Alexis Ohanian: “Brands have to be more self-aware”

[Music] so in the last year we've worked really hard to develop and add products at Reddit that really didn't get touched for about six years while Steve and I were gone and what we found was we can actually build a native add product on reddit that is essentially a conversation starter and it lets brands set a table invite a community for whatever their interests might be and start a conversation with them and sometimes it's a discussion about another ad sometimes it's just something fun sometimes it's serious it's whatever the brand wants to accomplish what we found is the engagement it's so incredibly high and then you combine that with brand lift studies we've done with independent third parties and the goals of the campaign actually succeed like the ability to influence people because you're coming correctly because you're using these native ads to start a conversation and get people highly engaged with it like they're actually accomplishing their goals there are going to be many more niche brands you're gonna find and I think that's a good thing it's gonna be it's good for consumers because at the end of the day we do have more varied needs we do have diversity of interests and wants and desires and so it makes sense that we would have products that reflect that as well as marketing that reflects that and I think on the whole the trend that we're seeing is brands have to be more self-aware now not just when they're advertising on reddit but like in general because the days of deluding yourself into thinking that like you sell miracle water are gone because people will call you on it right though you know people were calling you on it around the watercooler forty years ago you just didn't know and you couldn't see it happening in real time and now because of platforms like Reddit you can't biggest mistake marketers make is definitely that lack of self-awareness and it's weird because we're all people and we're all people who probably if our parents raised us right are welcome guests at a dinner table and yet even people with good table manners and good conversation like basic conversation skills forget all that when they get into marketing mode and start creating marketing content that is totally inauthentic and totally disingenuous and start behaving in a way that just feels really anti-social and the last ten years of these social media platforms have really reinforced this idea that is like I said fairly antisocial that black mirror episode does such a good job of really dissecting why it's so awkward but that is it I mean I'm I'm sure there was a photo from this press conference today that I'm gonna download and I'm gonna put into Prime and I'm gonna edit and then I'm gonna come up with a really good caption I'm gonna post on Instagram and we need that as people no doubt and there's a need for that kind of connection but it's so superficial and I would argue doesn't actually influence in a meaningful way and if you're a brand you want to influence you want to build an audience and just make sense to me you would go to where you can actually have an impact it is an amazing time to be a brand starting out because you have to earn every single customer and it will be in your DNA from day one that you have to make something people want and you have to engage with them in a genuine way or else no one will care about you and you'll go out of business so that's good I think the brands that are being forged today are gonna be so much stronger and so much better than the ones that were forged 50 or 100 years ago because they've been forged in these fires of social media of real-time discussion and and you know we see people the smartest ones engaged from the moment people are talking about them not just on platforms like Facebook and Twitter but on platforms like Reddit and the brands that are really winning the day are the ones that embrace that conversation good or bad or otherwise and just try to be for and when they find an opportunity to talk to someone they do so like a human being not like a brand not like some kind of soulless marketing robot awesome