How To Be "Savvy" In The Post-Trust Era: A Conversation With Shiv Singh

(First published on Forbes.com in March 2019)
Shiv Singh and I go back to the early days of social media—both of us working with companies and brands, advising them on how social media would transform their business. More recently, Shiv has taken a break from the corporate world to co-publish his book, “Savvy” which explores a variety of topics such as fake news, the role of technology in society and generally modern life in what he and his coauthor Rohini Luthra Ph.D. call “The Post-Trust Era." Shiv will be sharing these ideas at SXSW Interactive which kicks off tomorrow. 

Shiv’s transition comes at a key moment in time as the way we receive, share and digest information looks completely different than it did just five or ten years ago. It also comes at a time where dynamics such as economic and social populism no longer remain on the fringes and as people are beginning to reevaluate their relationship with technology. On the eve of Shiv’s book launch, we had a moment to catch up on what inspired him to put pen to paper and why being “savvy” just might be one of the most important skills in the 21st century.

David Armano: From PepsiCo to Visa to senior positions in the agency world—you’ve had an admirable run working with some of the biggest/most important businesses on the planet. What made you change your trajectory to take on this topic via a book?

Shiv Singh: Well, firstly thank you having me in this interview. Quite simply, I felt that we are in a critical time in history and I wanted to add my voice to the conversation. The same was for Rohini. Savvy was born out of a dinner table conversation one evening last spring. We were lamenting the sad state of affairs in the world around us. From the rise of narrow-minded nationalism, a blurring of the lines between fact and fiction in the public sphere with the political classes, the weaponization of technology by bad actors, the corrupting and withering of an independent media, artificial intelligence solutions spinning out of control and a broader breakdown of trust in society, we felt that the world we knew and valued was becoming unrecognizable. For the first time in our lives, we also worried that the world was moving in a direction that we didn’t want our children to have to inherit. So that got us thinking.

The more we studied what was going on, the more we saw that while there had been immense scientific and technological progress in the last few decades, human beings had developed glitches that were a root cause of some of the issues are facing. These were human glitches that no one was talking about. You just have to look to some recent headlines to see how those human glitches manifest themselves in our world - look at the Michael Cohen, Jussie Smollett and the Robert Kraft episodes for example. Each episode revealed a different kind of fakeness by those involved. Rohini and I also discovered that these human glitches (which we all have) were impacting how we inadvertently furthered fakeness in all walks of life. We wrote the book to understand those human glitches and to provide guidance on each of us can fix them.

Armano: A significant “thesis” of your book is the emergence of what you are calling “The Post-Trust” era. If you had to boil it down to the essence—how did we get here and what’s the most important takeaway in terms of how we should deal with this new reality?

Singh: Trust around us has been ebbing for a while. It isn’t a President Trump phenomena or tied to the most recent midterm elections. The signs of it in the U.S. first emerged after the 2009 financial crisis where people were shocked by the limited accountability among political and business leaders. That tension only continued to build in the lead up to the 2016 election by which time large segments of society felt disenfranchised and left behind. Some felt that wealth was being unevenly distributed and that a few billionaires were subverting the democracy. Others were fearful of immigration and how it was changing their communities.  Coupled with those feelings, was the sudden weaponization of technology through which misinformation was being spread on dramatic scale stoking fears and creating divisions in society. (These tensions weren’t a U.S. phenomena alone but something that was witnessed in the U.K., Germany, Australia, India, Brazil and elsewhere too.)

When you had people not knowing what the truth was anymore, they retreated to the familiar - what they knew, understood and allowing people to play on their deepest insecurities. What was not familiar to them, they didn’t trust. And with that, we entered the post-trust era where we all prefer to live in our own echo chambers, in the comfort zone of people who look and sound like us and with those people that agree with our pre-existing world views. It’s a sign of a society in decay which the Secretary-General of the United Nations explained eloquently last fall when he said the world is suffering from a trust deficit disorder.

