Good morning: Fighting misinformation

MarTech’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s digital marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.

Good morning, Marketers, we hope you are doing well.

Marketing and the war in Ukraine are not things that should go together and, to everyone’s credit, so far they haven’t. Brands seldom get credit for not doing something, but on this topic they should take a bow. The many companies providing much-needed aid and support to the people of Ukraine are doing so in a quiet way. It is far, far too easy to think of times when this was not the case.

So, I would like to mention an instance where marketers are using their expertise to aid in the struggle. 

DDBGermany was working on an anti-censorship campaign for the non-profit Reporters Without Borders (RSF) when Russia invaded Ukraine. That’s when RSF asked if anything could be done to fight the misinformation Moscow was using to convince its own people. The very agile agency is putting articles about the war into a blockchain via Ethereum domain links. As if that wasn’t all smart enough, the access code is that day’s winning Russian lottery number. All someone has to do is enter the number into Twitter or other social media and it will instantly take you to the site where the articles are.

Marketers are heckin’ smart.

Finally, a brief introduction: I’m Constantine von Hoffman, the new managing editor here at MarTech. I started out in business journalism covering the 1987 Black Monday stock market crash. Since then I have worked at/written for CBSNews.com (where I covered the mortgage meltdown), The Harvard Business Review, CMO, Brandweek, TheStreet.com, The Boston Herald and National Public Radio, among others. 

Constantine von Hoffman

Managing Editor

Shorts

Quote and image of the day. “OK, I get that it’s not much. But every little bit helps, right? We serve several thousand impressions monthly to Russia and Belarus. And with the news blackout, wanted to encourage readers to find out what’s happening in Ukraine. So we created and targeted this. Consider something similar if you have impressions running in Russia. At very least you’ll be able to assure your advertisers that they are not supporting genocide/Putin.” Chris Elwell, CEO, Third Door Media

About The Author

Constantine von Hoffman is managing editor of MarTech. A veteran journalist, Con has covered business, finance, marketing and tech for CBSNews.com, Brandweek, CMO, and Inc. He has been city editor of the Boston Herald, news producer at NPR, and has written for Harvard Business Review, Boston Magazine, Sierra, and many other publications. He has also been a professional stand-up comedian, given talks at anime and gaming conventions on everything from My Neighbor Totoro to the history of dice and boardgames, and is author of the magical realist novel John Henry the Revelator. He lives in Boston with his wife, Jennifer, and either too many or too few dogs.