Good morning. Brands rushing to Reddit in the hopes of influencing AI outputs are colliding with the platform's fiercely protective moderators, the WSJ Leadership Institute's Katie Deighton reports.
Reddit has risen in the esteem of many marketers because chatbots turn out to love citing its organic threads. But nothing has really changed about Reddit, which remains as inhospitable as ever to the kind of unchecked brand chatter that prevails elsewhere.
When the fine-jewelry company Brilliant Earth sought a Reddit strategy manager to shape its presence in conversation "that cascades across search engines, LLMs, and customer decision-making," for example, an alarm went off at r/jewelry.
"If there's a sudden wave of positive Brilliant Earth content on here, it might not be coincidental," a moderator warned the community, adding a siren emoji to the post.
"We are discussing the best way to discourage these larger brands" from infiltrating "possibly the very last place on the internet for genuine company reviews and feedback," the moderator added.
Read Katie's full story for a deeper look at how brands are navigating the backlash -- and the cottage industry of agencies promising to help.
I asked a few follow-up questions on talent, tactics and long-term strategy.
Traditional social media managers are used to broadcast-style, sometimes prolific posting on Instagram or TikTok. What skills should a CMO recruit for if they want team members who can survive in a subreddit?
Katie: Strong copywriting from people who can assimilate. On Reddit, how you say something is often just as important as what you say, so the ability to speak to customers respectfully, without slipping into corporate non-apology jargon, in the native language of a subreddit, is a must.
Subreddits can be used for fun things like product announcements, sure. But the text-based, no-nonsense nature of Reddit means sharp, human writing is the real skill that's needed here. Tolerance for AI-generated text is particularly low on the platform.
You report that Sonos and Fidelity have found ways to make themselves useful on Reddit. Did you pick up any tips for brands that can't offer tech support or financial expertise?
Katie: I've seen brands sprinkle those old marketer favorites -- surprise and delight -- across Reddit, direct-messaging fans for gifting and giveaways. "Ask Me Anything"-style forums are also a tried-and-true strategy for driving engagement, particularly if brands can bring on a special guest. Nike is really good at both.
But you don't have to be a "cool" brand to give the people what they want either. Researching this story has taught me that there is a subreddit and a group of passionate people for practically anything; there's a safe-for-work subreddit (I promise) called r/cableporn, for example. If I were running a brand in the data-center space, I'd be in that community posting behind-the-scenes shots of my meticulously organized cabling and watching the comments roll in.
Reddit has discussed cutting off Google's access to its content for training AI models, according to a Wall Street Journal report last month . What happens to brands' AI clout chase then?
Katie: If it's AI citations they're after, they should start posting more on YouTube, which is, unsurprisingly, heavily scraped by Google's AI model. Wikipedia is also highly cited, but sources tell me the gatekeepers to Wiki pages are even stricter than Reddit mods when it comes to blocking promotional amendments, and rightly so.
But even if you detach Reddit entirely from the LLM conversation, it's still a growing platform that users truly love, and one I believe leaders should pay more attention to. It provides free, unstructured customer feedback, a place to test ideas and a space to hone the communities that so many CMOs tell me they want to build.
More Reddit: Two years after going public, Reddit is joining the S&P 500. The news gave Reddit shares a pop ahead of the bell on Friday morning. The stock had previously fallen almost a third this year on concerns that AI models will divert traffic from the company's message boards.
Lens Flare
Flock Safety is introducing new guardrails for its AI-enabled license-plate cameras to stem public backlash and lost business over privacy concerns, Victoria Albert writes for the Journal.
The company will:
-- require law-enforcement customers to adopt a tool that flags abnormal activity;
-- institute a "proactive lockout" that suspends access over suspicious behavior;
-- require case codes for all database searches; and
-- cut default data-retention periods to seven days from 30.
Why it matters for brand strategists: Product policy and brand reputation have become entwined for high-profile, potentially high-impact tech players.
Supporters say Flock's cameras, which the company has said scan 20 billion license plates a month, help police fight crime. Critics say they violate privacy rights, citing incidents where officers have allegedly used Flock's cameras for stalking. Some 50 cities and counties have canceled Flock contracts or deactivated cameras since early last year.
Flock also lost a deal with Ring after a Super Bowl commercial for Amazon's smart doorbell company wound up sparking fears of a "surveillance nightmare."
Chad Marlow, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said Flock's moves were generally positive but don't go far enough. "When you put all this together, what you see is Flock treating privacy issues as public relations issues," he told The New York Times.
The Magic Number
Increase in playoffs-related revenue over last year for Madison Square Garden Sports Corp., whose New York Knicks won the NBA championship in June after getting knocked out in the Eastern Conference Finals last year.
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