OpenMagazine

The term ‘cancel culture’ has pervaded social media in recent years, drawing mainstream media attention and prompting heavy discussion. According to various reports, its prevalence will continue to rise in politics, media, and culture in 2021. But what exactly is ‘cancel culture’?

For the uninitiated, cancel culture refers to a massive loss in support for a person or company due to their controversial views or actions. It often begins on social media, where an initial few outraged reactions can rapidly spread across other platforms. The initial reactions rally support that is usually followed by demands of proper action to be taken by the relevant authorities or an apology from the offending parties. It is also now considered a new wave of social activism. Popular examples include the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements. 

As the culturally conscious Gen Z and Millennial consumers have risen into positions of economic power, brands are now under closer scrutiny and more likely to be held accountable for their actions and views, especially their environmental, cultural, or societal impacts. The combination of an increasing consciousness among consumers with brand globalisation and social media has created the perfect environment for cancel culture to flourish.

There is a polarising debate surrounding cancel culture: the dissenters feel that it impedes upon freedom of speech while the proponents deem it necessary to speak out against the people in power regarding legitimate issues.  

So what does this mean for brands?

A 2018 study conducted by the Edelman Earned Brand showed that “nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of consumers around the world will buy from or boycott a brand solely because of its position on a social or political issue”, with every surveyed country displaying a double digit percentage increase from previous years. 

Instances of brands that have been affected are Quaker Oats, who retired the ‘Aunt Jemima’ pancake brand name after it was accused of perpetuating racial stereotypes, Pepsi, for its insensitive depiction of global protests. The once renowned film studio, The Weinstein Company, went defunct after founder Harvey Weinstein was accused by over 100 women of sexual harassment, assault, and rape, sparking the #MeToo movement. 

As the general consumer becomes more informed, it is no longer sufficient for brands to stay neutral regarding controversial issues, primarily those concerning human rights, the environmental crisis, and upholding social responsibility. Brands are expected to either speak up against such injustices and take action, or be seen as complicit. Furthermore, there are now groups dedicated to holding brands accountable, so simply making empty promises without action could lead to harsher backlash.

Aiman Azlan – a youth mentor, motivational speaker and author. Join Derek and Aiman as they share uncommon advice to students that are currently deciding on a degree or young professionals that are currently paving their career paths. In 2011, during his second year at University of Toronto, he made a video from his one-bedroom apartment. Little did he know that the video would be an opening for him to create a passionate career. He discovered he can use his ability to speak, his understanding of psychology, and his online presence to inspire the youth.

With the technological advancements that we have achieved in this day and age, there has never been greater competition. In addition, there is no shortage of platforms where you could be investing your time, however, it all comes back to your audience. Are you giving your audience what they want or need, at the right time and what matters to them? Here are some social media trends that will matter most to marketers, brands, and businesses:

Community + Experience

People are looking for connections on a personal level with businesses and brands that feel like part of their community. Businesses will need to put more effort than ever into being more of a helpful, understanding organisation in a community than simply providing service to consumers. Businesses should aim to make their social media social as it is crucial to listen to your audience and provide value to them as opposed to solely using your social media channels to promote your products/services. With more competition on social media, connecting with your audience will help humanize your brand and gain their trust. People want to feel like they know who they’re spending money with, as a result, brands / businesses will have to step up their games and provide such an environment for their consumers. You have the power to build a strong community around your business and create such movements that aim an impact beyond increasing sales. Although, group and like-minded community spaces dominating means a much heavier workload for marketers and businesses. 

Influencer Marketing

Influencer Marketing is maturing and becoming more known in this digital age. The clear strategy by using influencer marketing is to integrate with your overall marketing strategy, thus, establishing a thorough process that outlines your brand’s goals and content guidelines while still allowing micro-influencers to direct the narrative in a way that feels authentic to their audience. However, smaller organizations or those in the B2B industry may be struggling to see how influencer marketing can be implemented to reach their goals. Perhaps look internally at how employees can step into thought leadership roles and become the voice of an organization through engagement and amplification of messaging.

Diversification

Diversification tends to be a primary trend in social media, especially on the advertising side. It is beneficial for risk mitigation by reducing dependency on main platforms such as Facebook and so on. It is known that younger demographics favour the sister platform of Instagram, such as TikTok and Snapchat. Any advertiser who embraces smaller networks (e.g., Twitter, Reddit, Snapchat) will also enjoy an environment of relatively low cost due to lower levels of competition. By exploring smaller networks like TikTok for example, marketers should start exploring ways to take advantage of TikTok’s advertising platform to reach engaged Gen Z consumers. In addition, the younger demographic is highly engaged and trusting of the opinions of their peers. It has never been a better time for businesses to establish themselves on a platform that is largely responsible for creating much of the internet culture we have come to enjoy today. 