So how we deal with it? The glib answer is to read the book of course. The first step in solving any problem is to recognize that there is a problem. From there you have to dissect why the problem exists and what sustains it. But as we talk about in the book, we also need to understand ourselves better. Whether it starts with understanding the human glitches that exist or in holding each other to higher ethical standards or to re-inventing how companies communicate and behave, there’s a lot we can all do. As marketers, communicators, and innovators our profession has a significant opportunity to do more - both as a service to humankind and to drive better business performance. We not only can strengthen ourselves but we’re a profession that’s built on our ability to influence and educate others. It is our time to step up and do that to help at this time!

Armano: One of the examples you cover in “Savvy” is how the Parkland school shooting story was covered by media with both right and left leaning perspectives. In the post-trust era, what role does the media play and how do you see it evolving?

Singh: It couldn’t be a more important time for the media. We need an independent, strong, non-partisan and ethical media ecosystem more than ever. When it came to Parkland there were two tragedies that took place. The first was the horrific shooting, the heartbreaking loss of life and the scarring of a community. The second was how America responded to it. Minutes after the news broke on Parkland, the media began generating various narratives about the tragedy with two distinct storylines emerging. On the one side, conspiracy theories surfaced, suggesting that the survivors of the attack were crisis actors. On the other side, people pointed to lax gun laws and the lack of background checks both of which were hyper-partisan narratives.

From the media, to political leaders and companies, we all went into autopilot and reacted in ways that prevented any authentic debate from happening on the subject of child safety and access to guns. This was at a time when meaningful, honest and fact-based conversations around sensible gun-control were needed. As a result of those autopilot responses, we haven’t done enough to prevent another horrific tragedy from occurring again. The media isn’t meant to become the story but they didn’t—furthering the distrust and creating more factionalism around the tragedy. Rather than bringing the country together and focusing on the facts and the human story, the media became part of the event. That is exactly what shouldn’t have happened.

Across the political spectrum (and arguably in business too) we don’t pay enough attention to opinions that differ from our own. We’re stuck in our own echo chambers. And with that behavior, we can’t do real trust building and real solutioning. In the future, a strong, independent, fact-based and evidence-driven, impartial media can do an immense amount to raise the level of discourse in the country, allowing us to coalesce around the real problems and then solve them together. That’s what the media can do for us in the post-trust era. And arguably, while the Parkland example is more political in nature, the same dynamics take place within companies and across companies in how information is used and abused to create competing narratives. Our Marketing and Communication teams are the internal media departments, they have important roles to play in being fact-based and evidence-driven especially at times of crisis.

Armano: One of your chapters asserts that “we blindly trust artificial intelligence” and yet most businesses find themselves in a race to automate, improve efficiencies and simply do things smarter with the assistance of AI. How can trust in AI be reconciled with the potential it presents?

Singh:
 The artificial intelligence question is a difficult one. We have AI technologies that are exponentially smarter than us in ways that we human beings will never become. That’s wonderful news. The technological progress is mind-boggling and it is going to transform society and make government and businesses much more efficient. However, with the technological progress comes a series of ethical and moral questions that we aren’t discussing as yet. And if we don’t have those conversations and build AI solutions with more explicit intention, we will find the AI spinning out of control.

For example, while we may be far from what is considered general artificial intelligence (where the AI spans across domains), we’re seeing early signs of it. With those signs comes the AI solutions making more decisions that appear to be intuition driven. Those decisions are sometimes fraught with bias and prejudice or with power that can become dangerous if left unchecked. Just because it is new technology and it is exciting, we cannot simply trust it. In fact, AI solutions are already being used in parts of the world to negotiate trusted relationships with each other and with our governments too. China’s Social Credit Score is the most recent example where 17.5 million citizens were blocked from buying airplane tickets in 2018 because they had low social credit with the government not trusting them. No one knows exactly how the algorithms and data sets behind those scores worked. But the AI decisions had massive ramifications for those Chinese citizens trying to travel.

Armano: You also explore cautionary tales from companies that have grappled with ethics ranging from the extreme such as Theranos to Uber. When it comes to ethics in business practice—what’s your advice for leaders leading in the post-trust era?

