Do I really need a $985 face cream?
LISA Mayoh was enjoying a facial she’d been given for Christmas ... until her therapist tried to push a cream that would “change her life forever”.
JUST moments after an indulgent facial at a swanky inner city day spa (a gratefully received recent Christmas present) I was told by the therapist that my skin was dry, and I absolutely needed two miracle products that would change my life forever, from this day forward.
Sign me up, I thought — my drowsy head still on the silk pillow of my dreams.
“How much are they?’ I asked, as slowly and surely, my senses returned.
To my shock horror, they were $985. EACH. That is $1970 I was being asked to fork out for two small tubs of cream, without a trace of irony, angst or embarrassment in the woman’s voice.
At first I laughed. Then I got angry. And then I laughed again. But I had to ask myself — was my spa treatment simply a hook designed to get me to buy ridiculously priced face cream? How do I know my face is actually in need of this stuff, or if the therapist just needed a commission?
It’s the same on social media. What is real anymore? I’m constantly scrolling through celebrity or influencer product recommendations to see if there’s a sponsored post hashtag at the end. If I see #sp, I’m #out.
I don’t want to buy something because someone else is being paid to tell me to. I want the truth. How do you pick paid content from reality?
So I asked the experts how to navigate the minefield of real vs. sponsored. Here’s what I found out.
TRUST IS EVERYTHING
With sponsored posts “the norm”, social media expert Ryan Shelley said most media consumers adapt, and have grown savvy enough to sniff out an ad.
“Wherever there’s an audience, they’ll be individuals, groups and businesses looking to get their message heard,” he said.
“Users should look to recommendations, reviews and opinions from people and sources they trust.
“If you don’t know or trust the person posting the content, then take what they say with a grain of salt.”
With some co-ordinated effort he said it was definitely possible to falsely boost a business’s reviews and ratings.
“Take the recent example of Oobah Butler, a UK journalist who managed to trick Trip Advisor into ranking his backyard shed as London’s number one restaurant,” he said.
“For this exact reason, trust is a huge growth point and something we’re tipping will become extremely important for businesses and individuals.
“Like sniffing out ads, consumers are growing savvy and most can see through false reviews.
“Consumer beware — just because something is published, be it online, printed, television or radio — doesn’t mean it’s true.”
FOLLOW PEOPLE WHO DITCH THE ADS
Joshua Fields Millburn, one half of The Minimalists in the US, has famously taken an anti-ad approach to growth, and has one word to describe sponsored posts on social media.
“Yuck,” he told news.com.au
“We don’t do them.
“Advertisements suck.
“That’s not to say that all advertising is inherently evil, or even bad, because not all advertisements are created equal — they run the gambit from informative to downright destructive.
“Because the internet is a noisy place, and we don’t want to add to the noise, we personally don’t allow ads on our website, podcast, or any other medium we directly control.”
He said taking that approach posed an “interesting and delicate” dilemma for The Minimalists.
“One of the reasons we refuse to clutter our podcast with ads is so we can recommend products and services in which we find value,” he said.
“Find individuals and brands who share similar values and tastes, and eschew businesses that don’t share your values.”
EDUCATE YOURSELF
“A good faith review carries considerably more weight than a sponsored review, and those good faith reviews increase trust since our audience knows we aren’t beholden to the desires of advertisers, which allows us to communicate directly with our audience in a way that strengthens the relationship because we are in control, not the ad buyers,” Fields Millburn continued.
Trust yourself. If you’ve heard a recommendation from someone you trust, you’ve seen results and truly believe in the value of a product or service, go for it.
And if it doesn’t live up to the hype, let them know.
Feedback — good or bad — can go a long way in helping a consumer feel valued, heard, and secure that you haven’t wasted your hard-earned cash.
Some organisations will reward honesty, and others have money-back guarantee periods. And if you’re not happy with their response, there’s always social media to tell the world all about it.