Last week, I made a moral argument against virtue-signalling, using Facebook as an example of what not to do. While I do believe that the moral argument should stand on its own, I do want to spend a few more precious words on why specifically this was a bad idea from a communications strategy perspective.
Here are a few reasons why it was a particularly egregious case of spending too much time smelling your own farts:
It's a transparent attempt to appeal to a particular group with feel-good content. For all we know, these people are paid actors.
It only appeals to people who are already on your side. On the face of it, it's a waste of money.
It does nothing of significance and is designed to appeal to our emotions. In other words, it's advertising and advertising is not altruistic, it's purely designed to serve the company's bottom line, even if only indirectly. But the danger is that it's advertising trying to pretend it's not.
It attempts to sweep under the rug the years of documented harm that has resulted from LGBT users being accidentally outed by Facebook or the platform being used by oppressive regimes to suppress and kill religious minorities (search for "Bobbi Duncan" or "Myanmar + Facebook"). And it does so without ever acknowledging the harm it's done.
It's not business-related, even though it's posted on a platform that is primarily devoted to business networking and goes out of its way to maintain that.
It's tone-deaf.
It reinforces the misguided idea that solving problems can be done by throwing money at it.
The spin doctors at Facebook might think that saving face is a worthy endeavour, but that's counting on the fact that most users are idiots, which is incredibly condescending. It may only erode a little of the trust that people have in Facebook, or even elude most users, but repeat that day after day, year after year and you end up with a brand devoid of any equity that no one trusts anymore.
Ultimately, I may be completely off the mark, but only time will tell.
What do you think?