Singh: Yes, we discuss businesses quite a bit and through the book, we have been developing an emerging thesis on what distinguishes a real company from a fake one. While it is easier to talk about fakeness in the extremes, the truth is that the fakeness in most companies aren’t like what we see in a Theranos or an Uber from a few years ago. Fakeness can seep into many different parts of an organization in the context of a team, a function a division or even a working relationship between two people. That fakeness and the human glitches that fuel it can have far-reaching consequences. A single glitch can lead to dramatic falls in market capitalization as we talk about in the book or even the firing of a CEO. On the flip side, companies that are mindful of those glitches and how misinformation can spread within a company just as it does in society will be able to keep the moral fabric of its organization strong and through that maintain much more trusted relationships with its customers too.

But to assume that the post-trust era is limited to the political world and will not affect companies may be a little naive to say the least. In a sense, in this digital age, we all need new skills to succeed - skills that aren’t just about using the technology to its maximum potential but also skills that help us deal with all the unintended consequences which may not always be good. These are skills that leaders in all levels of an organization need to learn and practice. They’re skills that we haven’t been taught in our schools or our colleges or even in the previous decade because after all, the technology hadn’t been weaponized and we didn’t have so much misinformation spreading inside and outside of companies before.

Armano: If your book does the job you intended it to—how would you describe the shifts in thought and action from both individuals and organizations alike? In other words, how would you like to see the world impacted as a result of your work with Rohini?

Singh: Thank you for asking this question. It is an important one. We really hope that as a society we all become more conscious of the human glitches in all of us that make us more likely to fall prey to the fakeness. We’d like people to recognize the responsibilities that they carry and how they can inoculate themselves from that fakeness. We also strongly believe that we need to return to fact-based, evidence-driven, conversations that are civil and constructive. The sooner we do that in the world, the stronger businesses we will have, the more impactful brands, more serious journalism and better leaders around us - all aligned to move the world forward.

This book is a mission-driven effort for us. We hope it will help in a small way to take us out of the post-trust era and to a normal where we all have more trusted, constructive relationships in all parts of our lives.

The Most Perfect Super Bowl Ad From The Wrong Advertiser

44% of all American households watched the Super Bowl on Sunday. The Patriots beat the Rams 13-3 in a lackluster game. Tom Brady took home his sixth Super Bowl ring. Nearly 60 advertisers forked out over $5 million for placement on the Super Bowl and spent several millions more to produce their mostly tedious ads. All in all, this was an evening not worth writing home about. At the very least, the Mercedes Stadium could have lost power for a few moments. But even that didn’t happen either.

However, the few ads that stood out in the sea of mediocrity, did so by pointing us towards being better or becoming better. From Microsoft, Google, and Verizon who demonstrated how their technologies have a rich, human impact to Bumble and Coca Cola who reminded us of fundamental human truths, fortunately, not every ad was mind numbingly boring. Some, like the Hyundai and Pepsi ads, even entertained us.

Still there was one ad that really stood out. An ad that made me pause and look at my fellow Super Bowl guests for their reactions. It was the most perfect ad for the times we’re living in, for the urgency of its message and for the meaning that demands reflection. It wasn’t pushing a product, celebrating a hundredth anniversary or teasing a new TV show’s launch – it was just a thank you message. According to the USA Today ad meter, it was equally loved in the blue and red states, across every age demographic (though gen-z consumers and baby boomers liked it most) and with even love spread across different income levels too.

The Democracy Dies in Darkness ad from The Washington Post, had a deep and important message for America. Knowing keeps us free, as the ad said, doesn’t come cheap. It takes bravery, sacrifice and the unrelenting desire to uncover the truth. Highlighting journalists who put their lives in danger everyday (or in the case of Jamal Khashoggi who even lost his) for the sake of the truth, the message was an immensely powerful reminder of how much we should care about the truth and how integral it is to our democracy. It was an especially poignant message in a time like ours. The President denigrates the media on a near daily basis (including the ad itself!), fewer people trust the media and the technology industry (unintentionally, I’d emphasize) smothers it leading to scores of layoffs, the most recent wave of which was just weeks ago. You can debate the merits of The Post spending so much  money on advertising when its employees don’t get decent benefits and you can discuss whether the media industry deserves what’s become of them, but that aside, the message for the 98 million of us watching the Super Bowl was powerful and necessary. However, it would have been even more powerful had it come from someone else.

