A (2:36)

I don't know, maybe I'm being too forgiving on this one, but it doesn't bug me. I think I'm actually bothered more by a brand that I love running on a show that I despise. Like, you support that more. And even that I don't do very often, personally, I don't. But I'm sure the study says that people definitely get tweaked by it.

B (2:58)

Well, it's also a tough question because as marketers, I think we're gonna have a very different view because we know how that could happen. If you're seeing an ad next to something, you're probably thinking, it's not like the brand manager went out and selected that.

A (3:10)

Yeah, they controlled the pod. Yeah.

B (3:12)

Yes. But I think the average consumer seeing it is more likely to assume that they were more careless about it. This study found that consumers don't completely let brands off the hook. They set this up in two, two different ways. So first they looked at real world data from Twitter. This was before X rebranded. And they tracked sentiment around 86 brands that had publicly known brand safety incidents. So they were looking at almost 7 million tweets analyzed before and after each incident. Then they also ran six controlled experiments across Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to test their theories they were trying to understand. Does appearing next to unsafe content actually hurt a brand? And if so, why? The short answer is yes, and the reason is trust. So when we see a brand's ad next to something offensive or harmful, we tend to start to doubt what the brand stands for. And trust in that brand can drop. And once that drops, other things follow, like purchase intent, brand liking, and word of mouth. So there's sort of this downstream domino effect. And interestingly, they found that it didn't matter whether a consumer experienced this firsthand or just heard about it from someone else. The damage was the same. This is so sad. Even reading a news article about a brand safety incident had just as negative of a reaction as someone who actually experienced the ad next to bad content. So, Rob, say this. Something like this happens. How fast do you think brand damage can spread?

A (4:34)

I mean, I'll confess I'm shocked that ad placement safety could spread. Like, obviously, we all know about the Bud Light Incident with brand safety or the Kendall Jenner Pepsi incident that spread like wildfire. But having an ad placement go viral because it was up against some other thing that. That amazes me. If it is catching on as fast as those more obvious incidents.

B (4:59)

I was surprised too by this. And so they looked at brand sentiment on Twitter after an incident like this, and they found that the drop in trust related language about the brand was measurable within days. So pretty quickly, wow, this stuff was damaging. Now, not every brand was equally at risk, so they found that some factors made incidents more or less damaging. This is very interesting. Service brands were hit a lot harder than product brands. So hedonic brands that would be things like lifestyle entertainment, anything emotional, those got hit harder than utilitarian ones. And brands that already had a lower familiarity or weaker consumer liking suffered more than brands that people already loved and trusted. And then there was this also this other big finding around fit. So if the brand's image actually matched the unsafe content, say a brand that's more known for counterculture, running next to an ad about cannabis, consumers didn't really notice it. There wasn't a harm to evaluating the brand or an erosion in trust. The unsafeness was the worst when it felt misaligned to the brand. One other nuance of the study that's probably worth talking about, it differentiated between content that's genuinely just unsafe, hate speech, extremist stuff, and content that's just negative or heavy, like a video about environmental toxins, maternal mortality rates. And they found that the truly unsafe content damaged brands, whereas negative but not unsafe content had no effect. There's this difference. That's why some people get concerned, I don't want my brand next to certain things. It's. There's a difference. It's okay to be next to certain content or certain reality shows maybe, or a murder mystery. You know, sometimes marketers, they get obsessed with that. I don't want to be next to this content. It's like, no, it's really, if it's only truly unsafe content. All right, so what does this mean for marketers? They found that you should respond fast if an incident occurs. So they did some supplemental research and they found that immediate responses significantly outperformed delayed ones. And no response to something like this was the worst outcome. Which I think is interesting because when we had Tyler Milfeld on the show, we talked about there's a difference. Like he was talking about more of the Bud Light sort of issue, where he said the best response was none. I think this is different. Like, we're saying this is like you're appearing next to something and people are freaking out about it, but they think that a quick response would outperform something that's delayed. Then they said don't over block. So not all negative content is brand unsafe. Context and fit matter. So blanket blocking can cost you legitimate reach and then know your risk profile. Maybe depending on your type of brand. If you're a service brand or more hedonic, you might need more robust monitoring system because you're more exposed. I'd also say that probably depending on how well known your brand is, how trusted your brand is, you might have different standards. Okay, now for a rob GPT imagine. I love this one. Imagine you're a well dressed guest at a fancy dinner party and the host accidentally seats you next to someone who starts making scene after scene. They're arguing, they're saying offensive things. They're generally embarrassing everyone around them. You didn't do anything wrong. You don't even know that person. But people at the table start glancing at you like you're somehow associated. That's brand safety in a nutshell. The brand didn't cause a problem. The algorithm picked the seat, but consumers still side eyed the brand and their trust quietly walks out the door.

A (8:12)

That is good.

B (8:13)

I thought that was great. I think everyone's had that moment where maybe you're next to someone where something's happening. You're like I'm not part of that. Like how do I like unassociate.

A (8:23)

We talk a lot about is this particular ad for this kind of show and that gets a lot of attention. You hear about people being sensitive to where they're placed in a podcast. But I've never heard this level of research done on the impact of that. So that's super interesting.

B (8:40)

Yeah, I liked it. It is definitely a very specific. Like you said at the beginning, it's a specific type of brand safety research which makes sense. It's academic research. It's harder to generalize. So it's a specific situation. But I know especially when buying digital advertising this is a big concern for brands. We have a luxury in tv.

A (8:56)

We are not immune to having a brand safety issue of our own occur. Do you remember that one of like A Marketing Architects 1AMarketing Architects product.

B (9:06)

Oh no.

A (9:08)

All right, well I'm going to refresh your brain and you can decide whether or not you wanted to make the podcast here. But we happen to create our own product branded. We've talked about it many times. Bring it to market in the hurricane

B (9:22)

right this was a long time ago.

A (9:24)

We should say, this is a long time ago. This would have been like 2000, 2013 maybe. And there was a very historic weather event that occurred in Florida, massive hurricanes that hit in Florida. And our ads were running all over Florida, and Mr. David Letterman decided, that's pretty funny. And he in his opening monologue said, hey, here's a company that probably shouldn't run during a hurricane. And he played our app.

B (9:59)

Oh, that's so funny. Oh, no. Now, did you apologize, Rob?

A (10:05)

Oh, hell no. We measured response.

B (10:07)

Did it work?

A (10:08)

You know, I don't think we saw a net positive or net negative.

B (10:13)

It's interesting that the net outcome you felt was neutral, but I wonder if it actually would have been negative because you're getting picked up by David Letterman, like, all of that. You think that would drive more awareness for the product.

A (10:24)

But, wow, I think we were so early in that product story as well. It wasn't like we were a Coca Cola and people were reacting to it and mad we were a new product in general. So if anything, I think it probably brought us more attention to this very unique value proposition. But again, it didn't greatly accelerate the sales in that moment either.

B (10:45)

Interesting. All right, that's it for this episode of the Marketing Architects. We'd like to thank Taylor De Los Reyes for producing the show. You can connect with us on LinkedIn. And if you like the podcast, please leave us a review. Now go forth and build great marketing Marketing Architects.