This Week In Customer Engagement: October 3rd

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The Week of October 3^rd’s Top 5 Stories

1. Forbes Under 30 Summit

Every year Forbes gathers a list of some of the most impressive young entrepreneurs in the world and deems them their “30 under 30.” This year was no exception. With recognizable names like Hailey Bieber to CEOs of new brands like Parade and  Alaskan Salmon Company, this year’s Forbes Under 30 Conference was nothing short of inspiring.

Perhaps most importantly, the business professionals offered incredible insights into working with our latest generation of consumers—Gen Z. If you missed the three-day online and in-person event, be sure to check out CEI’s analysis of awardee Cami Telléz’s start-up strategies and how you can leverage them in your own business.

2. Quiet Firing

Whether it's happened to you or someone you know, it isn’t uncommon to have a manager who is resistant to having an uncomfortable conversation, a bureaucracy that makes it impossible to let someone go, or a combination of the two, that leads to an employer ‘pushing out’ their employees as opposed to firing them. While the concept remains the same, the motivations behind it and the term used to describe it has changed. We covered Quiet Quitting, a phenomenon that upsets many executives, leaders, and managers. In retaliation, these same leaders are referring to this “showing you the door” tactic as “Quiet Firing.”

Read more and learn how to stop it from happening to you here.

3. McDonald’s Not So Happy Meals

McDonald’s PlayPlace and a Happy Meal sound like a nightmare for Millennials now but, as children, this often represented the perfect afternoon. Seeing an opportunity to capitalize on this nostalgia, McDonald’s introduced “Adult Happy Meals.” Same concept, but an adult-sized portion.

Upon the launch of the campaign, McDonald’s drove in more customers than they ever imagined the concept would. Though the surprise was a pleasant one for corporate, employees in each store lacked the bandwidth to take in so many customers. The store employees have taken to social media to urge customers to stop ordering Adult Happy Meals. So while corporate continues to advertise their newest money maker, store employees are begging customers not to come.

This debacle raises the broader question of how promotions and vitality impact the employee experience, especially at a time when finding, training, and supporting new talent in the customer service space is more challenging than ever. Will time resolve the issue, or will McDonald’s give their store managers the tools they need to handle the influx of customers?

Read more about the controversy here.

4. The Supreme Court Vs. Social Media

In 1996, a law was passed that granted social media platforms immunity from any legal repercussions of content put up on their site by users. Twenty-six years later, social media has changed quite a bit. Should the laws be altered, too? The family of Nohemi Gonzalez thinks so. After the 23-year-old college student was killed in Paris’ 2015 terrorist attacks, the family has grown suspicious of Google’s video algorithm on YouTube, arguing it encouraged the attacks that took Nohemi’s life.

Changing this law could have serious consequences—both positive and negative—for social media platforms and social media marketing. Read more from the New York Times article here.

5. Krypto Kardashian

Social media users are comfortable seeing their favorite celebrities and influencers promoting items on Instagram and TikTok with the simple caption, “#ad.” It’s one of the primary ways corporations leverage social media marketing. What viewers may not be as comfortable with, however, is that these influencers may be facing legal trouble for not disclosing their precise financial gain for these marketing services.

Kim Kardashian is the latest recipient of one of these lawsuits after promoting a crypto company that did not do as well as her audience hoped it would.  Her scandal is leading to questions about the future of crypto marketing for micro-influencers and A-List Celebrities alike. Furthermore, fans of the celebrities are beginning to question whether or not their idols actually believe in the products they are sponsoring, or if they’ll say anything for a few extra dollars.

Listen to the discussion over whether Kardashian deserved such an extreme SEC fine or if a simple “slap on the wrist” would have sufficed here.  For more information on the fears concerning the future of social media marketing, click here.

Header Photo: Photo by Egor Vikhrev on Unsplash  

In-line Photo 1: Photo by Elisa Ventur on Unsplash  

In-line Photo 2: Photo by Kanchanara on Unsplash