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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip: August 2025
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Due Diligence and Deep Fakes, Part 2
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Photo Credit: Tima Miroshnichenko via Pexels
Last month, I invited you to send your thoughts on how, both as marketers and as consumers, manipulative deepfakes affect us. With just one exception, you didn’t rise to the challenge.
This is the only response I got: “Not being a marketer, I can’t respond from that perspective, but this is chilling because if done a bit less clumsy, it could slide by as ‘reality’ all too easily. Deepfakes for sure.”
I’ll still share my own reactions, written June 22 (the same day I watched the video and wrote last month’s main article). But first—if this newsletter matters to you, please take a moment as you’re reading this—don’t put it aside until later—and hit reply and give me a couple of sentences that let me know why this work matters to you. Frankly, I need a pep talk. This newsletter is a lot of work to put together every month. I’m willing to do it if I know that people value it. Not so much if it’s going to a black hole.
Also, if you found this issue in your spam or promotions folder, please take a moment to flag it as not spam and move it into your regular inbox (be sure when you move it that you tick the option to do this for all mail from this sender). That way, you’re more likely to see future issues.
My Analysis of the Deepfake
- Despite its errors and omissions, this was really well done for its purpose. If the goal was to grab us by our hearts, it succeeded. If the goal was to go viral, that succeeded as well. A TikTok version garnered 71,700 views in four days before being taken down. The first version I saw had 83,000 views. With dozens of versions on YouTube, other social media, and individual blogs, it’s likely that it’s been shared a whole lot. Probably several million people have seen it.
- As consumers, we must up our skepticism. I generally try to verify anything that seems too outrageous to be true before sharing it, though I forget sometimes (and often regret that I didn’t check). Before sharing anything provocative, make sure it’s true—especially if there are warning signs like a lack of sourcing or sourcing only to personal blogs or nonverified media such as Daily Kos on the left or Fox on the right—misidentifications, lots of emotion-pullers like “nobody ever expected,” clickbait headlines, etc., as there were all through this beautiful but false narrative.
- Ask yourself who benefits from the message and what’s their agenda. In this case, anyone who is appalled by the current administration’s racism is likely to be already angry and probably has mobilized to participate in demonstrations, sign petitions, write letters, lobby their elected officials, etc. So while this new, artificial, “example” of racism might turn the intensity up a notch, it wouldn’t really change anything. There are certainly people around the world who would benefit from de-escalation of tensions, and we’d all benefit if world leaders responded from the place of truth and love that the African leader’s doppelganger purported to respond from. When I watched an actual speech of his (as opposed to the AI-generated narrative of a fictional incident), I did notice that he has formed alliances with Russia. So it’s possible that the maker’s agenda was to very indirectly make Russia look better in the eyes of a world that distrusts and fears it (with reason—just ask Ukrainians or the loved ones of those murdered by its government). But the connection is thin enough that my own hypothesis doesn’t convince me. I still don’t understand what benefits the maker and distributors of this piece received.
- As marketers, we will face either extreme gullibility—that, if we can consider ourselves ethical, we have to refrain from abusing—or even deeper mistrust because “you can’t believe anything you hear anymore.” Either way, our task has become harder. So do what you can to enhance credibility.
Examples:
- Attribute testimonials by name, position, and geographic location, and ideally use video as well as text (please get permission first!).
- Link to reviews including some negative ones. Refute any errors of fact in the negative AND the positive reviews, but do it with respect and politeness, not with name-calling or other accusations. Accept any genuine criticism and respond with how you plan to fix that problem or why it’s not something you’re able to fix (perhaps it’s a feature that you see as an advantage—explain how).
- Set up user communities where your customers can get support from each other and explore new uses for what you sell.
- Provide lots of unbiased information that positions you as an expert and your organization as on the user’s side, even if the right decision is for them to go elsewhere this time. And not in a begrudging way but from sincere wishes to be helpful, useful, and positively remembered.
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Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available. |
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One Million Rising
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