Social media metrics are rats

A “perverse incentive” is a target that unintentionally causes an outcome that is opposite to the intended one. There are a couple of iterations of this in popular explanations; one called the Cobra Effect and another called the Hanoi Rat Problem, which is my favourite and I’ll briefly lay out here. If you know it already, feel free to skip to the middle of this post. My point is that marketing is full of perverse incentives, with social media marketing particularly infested to the point that it’s doing itself harm.

In 1902, there was a major rat problem in Hanoi. They were everywhere, spreading disease, eating food, damaging property etc. The government decided the best way to get rid of them was to mobilise the population by offering a bounty for each rat killed. Simply bring in the rat tail as proof and you’ll earn 1 cent. It started well. The number of rat tails they received went from modest to bountiful in a few weeks. People all over Hanoi were responding to the incentive.

It wasn’t long however before the authorities noticed that the rat population didn’t seem to be receding. In fact, if anything it was worse than ever. How could they be receiving thousands of rat tails but the problem be getting worse?

Investigators went out and soon discovered what was going on. People had quickly realized that rats = money. Therefore, more rats = more money. Even better, more rat tails = more money. So they had been breeding rats, chopping off their tails and breeding more. It was a nice little earner.

Upon realizing the flaw, the government ended the incentive, whereupon everyone released their rat packs into the city. Hanoi was in an even worse state than when it started and had paid cash to get there.

This is social media marketing in a nutshell. Because of the difficulty in linking social activity to business effects, brands incentivize their teams and agencies to collect rat tails: likes, engagement, followers and so on. It is a very rare situation when a brand is tracking the desired effects that their social media are having on the audience: sales, profit, behaviour or attitudinal change. Instead, the social media marketing ecosystem has come to firmly understand they must make the most popular content and reap the vanity metrics that follow.

We’ve all seen examples of this. I recently had a conversation with a client who was upset that a major celebrity had promoted their product (organically) but tagged the wrong business division in their post. My client therefore received none of the likes, followers and engagement that she is incentivized to get. I pointed out that it shouldn’t matter. In the real world, millions of people will likely have seen the celebrity post and absorbed the implied message: this brand’s product is linked to this lifestyle and level of prestige. If you had an audience survey that was targeted or sensitive enough, the brand lift would be visible: job done. It didn’t console her, however. She wouldn’t get her rat tails.

The cause of this is most likely the cost and effort of measuring the real world effects of social media, especially when social metrics are immediate and free. However, I also think a lack of training and knowledge of marketing fundamentals is in play.

Whatever the cause, while this goes on, social media marketing is going to remain a lesser-respected, less mature area of business. It’s causing bad marketing, bad assessments and holding back the brands and marketers involved. If you want to know the effects of your marketing on social media, track and attribute the real world effects and set them as your targets. Use social media metrics as feedback measures but do not incentivise teams with them or you’ll end up with a strategy and culture that will consider a meme post more important than a mis-tagged endorsement from a major personality.