Andy Lark: Online anonymity breeds ‘irresponsibility’
Outgoing chief marketing officer of the Commonwealth Bank, Andy Lark, has declared “anonymity breeds irresponsibility” and is ruining the opportunity for “meaningful (online) conversation” between brands and potential customers.
“As the old saying goes ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant’, and it’s the bold that revel in that sunlight” said Lark in a Ten-Minute at the Mumbrella360 conference.
“I don’t think bold is big, I don’t think it’s big budget… more than anything I think we need to be bold in the conversations we have,” he said.
I wasn’t there but it would seem an outstanding effort of Mr Lark’s to make and substantiate at least five different points in a ten minute talk.
Anonymity isn’t going away. I don’t think it’s going to change just because marketers aren’t getting meaningful conversations. And I doubt it’s having that much impact on potential customers anyway. I reckon that’s overstating how much people care about brands, particularly in the digital space.
13 or 14 feet from your telly? You must have an awesome living room. I’d be sitting outside watching through the window if i sat that far away.
It’s a fallacy that anonymity breeds irresponsibility. Poor community management and reputation systems breed poor behaviour – and the internet is littered with examples. Far too many brands/websites wait until they have a community before investing properly in managing it.. by which point it’s too late. If you have a very small community, it’s precisely when you should be creating the tone & culture of the space.
The largest and most successful online communities in the world – many which have run for decades – are anonymous (well technically they’re pseudonymous but I suspect Andy’s not an advocate of this either). I wrote a mumbrella piece on this last year: https://staging.mumbrella.com.au/why-using-your-real-name-will-not-mean-better-behaviour-online-121487