{"id":11447,"date":"2019-07-30T10:56:03","date_gmt":"2019-07-30T09:56:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vccp.com\/?post_type=news&p=11447"},"modified":"2020-08-25T11:11:16","modified_gmt":"2020-08-25T10:11:16","slug":"isnt-it-ironic","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.vccp.com\/uk\/news\/2019\/jul\/isnt-it-ironic","title":{"rendered":"ISN’T IT IRONIC?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\r\n We live in an age of irony. Perhaps we always have, but some ironies are more profound than others. And the irony of the moment is that, as we understand more and more about how the mind reasons, we become less and less capable of being reasonable. <\/blockquote>\r\n \r\n \t\t\t <\/div>\r\n \r\n
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The un-reason irony is heightened by the cumulative findings of\u00a0cognitive science which would suggest that, no matter how clever we\u00a0think we are, our starting point for rationality is in practice\u00a0remarkably low. A classic example of our innate irrationality is the\u00a0distorting filter of confirmation bias. This is a universal mechanism\u00a0to which we are all subject, which means we have an innate tendency to\u00a0cherry-pick those \u2018facts\u2019 which most reinforce our own subjective world views.\u00a0This is one of the primary reasons why objective reality remains so\u00a0elusive for us as a species.<\/p>\n

To compensate for this inherent processing flaw, most of us try to\u00a0maintain something resembling a balanced outlook. We try to accept\u00a0some level of ambiguity and, perhaps reluctantly (especially for\u00a0obstinate people like me), try to acknowledge that there are\u00a0frequently two sides to any argument – and that you should,\u00a0metaphorically, kick yourself under the table if you find yourself too\u00a0vocally on the polar extreme of either side.

The trouble, it seems, is that social media has turbo-charged the more\u00a0vocal ends of any debate, and untethered them from their respective\u00a0ambiguity moorings. Whatever the subject, let us say Corbyn or Farage,\u00a0the discourse soon polarises into two irreconcilable factions. In\u00a0virtually any Twitter storm the ferocity of disagreement tends to be\u00a0matched only by its hyperbole, invariably ending in seething\u00a0comparisons to one or more of Hitler, Goebbels, Stalin, Mao or\u00a0McCarthy.<\/p> \t\t<\/div>\r\n \t\t\r\n <\/div>\r\n \r\n <\/div>\r\n<\/section><\/div>\n\n

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The way that social media haters rush to make their selective\u00a0judgements heaps irony upon the irony. They condemn and moralise\u00a0whilst echoing the censorious tactics of the very egomaniacs to whom they will\u00a0inevitably equate their quarry. Nuance is lost. Moderation is lost.\u00a0Denouncement rules. It’s like living in the McCarthy era. Oops, I’ve\u00a0only gone and done it. Of course it isn’t. Not remotely. But the direction of travel is still unedifying, taking us further away from the safety and mutual ambiguity of the middle ground.<\/p>\n

Why does any of this matter for brands, you may wonder? Well, I wrote\u00a0a while ago about the recent trend for brands to put themselves at the heart\u00a0of a polarising issue. Sometimes it works. But it seldom works as\u00a0well as being a unifying force, of selling hope rather than fear,\u00a0amity rather than enmity.\u00a0

Like human beings, brands work best at a supra-rational level. We respond to feeling more than thought and, even without confirmation bias, our minds are notoriously difficult to change (search Leon Festinger for more details). The strongest brands, therefore, seldom get into an argument because arguments are emotional cul de sacs. Instead, they focus on what Orlando Wood at System 1 defines as the three F’s; Feeling, Fluency and Fame.\u00a0<\/p> \r\n \r\n \t\t\t <\/div>\r\n \r\n

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There is a view (backed up by recent evidence from the IPA, see Peter Fields\u2019 \u2018The Crisis in Creative Effectiveness\u2019) that, as an industry, we are beginning to neglect the first of these F’s. That there is a growing tendency to over-message and over-argue, particularly with precision targetted sales activity. Campaigns that lack feeling soon lose the fluency that comes with emotion, and then brand fame inevitably begins to falter.<\/p>\n

The best communicators, in social media, in marketing, in politics, all understand feeling, and they also understand that feelgood is feeling at its most persuasive. This is something that we forget at our peril, especially if tempted to lay into someone or something online when, to take Taylor Swift’s advice, it may be better for us all to ‘like, just calm down’. ‘You Just Need to Calm Down’ is a timely rebuke to the excesses of online behaviour, including the memorable couplet; ‘Say it in the street, that’s a knock-out\/Say it in a tweet, that’s a cop-out’. Or, as Alanis would have it, ‘It’s like a black fly in your Chardonnay\u2019\u2026<\/p> \t\t<\/div>\r\n \t\t\r\n <\/div>\r\n \r\n <\/div>\r\n<\/section><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":11,"template":"","categories":[193],"class_list":["post-11447","news","type-news","status-publish","hentry","category-in-the-press"],"acf":{"news_id":"193","author":{"ID":930,"post_author":"2","post_date":"2020-07-02 12:04:34","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-02 11:04:34","post_content":"","post_title":"Charles Vallance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"charles-vallance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2026-01-19 12:22:45","post_modified_gmt":"2026-01-19 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