Many lo­cal brands are mis­us­ing da­ta to pro­mote prod­ucts, brands and ser­vices to tar­get au­di­ences on so­cial me­dia.

This was just one of the talk­ing points at Me­dia In­site’s con­fer­ence ti­tled “The Pow­er of Per­cep­tion: Me­dia In­tel­li­gence for En­hanced En­gage­ment.” 

Dur­ing the con­fer­ence, Me­dia In­site CEO Al­li­son De­mas gave ma­jor in­sight in­to the lo­cal me­dia mar­ket and pos­i­tive trends that lo­cal com­pa­nies had adopt­ed in the past year.

In a pan­el at the event, it was re­vealed that many com­pa­nies did not know how to make use of such in­for­ma­tion.

Joe Tay­lor, vice pres­i­dent of op­er­a­tions at Me­dia In­Site ex­plained, “At our sim­plest lev­el of ac­tiv­i­ty we count things, that’s what Me­dia In­Site does. We count a lot of things and we do it in some pret­ty so­phis­ti­cat­ed ways. We pro­vide that raw da­ta and then we pro­vide ways to vi­su­alise it but the se­cret sauce re­al­ly is your ex­per­tise in your area. You know your busi­ness bet­ter than we ever could.”

How­ev­er, he said this da­ta was use­less if the com­pa­ny sup­plied with that in­for­ma­tion did not know how to use it to the ben­e­fit of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“While we can pro­vide lots of in­for­ma­tion and we can draw some high-lev­el con­clu­sions, analy­sis, and we can of­fer ways to fer­ret out the in­sights, you then have to take that in­for­ma­tion and ap­ply it very specif­i­cal­ly to your sit­u­a­tion. It’s al­so sub­jec­tive; what looks good for my in­ter­est may not ac­tu­al­ly be pro­mot­ing your in­ter­est,” said Tay­lor.

“We can keep track of every­thing for but ul­ti­mate­ly you have to un­der­stand what it means to your or­gan­i­sa­tion and that comes with ex­pe­ri­ence in your fields, but it al­so comes from the ex­pe­ri­ence of us­ing the da­ta and get­ting com­fort­able with how to use it and what it means.”

This re­al­i­ty had be­come a com­mon frus­tra­tion for con­tent cre­ator and strate­gist at Sis­ter Isle Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing Ser­vices, Ric­q­co­l­ia Phillip. She ac­knowl­edged while T&T had large­ly be­come aware of the pow­er of so­cial me­dia and so­cial me­dia mar­ket­ing, too of­ten the ap­proach to the var­i­ous plat­forms was far too scat­ter­shot de­spite the in­for­ma­tion avail­able. 

“If there is a mis­align­ment then we are not on­ly not on the same page, but there is go­ing to be a dis­con­nect and peo­ple are not go­ing to re­ceive things in the same way you ex­pect them to,” Phillip said.

She con­tin­ued, “What I have come to recog­nise, when I have worked with brands, is that there is a dif­fer­ence be­tween what they think they are putting out and how they are per­ceived and what their tar­get au­di­ence sees and what they feel about the brand,” she said

“What I al­so recog­nised as well as they tend to put them­selves in it too much. So yes this is your brand and this is your busi­ness and all of that but at the end of the day it is all about how you want to show, what mes­sage are you try­ing to put out to your au­di­ence and are that mes­sag­ing and that per­cep­tion align­ing with how they view you?”

She added that far too of­ten, brands were more con­cerned with latch­ing on to a trend in­stead of cu­rat­ing con­tent that would fall in line with the com­pa­ny’s iden­ti­ty and as a re­sult falling out of favour with tar­get de­mo­graph­ics.

“The num­bers are there but it al­so has to work along­side what are your goals, what are your ob­jec­tives? I tell peo­ple to sort of re­verse en­gi­neer, so if we are work­ing let’s say with­in a busi­ness for a quar­ter, six months or a year. You have five par­tic­u­lar goals, and five par­tic­u­lar ob­jec­tives. Is your strat­e­gy align­ing with that or are you just putting out con­tent for con­tent’s sake? And that’s a pet peeve or mine, just show­ing up is not enough in this state of things,” she said.

She said as a re­sult a lot of cam­paigns are not on­ly miss­ing the tar­get, but al­so dis­tort­ing the im­age of the brands.

“We are in a vac­u­um. The amount of con­tent that has been put out al­most by the sec­ond at this point but un­for­tu­nate­ly, we are see­ing a lot more con­tent that is vac­u­ous and is just there. And less con­tent that is pur­pose­ful, pro­vid­ing val­ue, an­swer­ing a ques­tion or ful­fill­ing a need, de­sire what­ev­er the case may be,” she said.

Ad­mit­ting that this could be due to a dis­con­nect be­tween the mar­ket­ing team and the over­all or­gan­i­sa­tion in terms of plan­ning, Phillip said, “There is that di­vide be­tween the mar­ket­ing de­part­ment and the wider or­gan­i­sa­tion, they have their bot­tom line to reach. We are in a space right now, es­pe­cial­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go where yes com­pa­nies know we need to be out there. Yes they have fi­nal­ly em­braced so­cial me­dia. Yes we know we need to be on In­sta­gram, we need to be on Face­book, we need to be on Tik Tok,” she said,.

“But it’s kin­da fren­zied some­times, in the space of we just need to be there but it doesn’t feel co­he­sive, it doesn’t feel like there is a strate­gic ap­proach some­times.”

Phillip said this should not be the case giv­en the vast amount of da­ta that so­cial me­dia pro­vides to com­pa­nies that could bol­ster mar­ket­ing,

“We’re sit­ting on so much da­ta, I, un­for­tu­nate­ly, be­lieve that not enough busi­ness­es and brands are lever­ag­ing it the way that they should.”

Brent Coutain, the di­vi­sion head of iu­GO dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, a di­vi­sion of Lons­dale Saatchi & Saatchi, al­so not­ed lo­cal brands some­times be­come lost try­ing to do too much, when a mea­sured ap­proach could gar­ner sim­i­lar re­sults.

“You don’t have to be every­where all at once. You don’t have to be on Tik Tok or X as they call it now. It will reach there if the con­tent is good or bad. You need to be au­then­tic to the chan­nel that your brand re­lates to.” said Coutain, who al­so said lo­cal com­pa­nies should al­so pay at­ten­tion to AI trends as in time it too would play a cru­cial role in mar­ket­ing.

How­ev­er, he not­ed there were pros and cons in that re­gard as it was still be­ing learnt by most.

An­oth­er pan­el­list Ki­ran Ma­haraj, pres­i­dent, T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce sim­i­lar­ly felt AI’s use should be giv­en at­ten­tion in a mea­sured man­ner.

“We need to recog­nise the op­por­tu­ni­ties that it presents as well as the threats and what as­pects of it we should im­ple­ment. As a re­gion, there is cur­rent­ly a push by UN­ESCO to de­vel­op an AI roadmap pol­i­cy and I think every­body, every com­pa­ny every CSO, every NGO, every gov­ern­ment en­ti­ty, every­body should be look­ing at that roadmap. That’s be­cause the point here is that if we are not cau­tious as a re­gion, our cul­ture and our con­tents can be mon­e­tised else­where, and peo­ple are go­ing to be out of jobs if it’s done the wrong way,” said Ma­haraj.

She stressed that AI, much like the da­ta made avail­able by com­pa­nies like Me­dia In­site, need­ed to han­dled cor­rect­ly to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.