What if Facebook had paid for the Democracy Dies in Darkness ad? Monday was their fifteenth year in business anniversary. Facebook celebrated with Mark Zuckerberg posting (on Facebook, of course) how proud he was of his company’s success and also of all the work that the company was doing to combat disinformation on the platform. He argued that Facebook has built some of the most sophisticated artificial intelligence tools ever created, to weed out the fake news. That’s great, but Facebook can always do more and running that ad could have been a conversation reframing-step symbolizing what it values. Let me explain.

Voltaire said that with great power comes great responsibility. With its 2.4 billion users, its algorithms do more to share news (and disinformation unintentionally) than any other company, publisher or service in the world. Its commitment to connect everyone, comes with a significant responsibility in the context of news. A responsibility to always protect and further the truth. I do not doubt that it is indeed Facebook’s intention. However Facebook can declare that more strongly. It could have done it on the largest advertising stage in the country with that very same ad.

Facebook’s current vision of connecting us and building community may not be enough anymore for the age we live in. It isn’t because Facebook has made mistakes in the past (other Fortune 100 companies have at one point or the other), but because with its 2.4 billion users, we need it to stand for more – truth in journalism, truth in what gets attention on the platform, truth in how it protects our data and truth in all those connections.

Facebook could have run that Democracy Dies in Darkness ad to recommit and expand its mission to more explicitly include protecting the truth. It could also explain all the good that it is doing. And it can run many more ads like that one – ads that remind us what we should care about beyond what a product, a service or a platform has to offer. After all, Facebook does represent more to us. We need it to take those stands. Democracy in our country needs it to do so. Facebook shouldn’t hesitate with this opportunity. Fixing the user privacy, disinformation and loss of trust issues are just the first step in the process. For such a successful, popular and valuable company that many of us love, we want it to stand for even more.

Happy 15th anniversary Facebook. I can’t wait for the next 15. And please share messages like the Democracy Dies in Darkness one to remind us of what we should care about in the post-trust era, what good you’re doing for us and what you commit to doing for us in the future.


To Fight Fakeness, A New Kind of Leadership Is Needed

Time magazine announced its Person of the Year earlier this week. Jamal Khashoggi, Maria Ressa, staff of the Capital Gazette , along with Kyaw Soe Oo and Wa Lone from Myanmar were recognized as guardians fighting the war on truth. They are journalists who hold truth above all else including their own personal safety (half of them have been murdered.) However, Time magazine’s story is somewhat incomplete.

Time magazine announced its Person of the Year earlier this week. Jamal Khashoggi, Maria Ressa, staff of the Capital Gazette , along with Kyaw Soe Oo and Wa Lone from Myanmar were recognized as guardians fighting the war on truth. They are journalists who hold truth above all else including their own personal safety (half of them have been murdered.) They chose to fight governments, despots and other bad actors who treated the truth like putty – useful only when it served larger nefarious goals and malleable into something else when it didn’t. These guardians believed that the person with the largest microphone shouldn’t necessarily get to be the arbiter of the truth. There’s no question: the world is a better place thanks to their courage.

However, Time magazine’s story is somewhat incomplete. We cannot depend on guardians like them alone to win the war on truth for us. The war on truth stretches across continents, generations and all parts of society from government and politics to business and into our personal lives. We’d like to believe that the phenomena of misinformation is limited to the political sphere, but that’s not the case. We want to take comfort in the thought that the war on truth is Congress’s problem to solve by regulating the technology companies, but that’s not accurate either. We celebrate journalists like the guardians above, because we want to believe the war on truth is their problem to fix, but in doing that we absolve ourselves of our own responsibilities. Yes, we as leaders carry significant responsibility as well – to protect the truth, to elevate it, to fight misinformation and to help create a more trusted and trustworthy society in the post-trust era. We must be savvy about it.

