Benioff beats up on Facebook: Monday’s Daily Brief
Eveyone is talking and writing about Facebook — for a range of reasons, none of them very good.
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Good morning, Marketers, and did you see Benioff beat up on Facebook?
Count the ways Facebook had a bad week last week. Marc Benioff, co-founder and CEO of Salesforce — and, not incidentally — owner of Time magazine, took the opportunity to unload on the social giant. He took issue, in particular, with Facebook’s failure to staunch the flood of disinformation on the site.
One of his comments struck me, not least because some of us have been making much the same point for years. “I own Time and I am held accountable for what is produced on my platform. In regards to Facebook, they are not held accountable.” That’s the heart of the matter. Although Facebook does edit content, it insists that it is not a publisher but a platform on which third parties publish content.
Which brings us, of course, to Section 230(c)(2), enacted as part of a piece of legislation in 1996. The Section protects websites from liability for content published on their sites by third parties. The motive — valid in 1996 — was to prevent the nascent internet from being crushed by lawsuits. This is not 1996. Amend the law so that only small web-based businesses are protected — not Facebook — and many of our major problems with social media would be solved.
Kim Davis
Editorial Director
Facebook’s failure demonstrates why email reigns
In her latest contribution to MarTech, email marketing expert and author Kath Pay looks at the smart strategies email marketers adopted during the Facebook/Instagram outage. “Within an hour after Facebook’s platform got knocked out, the first emails began to roll into inboxes, with subject lines like “Here’s a distraction while Instagram/Facebook are down…” (Mott & Bow) and “Instagram (Got U) Down?” (Lulu’s).”
Some email marketers went with existing creative, just changing the subject line (“Instagram May Be Down, but Our Holiday Arrivals Are Up” — The Rifle Paper Co.). Others were agile enough to build campaigns in real time addressing the outage (Postable offered discounts on greeting cards as an alternative way of messaging friends).
“It’s easy for the email team to chuckle at social media marketers who had a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day on Monday,” she writes. “The entire internet would have to go down to affect email the same way.”
7 tips for building brand identity
“One of the things we’ve got to remember about customers is that they always like to attribute personalities to the characters they interact with,” said Terry Flynn, president of multichannel marketing company Market Chord, in his recent MarTech presentation.
“We can either let our customers give ourselves characters, or we can choose to define that personality and help shape the way that our customers interact with our communications.”
It’s important to first decide “who” your brand is. For example, is its tone corporate, serious and formal or is it more personal, funny and casual? Is it speaking to the public at large or a more intimate audience? Is it demanding and direct, or deferential and vague? It should be sharp, and not clueless, and, above all … authentic.
“Most important of all is that you are authentic,” Flynn said. “We all know it’s very clear when sometimes things are fake.”
G2 adds high profile new ABM integrations
G2, the business software and services review site and marketplace, has added new ABM integrations to its existing integrations with LinkedIn Matched Audiences, Terminus, and Metadata. The new additions to the list are Demandbase, 6Sense, RollWorks and Triblio.
One of G2’s offerings allows vendor subscribers to track target accounts viewing their profile, their category or their competitors. The intent data informs B2B marketers about where accounts are at in their purchase journeys, while the integrations serve to automatically push the data into the ABM platforms for activation.
Why we care. There are obvious advantages to having intent data ingested directly into an ABM platform. G2’s directory goes far beyond just marketing tech; this initiative should help any tech marketing org to act more quickly when target accounts are in market.
While the roster is not comprehensive, G2 is now integrated with a number of the most prominent ABM players in the space.
Brightcove’s new B2B streaming tool
Video technology company Brightcove has introduced a new tool, Brightcove CorpTV, that aims at providing a platform to B2B marketers looking to launch Netflix-style streaming content.
By building out a streaming channel with CorpTV, businesses will be able to release content that can be seen on smart TVs, mobile and other connected devices. The CorpTV platform also allows the streamer to monetize premium content, gain sponsorships and even sell ad time. CorpTV allows businesses to keep all of their video content in a single place and also measure the viewership of their content.
As part of the launch, Brightcove has also released their own corporate channel, the Brightcove PLAY TV app, using the CorpTV technology.
Why we care. As we started to see in 3Q, branded B2B streaming channels are becoming a thing. Streaming technology lowers the barrier to entry for TV-style broadcasting, and businesses like Salesforce are stepping up with production value and regular shows to stream on their Salesforce+ app.
It’s still too early to tell how much this supposedly deeper engagement will catch on with business audiences. Will they watch a Salesforce-hosted show at night instead of Ted Lasso?
Quote of the day
“Every week that goes by without investing in the brand channels / how people actually buy (original content, word of mouth, referrals, thought leadership, creating demand by developing new products and concepts people actually want) is a week you’re missing out on demand you could be capturing 6-12 months from now.” Dave Gerhardt, Chief Brand Officer, Drift
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About the author
Kim was Associate Editor at a New York Times hyper-local news site, The Local: East Village, and has previously worked as an editor of an academic publication, and as a music journalist. He has written hundreds of New York restaurant reviews for a personal blog, and has been an occasional guest contributor to Eater.