Does the scientific community need a rebrand?
Science and technology are more important than ever, but they face a crisis of confidence in public opinion. The Drum Network assembled a panel of experts to explain how good marketing can help.
The world once again had its sights turned skyward recently, as Elon Musk’s SpaceX company completed the breath-taking feat of 'catching' a booster rocket back between a pair of gigantic metal 'tweezers'. As an equally controversial figure (and a foundational one in the Silicon Valley movement of which Musk is so famous a part), Ayn Rand, said once in the 1960s, when the space race was last this hot: “It is man’s irrational emotions that bring him down to the mud. It is man’s reason that leads him to the Stars.”
Despite the live-streamed theatrics of the Super Heavy booster landing, surveys show that trust in the science and technology sectors is lacking. Some 69% of respondents to this year’s Edelman Trust Barometer said innovation was poorly managed and didn’t benefit people like them. Similarly, the Campaign for Science and Engineering found that 61% of people said research and development (R&D) doesn’t benefit them.
So, do marketers have a role to play in getting people’s muddy emotions behind these great skyward endeavors? And, whisper it, is there a tidy buck to be made, too?
Fly in the ointment
For Andi Davids, global business director at Bulletproof, these trust issues in the sector came sharply into focus during the Covid-19 pandemic. “I remember when covid hit, I was thinking, ‘Oh, God, for the first time ever, the big pharma brands are starting to become household names’. People were suddenly much more aware of science,” she explains.
At the same time: “The future of science and tech are evolving. They’re becoming more interdisciplinary, more complex, more important than ever”. Amid this crisis, the sector must work to recruit the best minds from the next generation to become scientists, she adds.
For Cristina de Balanzo, board director at Walnut Unlimited, the sector’s future relies on them being able to communicate clearly. “They need a repositioning campaign,” she says. “To show the benefits of the work they do by demystifying it. Because these companies send messages that are not intelligible, are not easy to understand, and they put people off.”
“People just don’t like it. Because they are not being human in the way that they communicate what these industries do and how they can be a benefit for you in the long run.” The issue is pertinent too, she adds, to the burgeoning AI sector, which often uses communications many may find ‘alienating’.
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Solving the equation
How, then, can marketers keep public attention on the dazzling achievements of the sector and away from conspiracy theorists and other would-be detractors? #
For Mike Oliver, head of strategy at Radley Yeldar, the answer could be as simple as a chemical reaction. “It’s about trying to communicate the wonder of what science does at a variety of different levels, and tech as well. Because when you break it down, and you go back to being a 10-year-old kid at school, science wasn’t necessarily a boring subject. Science was the sort of subject where you blew things up in a lab, and you had crazy teachers teaching you about what happens when you put this and this together.”
The alchemy marketers must engage in when it comes to selling the sector’s virtues, says Davids, breaks apart into three components.
“If you really distill it down to the three almost dichotomies that we attempt: it’s making the complex simple, making the rational emotional, and making the abstract tangible,” she explains. “Those are three of the key challenges I think in this space that we’re trying to accomplish through branding.”
As an example, Davids points to some work her team did for an authoritative chemistry database, which resulted in someone telling her: “After 25 years, my wife finally understands what I do”. Praise indeed.
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Astronomical returns
There are serious business considerations, too, when it comes to clear messaging. Jason Megson, international managing director at Sparks, recalls working recently on a project for the security division of a global technology company. While his team was used to showcasing the company’s work and products at trade shows and conferences, they found themselves presented with the opportunity to present directly to the chief executive of a major world stock exchange – and took a punt.
“We created this bizarre VR security scenario product where we took the CEO on a journey through all these different scenarios of his stock exchange being attacked by various security threats. But we humanized all of these instances. So, it was less about data points and more about weird and wonderful characters that this person was interacting with.
The result of that demo? “The CEO talked to his CTO and said: ‘This is the product we want. Can we please make this purchase? I get it now: I understand why this is important, and I also understand why this particular product is the one that we want to buy over the competitive bids that have been put across my desk’.”
The outcome? Megson estimates that in return for the roughly $200,000 investment in the pitch, the work secured his client a five-year $180m contract with the stock exchange. “It’s probably the best ROI I’ve ever had on anything I’ve ever done,” he says.
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The marketing moonshot
Consumer tech is the corner of the sector that consumers have the most contact with, thanks to their smartphones and laptops, and it scores better in trust polls. Edelman found that 76% of people do trust the tech sector despite real fears around privacy and technology replacing jobs.
Vibhu Bhan, chief operating and information officer at Creativ Strategies, says that while his agency works largely in the technology, gaming, and media sectors, it faces the same challenges as marketers trying to explain the differences between two vaccines, or the value of interplanetary space exploration.
When working B2C, “the focus is on storytelling and making sure [to deliver] the right story at the right time”. In his B2B work, the watchword, as for de Balanzo, is ‘transparency’. “There’s a fear really connected to the opaqueness of the insight or why certain things are important,” Bhan explains. Overcoming this fear is about being able to answer the client’s questions: “How many people are behind that? What channel are they active on and expressing certain emotion or sentiment against a product feature or whatever the tech company is trying to market?”
Explaining insights to clients and convincing them to heed them helps avoid a ‘spray and pray’ approach to marketing products and services. Which, conveniently, brings to mind another old quote about the cosmos: “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”
Content created with:
Creativ Strategies
Creativ Strategies is a full-service marketing consultancy and studio for media, entertainment, and tech brands. Challenges welcome.
Radley Yeldar
Radley Yeldar is an award-winning, independent, London and Birmingham-based creative consultancy. Our 200-strong team of specialists has been helping to create a...
Sparks
Creating powerful experiences for the world’s most iconic brands. #PoweredBySparks
Bulletproof
Bulletproof is the world's largest independent brand agency, combining unrivalled creativity with global reach. We drive growth, standout and fandom for the world's...
UNLIMITED
UNLIMITED delivers business impact through human understanding. We’re an integrated tech-enabled agency group comprised of TMW, Walnut, Health Unlimited and Nelson...