Let’s take a look at a few examples to discuss how we as regular citizens can be guardians. We’ll start with Uber. A few days before Uber’s self-driving car accident that killed a cyclist, a manager in testing operations sent seven Uber executives a detailed email warning them that the self-driving program was very dangerous. He carefully explained why and highlighted past close calls to make his case. Unfortunately, the email was ignored and a person had to die before they halted the program. Now over the last year, Uber has been doing an immense amount to righten its ship. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and his leadership team should be commended for their efforts to fix the Uber culture. But this whistleblower was ignored. And it wasn’t one person but several that ignored him. They didn’t because they were blinded by business metrics to clock more self-driving miles than their competitors. Those seven Uber executives missed their opportunity to be guardians.

Twitter CEO and billionaire Jack Dorsey visited Myanmar on a ten day meditation retreat. He tweeted photographs that showed how he was able to lower his heartbeat, meditate in a cave and as he said, experience firsthand how “people are full of joy” in that country. He encouraged his four million Twitter followers to visit the “absolutely beautiful country” and experience it for themselves. Except that Myanmar has a brutal dictatorship which, according to the United Nations, is conducting a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” on the minority Rohingya population. Thousands have been killed, and nearly a million Rohingya Muslims have fled their homes as a result. Dorsey’s tweets smacked of childish naivete at best if not willful ignorance at worst according to many. How could he have been unaware of what citizens of Myanmar were going through? And if he was aware, how could he give the country such a ringing endorsement? You could argue that it wasn’t his responsibility to take a stand on the politics especially because if he did, he probably wouldn’t have been let out of the country. But then again, he’s Twitter’s CEO, running one of the most important media platforms in the world. His voice really counts. He had an opportunity to be a guardian or at the very least a more thoughtful, sensitive observer and he wasn’t. Dorsey is now making amends but the lesson still stands.

Let’s shift to some positive examples now. We’re all thrilled with the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution that’s upon us. Recently, AlphaGo, the famed AI computer which had beaten the leading human Go player in the world back in 2016, lost a Go match. It wasn’t to a human being (that would have been nice for the Luddites among us) but to AlphaZero, which was a newer AI computer that not only beat AlphaGo at Go but also beat the best computer chess player in the world in chess and the best shogi player in the world. AlphaZero had taught itself all three games in a matter of hours and quickly became better than any human or other AI program that had come before.

And yet, this moment of celebration is marked with some trepidation. As artificial intelligence systems are able to take on more complex human activities that span more than just one domain as AlphaZero is demonstrating the first signs of, their powers risk becoming unstoppable. It’s healthy trepidation and the same reason why use of AI systems in business is cautiously slow. Bankers still constantly look at every loan application rejected by a computer carefully to determine if there are mistakes. Traffic controllers still oversee the computers that surround them. And while cars can self-drive, regulators are slow to give them permission to do so. In Europe, the General Data Protection Regulation gives citizens a right to “a human review” of any algorithmic decision affecting them. That’s because while the human truth may slow us down and make us more manual, it still protects us in more transparent ways. Those bankers, regulators and technologists are guardians. They know the power of artificial intelligence, and they believe it needs to be handled with care.

On December 12, 2018, Procter & Gamble, the largest consumer goods company in America announced that it was buying the startup, Walker & Company for an undisclosed amount. This startup had raised $30 million dollars and ran a business selling beauty products specifically designed for people of color – people who have skin and hair types that differ from  the mainstream white American. Tristan Walker had recognized a business opportunity and a strong consumer need that few others had seen before. He launched products that specifically catered to this group. P&G saw this, saw the business opportunity and in all probability saw the goodness in it too and scooped up the company. Walker & Company will have better R&D, greater distribution and more advertising dollars to grow now. Tristan Walker and P&G are both guardians of another kind of truth – one that’s about serving people’s needs on their terms based on who they are.

The Time Person of the Year are due every complement, accolade, and adulation that they receive. They’re courageous, principled, and tough as nails. We are indeed extremely lucky to have had them in our world. However, we cannot depend on them alone to move our world forward. In the post-trust era, with fakeness invading all parts of our lives, we all have opportunities to be guardians of the truth in big and small ways. Whether we’re business leaders, mid-level executives, or even new employees, we too can do more. Let’s not screw up and miss the opportunities before us. While we are only human, by paying more attention and being savvy, we too can stand up for the truth. In fact, we have an obligation to do so for the next generation.

