Perception vs. reality; what it means to businesses; and how to bridge the gap





This piece might spark a debate, because different experts have different views on social media. My intention is not to challenge anyone’s opinion though, I just want to put another perspective on the table. So here we go!

First up, I mentioned that social media reflects our superficial aspirations. How so?

Because we use social media mostly to portray how we want to be perceived by others, rather than to display who we truly are. The growing use of photo editing apps, popularity of numerous filters etc. shed some light on that aspect.

This attitude ends up impacting the larger community in a not-so-positive manner. Research shows that anxiety, FOMO, unrealistic expectations are just a few common derivatives of this obsession.

To make things clear, when I say ‘we’, I mean the general social media using population. I’m not including any radical groups here that promote cyber bullying, hate speeches etc., or the political propaganda-makers (promoters of fake news).

Some of you might still think, ‘Well, that’s not true. Social media gives us a platform to share our voice, to stand up for causes’, etc. etc. I’m not disputing that. You see, social media isn’t the sole culprit. It’s the way we have started using social media has become a little twisted. And the social media platforms are just further fueling that misguided mindset. Here’s a couple of examples.

Situation One: (Ten years ago, when social media wasn’t a ‘thing’)

I wish to build a good physique. Great! I start working out. After a year or so, I get a decent body. I start flaunting it by wearing complementary clothes. People start admiring my hard work. It boosts my ego and inspires me to exercise harder.

Situation Two: (Now in the era of social media)

I wish to have a good physique. Great! But I go to the gym only twice a week. Within that time, I try to get as many photos as possible. I get back home, use a photo-editing tool to accentuate my work-out snaps, and put them up with captions like - “first day at the gym”, “still going strong” and so on. I get a bunch of likes and be happy with that.

The situations above are hypothetical, but did you see what happened?

Instead of trying to make my aspiration a reality, now I am making others’ perception of me my reality. It doesn’t only weaken my ambition of building a good physique (because I don’t need to anymore; I’m still receiving their admiration), but it also pushes me to desire peoples’ attention and approval even more (which has become my primary objective now over building a good body!).

Completely superficial stuff and we are absolutely aware of it!

So, why do we do it then? Why cheat ourselves and others?

Because, it’s instant gratification at our convenience. Putting up edited photographs is way easier and faster than working out in the gym. And it leads to peoples’ approval too! What could be better than this? But what we don’t appreciate is, we end up losing peoples’ trust in the longer term, because eventually they find out the reality.

This is not a new thing though. Exaggerated advertising is an age-old version of this phenomenon. But advertising is a thing of the business world, so it doesn’t seem to bother us that much, because we know that's unreal. However, social media has brought it into our life and made it real!

Now let’s take a closer look at the world of business. There the game of portraying perception-as-reality gets even more crooked. Like this:

At an individual level:

We have seen the sudden emergence of influencers (in different formats - Nano, Micro etc.) in the recent years. While not all of them are trying to exploit peoples’ perception, a lot of them are. Fake followers, fifty-shades-of-filters etc. have become so common that now even the social media platforms are trying to control the situation.

At an organisational level:

Many businesses have also jumped on the bandwagon of running virtual shops by augmenting their reality. Especially, the emerging ones. Since they don’t have big marketing budgets, they try to make the most out of social media and in that pursuit, they inflate and even fake things.

Even big brands these days talk a lot about people, emotions, real-connection-with-consumers on their social channels and other platforms, but when their turn comes to put it into practice, they prefer to stay rather commercial, competitive and ruthless in their approach. Emotion takes a back seat for most of them. Old habits die hard, you know!

And this is where the problem lies. We don’t practice what we preach.

Eventually, this impacts all of us. Like I already mentioned, at an individual level this ‘augmented reality’ is giving people anxiety, depression, lower self-worth; and at a business level, consumers are losing faith in brands. There’s no emotional connection and brand loyalty is diminishing now faster than ever!

Is there a way to turn the wheel back?

Yes - we need to stop wearing social media like a mask made of cursory aspirations and start using them as our eyes to reflect our true personality.

When we turn our aspirations into reality, we don’t need to augment things on social media to form a perception. Rather, our social media naturally starts reflecting our personality. This goes on to generate better connections, greater faith, and higher loyalty.

But just on social media?

No – we should reflect our personality on all communication touchpoints, rather than displaying our flaky aspirations under a different shade of light.

This is the only way to remain human in the long run. Otherwise, these tools that we have shaped, will start shaping our reality, soon.

The choice is yours!

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Shaan is passionate about brand building and loves weaving brand stories that are simple yet momentous. In 2016, he was awarded the 'Star Youth Achiever' from the Global Youth Marketing Forum for creating award-winning work and pioneering digital innovation for a global brand. Shaan believes, every brand has a greater purpose to serve, and our job is to help them reach their full potential by bringing that purpose to life.