is causing us to change our mind. We want to corroborate evidence. We can detect manipulation in body language. The lesson here is pretty obvious: under no circumstances should we ever use this method to shift public opinion. Sure, we can try, and we might experience success with it, but eventually, it will blow up in our face. There are so many different ways to persuade people in a transparent and ethical manner. Stick to those, and avoid this method altogether.

Getting Conversions

So we know how the brain works. But how does this affect our conversion rates? Well, to pull from Roger Dooley of Neuromarketing, we can look to the playground to help us understand how to increase our conversions. Roger developed the concept of the Persuasion Slide.

These are your friends you didn’t really know you had. They listen very well. They’re keenly aware of your interests and where you’ve been. They know where you work and they know where you live. What you tell them and what you do, they really never forget. Well, unless you tell them to. And what they don’t know, they don’t simply leave alone. No, they make an informed guess.

These friends are the devices and services you use every day. And depending on your privacy settings, what they know about you is both fascinating and creepy.

If the product is free, you’re probably the product.

Search engines, social media sites and streaming services all collect more information than we think. Not only does Netflix know our show preferences, it knows what scene or episode caused us to pause, rewind, or abandon a series completely. Unlike traditional television rating systems, the sample size is every user and the dataset is complete. Analytics has become an intrinsic part of its strategic programming decisions.

When Netflix ventured into original content, it was confident its $100 million investment in House of Cards would pay off. While TV networks and movie studios have long used focus groups before green-lighting pilots or projects, Netflix had the data of 33 million subscribers to review. What it told them was that the original British House of Cards, director David Fincher, and actor Kevin Spacey were incredibly popular with its users. As someone who has devoured many hours of House of Cards, I’d like to thank the fine people at Netflix for their informed gambit.

Most people are comfortable having their viewing habits studied by Netflix, if it means Netflix returns with more addictive original programming and user-specific recommendations. The user’s reward is access to an ever-growing library of binge-worthy hits. However, some of these same users are more inclined to change their privacy settings on some larger platforms that also use data to improve the user-experience. For example, Gmail analyzes your email and serves you ads accordingly, while Facebook turns on your microphone to listen to the music or TV show you are watching while you compose a status update. How well do these tech giants know you? Who does Google think you are? Based on your search and YouTube history, the company estimates your age, gender and interests. Your work-related search history may skew the results, but Google can guess that I’m a male between the age of 25 and 34 (it doesn’t know my interests as my privacy settings were too restrictive).

While Google may not be able to predict the future yet, the location-based tracking information that fuels Google Maps’ traffic congestion feature also knows what bars plied us on a Saturday night, what greasy diner remedied us Sunday morning and every stop and mode of transportation in between. Try it yourself – depending on your privacy settings and Android phone use, you can track years of daily movement and see where Google thinks you live and work.

These techniques have advanced to the point where your name, location and behaviour, compared against government census data, can signal your age, gender and race. For example, social listening software can infer that an American Twitter user named Britney who follows Taylor Swift is likely to be a female under thirty, while a Canadian user named Todd who follows the Financial Post is an older male.

Facebook has gone one step further, leveraging data on your beliefs, friends, language, organizations and taste in music for its ‘Multicultural Affinity Targeting’. While currently only available in the United States, it provides advertisers the ability to run campaigns that specifically target users who fall under four demographic categories: African American, Asian American, Hispanic and non-multicultural (a delicate way of saying white). While using a diverse selection of talent to reflect your targeted audience is arguably noble and savvy, how marketers use this feature poses major ethical challenges.

When marketing the the movie Straight Outta Compton, advertisers used wildly different trailers for white and black users. The version for white audiences sensationalized the gang elements of the film, showcasing police chases and guns. In contrast, the trailer for black audiences played up the biographical, racial discrimination and protest elements. The notion that advertisers use stereotypes is not new, but the advent of ‘smart’ racial targeting will certainly be studied by businesses and sociologists alike.

On a smaller scale, the advanced data capturing methods will continue to trickle down for popular use. A band may decide to rejig their tour schedule based on the listener data provided to them from Spotify or a local restaurant may use its Wi-Fi to track and promote menu items to its customers. Together, these practices will continue to evolve as far as technology and public sensitivity allows, with smart marketers able to find the right nuances to tap into user attitudes and desires.

Analytics will always be limited by what has already happened – they can’t predict the future. Events of course matter, as do the innovators, like Steve Jobs or Walt Disney, who produce what we didn’t even know we wanted. But, the use of Big Data gets us closer and may prevent big investment losses and ensure that the services we use and the products and media we consume are tailored to our behaviours better than a marketer’s gut feeling. There is a trade-off in receiving tailored products, but the allure of cheap or free services will help gloss over consumer doubts about privacy or security risks.

Ultimately, the tracking and profiling of our online behaviour may create two classes of users: those who believe in the practice’s benevolence and the convenience of more attentive, efficient products and services; and those concerned about the Big Brother aspect, and their loss of privacy and autonomy. Looking at the analytics of it all, marketers may well decide to create more personalized privacy settings and applications to suit our individual tastes – but that behaviour will certainly be tracked too.