This article was first published on Forbes.com

What’s Your Responsibility In The Post-Trust Era? A Savvy Look

Do we carry responsibility for the state of our post-trust world? Are we allowed to turn a blind eye and carry on with the assumption that we have no culpability? Can we practice schadenfreude without reflecting on whether we have aided and abetted the current state of affairs? The answer is no.

Let’s just look at a few headlines from the last couple of weeks. CNN started running split screen views to fact check the White House press briefings in real-time. General Motors announced that they’re shutting down factories and laying off 14,000 blue collar workers. Hundreds of Google employees signed a letter protesting Dragonfly, the project to launch a censored search engine in China. Thirteen federal agencies and 300 scientists collaborated to produce a government climate change report that warned of substantial dangers which was mostly ignored.

Closer in with the marketing world, the Department of Justice charged eight people as part of a multiyear FBI investigation into gangs that allegedly perpetrated digital advertising fraud. Earlier in the month, the Association of National Advertisers announced that it was recommending companies worried about being defrauded by their advertising agencies to cooperate with the FBI.

And then there’s Facebook, the darling of the social media era, finding itself in a rough news cycle that doesn’t appear to end. Accused by The New York Times and others of gross negligence and worse, the company is trying to find its footing and regain the moral high ground it once held.

All is not well in our world. Your first instinct maybe to shrug your shoulders and move on. None of the examples above directly pertain to you as a business or as a marketing leader. Or do they? In fact, each of the examples above is connected with the marketing industry in some form or the other. Some more directly than others of course, but each is linked to the world of marketing. As a marketing community, we do carry responsibility for the pickle we find our world in.

Dictionary.com just chose its word of the year. For many (me included), and as Fast Company pointed out, it is as big a deal as Time choosing its person of the year. This year, the word chosen was misinformation which it defines as “false information that is spread, regardless of whether there is intent to mislead.” We marketers are in the persuasion business using stories to convince others to change their opinions and purchase our products. Through our advertising budgets, we also fuel several other industries who depend on advertising revenue streams. Misinformation is rampant in our world and we aren’t wholly innocent when it comes to allowing its spread. It is also behind many of the headlines mentioned above.

Over the years, I have steered hundreds of millions of advertising dollars to Google, Facebook, Twitter, The New York Times, Buzzfeed, Forbes and other advertising platforms while at Visa and PepsiCo. I never asked about their data sharing practices and frankly speaking, I didn’t know enough. I paid occasional interest to ad-fraud with my programmatic spends but probably not as much as I should have. I tried to address agency kickbacks but arguably only when my procurement department chased me down. I never took a stand on censorship for my own brand, on behalf of my consumers or even in my personal life. When companies failed or shutdown their factories, I rarely thought that it could also have been because of a failure in marketing.

So yes, I carry responsibility. And I’d like to pose, that all of us who are marketing and business leaders, carry responsibility. We’d rather talk about purpose driven brands, bringing more diversity into our organizations and educating our teams on data, but that alone is not enough anymore. We have to dig deep and relearn the importance of authenticity and trust not only in our own mostly tidy worlds of marketing, but in the broader world of our consumers and society at large. And then we have to take even more powerful, determined stands backed by actions.

A few marketers, business leaders and companies are taking strong stands and are also acting on them – putting their money where their mouths are. That’s honorable. But more of us are needed to do that, more passionately and with more resolve than before. There’s too much fakeness and misinformation around – fake companies, fake leaders and fake news as manifested in the headlines of the last few weeks. It’s going to take much more to fight it. We all need to.

In his latest book, Seth Godin said, “Marketing is one of our greatest callings. It’s the work of positive change.” Let’s fulfill that promise with even more sincerity and vigor than in the past. In the coming weeks and months, I’ll share some ideas on how to do so here as well.

This piece was first published on Forbes.com