Stories 2.0

Businesses should do well to ensure that they have a solid strategy with daily images, micro-videos, and content that audiences value. Bite-sized content seems to be very popular nowadays as it is easy to digest for consumers. They are a perfect way to get the attention, for a few valuable seconds, of an audience that loves authentic creative content. Stories are also a great way to add a touch of your personal taste to your social media using emojis, videos, gifs and stickers.

In conclusion, given that social media trends are constantly evolving, you’ll want to make sure you’re up-to-date on the latest social media marketing trends so that you stay one step ahead of the competition! Authenticity matters in social media marketing. Nearly three out of every ten consumers use social media to communicate with a company. The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have also brought us various mitigation efforts, and have underlined the critical role that the internet now plays in our everyday lives. Within that, they have also exacerbated our reliance on social media apps, which are increasingly serving a range of different purposes in our day-to-day routines.

People analytics can be defined as the use of data about human behaviours, relationships and traits to make business decisions. It helps to replace decision-making based on anecdotal experience, hierarchy and risk-avoidance with higher-quality decisions based on data analysis, prediction, and experimental research. Furthermore, people analytics data was used to baseline the time spent on the process in every country, and to map the networks of the people involved. 

Businesses now are facing unprecedented times during this global turmoil leading to a series of unfortunate circumstances associated with the economic, global and political issues that are challenging business operations and strategies. The assistance and application of people analytics may help assist through focusing organisations to move beyond their mission and reinvent themselves around the human focus. 

Agile Work and Organisation Design

At this point in time, where people need to work from home, it has become very apparent that we have shifted to an agile way of working and now we need to rethink our organisational design. These methods have revolutionised IT and greatly increased success rates in technology quality and productivity. Today, businesses will need to go agile as they will have to look at the capability of their workforce as a strategic imperative towards delivering the business strategy. Even with the best-laid plans, things can change, such as failed assumptions, skill misalignment, incorrect resource forecasting, significant productivity changes and even organisational structure change. Agile organisations should collect all such people data and analytics to counter change using strategic workforce planning that reinforces the evolving business goals and strategies.

Managing Remote Work Culture

The traditional hierarchies and protocols will do more harm than good for organisations, as they hinder communication and decision-making. There is now a need for organisations to understand that the paradigm shift required to become agile is far more than understanding agility itself. The technological advancement today allows us to be able to implement this concept, however, HR will need to break the traditional hierarchies and move to a robust network system. 

The new normal

The cause of global disruption due to COVID-19 has caused a major systems-level disruption that has ultimately led us towards a transformation in organisational work patterns. It is pointless to look at all these challenges unless organisations make tangible and quick responses to these disruptions at play. The new normal promises exciting challenges for the HR function, however, businesses must embrace and utilise the power of people data and operate in an agile and strategic way.

With the current pandemic, COVID-19 affecting the entire world, many job seekers are naturally concerned about job stability and are worried that they are unable to find a new one, or with fresh graduates who are entering the job market soon at such an unfortunate time. To address this, we have invited some experts from industries that are still hiring, Dato’ Ng Wan Peng (Chief Operating Officer of MDEC), Dawn Seng (Head of Elite and Premier Academy of AIA) and Siew Mee (Managing Director of 2X Marketing) to weigh in on the current job market in Malaysia and to help job seekers find their way in these uncertain times – in an online panel discussion.

Facial Recognition Payment or FRP, is essentially making a payment with face recognition technology. FRP is currently widely implemented in China, with the use of a WeChat e-wallet or Alipay account, you can link your existing account to stores available with this service and check out by simply scanning your face. There is also news on this technology being implemented in a store in LA, USA and also in Denmark. FRP is definitely a new payment technology that is on the rise, but how does it actually work?

According to Alipay’s FRP (Facial Recognition Payment), 

1. The user taps Pay with Face Recognition on the screen of the device. 

2. The device scans the face and recognizes the user.

3. If you are a first time user, you will need to key in relevant data like phone number and associated payment accounts used in payment. But if you are a returning user, all you need to do is verify your payment account and confirm payment. 

4. Your payment is complete! With relevant information like payment amount and account associated with payment will be shown on the device. 

Even though this cut-edge technology is efficient in easing the payment process and also succeeding in lessening physical contact, especially amidst Covid-19 pandemic, many users are concerned with the exposure of data and privacy invasion as to the lack of security regarding the information shared during payment. Below are some key concerns according to research.

1.  No consent was questioned for. 

Users were asked to scan their face immediately after tapping the ‘make payment’ button but not whether they want to proceed with the process at first. 

2. Users are not able to understand how exactly is the process of facial recognition carried out. A genuine concern of users is that anyone with a user’s phone number could buy something and associate their own face with the account linked to that specific phone number.

3. An easy breach of data and privacy. Your data is essentially exposed to the public and it is not explained that facial recognition is secure enough to protect user data. 

As for now, FRPs are still unfamiliar and foreign to the public’s eye. It is indeed a fairly new technology and with the concern of user data protection and privacy, FRPs still have a long way to go. 

If someone comes up with a better plan in protecting users in the process as well as enhancing the payment process, FRPs may be the biggest breakthrough in technology.