I owe you some emails, don’t I? It’s been a bananas few weeks on my end. Learning how to manage this newsletter & my LinkedIn content alongside my basketball content has been a bit of a struggle, and I’m woefully behind on my emails & marketing deliverables right now. But, I did live a dream: I played pro basketball on national television. Shed a lot of happy tears after that one.

But now it’s time to get back down to business. Even gonna hire some help so we don’t miss issues (and so I can start making marketing video content). SO MORE CONTENT SOON. But til then, let’s chat about:

• What the CEO + Head Of HR meme means for the internet

• Why I hope your brand doesn’t try to meme it

• Holding ourselves to a higher standard

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Let’s not turn that CEO & Head Of HR into brand social content. We can do better.

I doubt you need a primer on the web’s main characters right now. That married CEO embracing his married Head Of HR at the Coldplay concert has blanketed every social platform (because, uh, they’re not married to each other).

I genuinely think that picture / video will go down as one of the most famous internet moments of all-time. Between the context of the moment, their hysterical reaction to getting caught, the everyday employee’s frustrations with hierarchal leadership, and how the public’s love for the downfall of the rich, it’s for sure headed for Know Your Meme infamy.

But do we need to turn these moments into brand social content? Does a moment’s virality, even at the expense of others, make them fair game for brands? Is it a good strategy to meme the moment?

Personally, I wish brands would avoid ugly celebrity moments. But let’s look at some examples.

Internet moments can be both hysterical & inappropriate.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t howl laughing when I saw the original clip. How could you not?! Watching the CEO instantly drop down as if a Mario warp pipe was beneath him? And the Head Of HR covered her face so fast I bet she left handprints on her own cheeks. I’ve got no sympathy for them (though I care deeply about how their spouses, children, and employees will be forever affected by this moment. They didn’t deserve that).

But just because it’s the type of content that’s shared in our group chats doesn’t mean it’s something that should inspire our brand social content. There are real people being affected by this—those 400ish employees, and their (seemingly now in-the-process-of-separation) partners, and their kids. There’s a very real chance this moment turns into every one of those employees losing their jobs.

I think it’s incredibly easy to make compelling brand content that won’t offend even a single person. And it would absolutely break my heart if one of my brands parodied this moment and it got back to any of the people listed above. It’s just not worth it to me when there’s an infinite supply of other creative ideas I could use that wouldn’t hurt anyone.

Will this kind of content actually help your brand?

I’m sure StubHub would tell me a loud YES. This parody of the moment has 5.2 million views in 3 days, making it their most viewed Instagram post by an exponential rate.

stubhub

262K followers

View more on Instagram

And again—I laughed. There’s some internet cleverness to this one that certainly got a chuckle out of me. And in the ticket resale industry? Where StubHub and SeatGeek and all the other phonetically-named resellers are basically the same and just fighting for share of voice so when you need to grab last-minute tickets, you think of them first? This one piece of content will certainly hit the bottom line.

Even still, I’m just not personally comfortable making this sort of content because of the subject matter. Hell, some might call be a bad marketer for not taking advantage of the moment, especially if I worked in the music industry. And I’m not gonna admonish them for doing this—it generated great results for the brand! It’s just not something I could ever suggest, just because it gives me the heebie jeebies.

Do I think it’ll hurt your brand? Probably not, tbh.

I could build some strategic argument that associating your brand with ugly internet moments creates perception issues or alignment you don’t want… but let’s be real, that’s not how anyone reads the internet or remembers content these days.

And frankly, because the moment’s about infidelity & the wealthy acting out of line, there really isn’t an opposing stance that could appear in your comments. Who’s gonna defend these two? Literally no one.

Maybe this weakens my argument and plea. Maybe we’re in a time where all we care about our likes and views. I just wish we weren’t.

Holding ourselves to a higher standard.

Most average joes spreading the meme around are just that—regular people having a laugh. I understand it and don’t have feelings any which way about it.

But we’re paid professionals. For-profit corporations are paying our salaries & giving us budget to create content on the internet. We get to choose how we use that money and what content we’ll make.

I’m a pretty capitalistic guy at the end of the day, but this is where I think ethics have to kick in. I do think we have an obligation to leave the internet a better place than we found it. Some of our brands have millions of followers and/or significant cultural clout—we need to be the example of how to act online, not a reflection of the internet at its ugliest.