Every now and then, our favourite sites go down. Completely off the grid. And when they do, we lose it. We hop on Slack and ask our colleagues if they’re experiencing it too. Just to confirm, for sure, that Facebook is down, we might even step outside our office to check that’s it not just us, that we’re not losing our minds. Of course, by today’s standards, we’re not losing our minds. It’s completely natural for us to have a casual freak out when the Internet breaks. For better or for worse, we’re hooked. And why not? There’s literally a world of information, distraction, and entertainment available to us at a swipe of a finger or a click of a button. It’s empowering to know that whenever we need an answer to something—anything— we can whip out our smartphone and find it, pretty much instantly. We do it so much and at such high frequencies that the moment the Internet is down for a minute, we’re completely thrown for a loop. We panic. We get frustrated. We seek confirmation. And if it progresses beyond 5 minutes, we look at our screens with a blank stare, waiting – waiting for it to come back on so we can get our daily fix of our friends’ photos, see how our stocks are performing, and read the latest celebrity gossip rags. The Internet puts us in control; when we don’t have it, we’re at a loss.

It’s a luxury, and it’s one we take for granted. In too many countries, however, this feeling of being out of control or disconnected from the rest of the world is a regular occurrence. I’m not talking about remote places with bad connectivity (I’ll save that for another day). I’m talking about geographically accessible countries where governments use every tool at their disposal to throttle access to the Internet. I was recently reminded of this reality when I participated in the Munk School of Global Affairs’ Digital Public Square (DPS), which brings together leading digital experts to help address sociopolitical crises around the world. DPS tackles these challenges because, increasingly, people turn to digital platforms to express opposition or support for their government and policies, engage in online discussions about their country’s future, and self-organize around sociopolitical challenges.

This week, we highlight one of these stories on the Political Traction podcast. If you haven’t listened to it yet, I highly recommend it. My colleague Allie McHugh walks us through the fledging YouStink.org citizen movement in Lebanon that is using digital technology to call for change because of a problem most of us in Canada consider routine : garbage collection. It’s a fascinating story, and one that showcases how powerful the Internet can be. These activists are using it to rally people around a common cause, and mobilizing these people to take real-world action. This is a major crisis for Lebanon, and activists are using digital platforms in smart ways to reach people and circumvent repression through mobile apps that let people communicate, even when the government tries to limit connectivity and shut down the Internet. Unfortunately, the ability to self-organize, even if it’s under difficult circumstances like in Lebanon, isn’t an option in too many places.

In countries like Iran, North Korea, and Russia, people face significant barriers to civic engagement, both in the public and digital space. The simple right to express one’s own opinions, exchange ideas, and talk openly about the future of the country is denied. No venues exist to facilitate these conversations. Repressive regimes recognize the inherent capacity the Internet has to empower people. So, these regimes do what all brutal regimes before them have done: they actively monitor, filter, and block content to deny people the ability to share dissenting opinions and debate issues. Their targets—their citizens—are unable to create spaces for expression or institutions and policies that represent their interests. They deny them any semblance of control over the national dialogue, and replace it with repression, censorship, and exclusion.

The Digital Public Square is helping open up this dialogue back up. This crackpot unit (and I use this term affectionately—these guys do amazing work) is building new platforms to create safe digital spaces for people in repressed countries to freely exchange ideas, participate in open political discussion, and engage fellow citizens.

Those who know me well know I’m partial to the work DPS does. I helped initiate this project when I worked for Foreign Minister Baird.. In partnership with the Munk School of Global Affairs, we established platforms and tools that reached 4.5 million unique people inside Iran. On the heels of this success, we announced the government would provide an additional $9 million for the DPS project. It was a no-brainer — few initiatives use the power of digital technology in a way that brings people together to provide an outlet to express dissent against repressive regimes.

Because so much of our free time is spent exploring the Internet, we tend to forget how much of an impact it can have. We use it for fun – so sometimes we forgot the importance of its function. Today, only about 40% of the world has an internet connection. Furthermore, almost 75% of Internet users are from the top 20 countries, the other 25% is spread out over 178 countries that represent less than 1% of the global total. Plus, for many of those with Internet, that connection comes with a number of conditions.

Most of us take the Internet for granted the same way we take garbage college for granted: we assume it’s a standard part of the basic infrastructure we are awarded in our society. Although I worked on the initiative in the first place, revisiting DPS humbled me all over again. It was a reminder that my Internet worries extend, at most, to a few hours without email. A lot of our online expression is wrapped up in Facebook statuses, tweets, and…a (perhaps slightly preachy) blog post. But I don’t know how else to say it — a lot of people don’t have this tool at their disposal, so it isn’t a missed email or not being able to Google a fact that puts them at a loss; it’s a much more frustrating fact. There is literally a world of information, distraction, and entertainment available, but only a small portion of us actually have it at the swipe of a finger or a click of a button. For us, limited connectivity is often a break from being constantly in contact. For others, it’s a break of a much different kind, that extends well beyond an instant message or five minute YouTube video and right into their governing infrastructure and an entirely different perspective on what’s ‘standard.”