In a stinging indictment of social media, renowned philosopher and writer Alain de Botton has urged brands to switch off the comments stream and focus on broadcast messages.
Speaking in Cannes, de Botton chastised “nervous” marketers who focus too heavily on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook as a form of consumer insight.
He argued social media comments will mainly be negative, and are more reflective of people’s “bizarre neuroses” than actual sentiment towards a brand.
“The internet has taught us we are a very querulous, quarrelsome, sometimes nasty bunch, over things that don’t matter. We already knew we went to war over large things, but it’s odd how we can go to war over an idle comment.
"There’s an assumption that if people are commenting that’s a good thing. Nervous companies say they want to find out what social media is saying. I think the more robust companies say 80% of what you’ll pick up is people’s bizarre neuroses.
“I think it's good to sometimes switch off the comment boxes. In social media there should be more broadcast and less two-way, we don’t always needs two-way. People have thought long and hard about a good bit of broadcast; they’re putting good content out there. Quite frankly the immediate kneejerk response of someone who has woken up on the wrong footing is going to be less important. The internet gives them equal voice, equal space, equal font type and an equal sense of importance. Strip some of those comment pages off.
“The nervous boss thinks ‘my goodness, 500 people on Twitter have said this is bad, therefore I must jump off the ship’. So 500 people might mean you’ve made 50,000 enemies, maybe 500,000 enemies, but that’s alright because in doing it you’ve made a million friends. But these friends are quiet friends, they weirdly didn’t bother with Twitter, they just enjoyed whatever it was.
“So be very aware of the distortions in the feedback you’re getting via social media. A comment on a blog looks very much like the main article, except someone who didn’t think at all wrote it in three seconds. The tweet looks the same as any other tweet. It gives equivalence to things which are not equivalent.
“By all means we need feedback, but I think the feedback you’re getting off social media is probably quite unreliable. You are better off getting it from elsewhere through careful, long term, slow, more expensive ethnography, than the instant hit Twitter might provide you with.”
At Cannes, de Botton spoke at Ogilvy & Mather’s ‘Ogilvy & Inspire’ lecture series.
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