The Great Redirect: How Illusions Shape Brand Narratives

Hello marketeers,

Illusory describes the phenomenon where things appear different from reality. Over the past decade, we’ve seen this on social media, where filters and curated images often craft a narrative that diverges from the truth.

Last month, it came to light that, Goldman Sachs analyst Peter Oppenheimer highlighted a sharp drop in ChatGPT’s traffic, presenting ‘evidence’ to support its rapid decline and suggesting that AI might be a bubble. He even added some helpful arrows, just in case anyone needed a reminder of which way "down" was.

This didn’t quite land as the mic drop Oppenheimer intended—it was more of a ‘bowling ball on foot’ moment. Given Goldman Sachs’s cautious stance on the AI hype, even publishing a paper titled “Gen AI:Too Much Spend, Too Little Benefit?”, it’s understandable how one might get a bit giddy over such "gold dust" data to reinforce their point and control the narrative.

It’s an easy misstep—I was researching Twitter vs. Threads earlier this year and stumbled upon this gem:

You can see the embarrassing LinkedIn headlines now:

Of course, if you overlaid Twitter.com and X.com on the same chart, the real story becomes clear:

When researching for a client or preparing to publish findings, thorough due diligence is essential. If something seems ‘too good to be true,’ it probably is—careful scrutiny helps distinguish fact from perception.

Brands move URLs or domains all the time and the correct way to do this should you wish to keep your SEO visibility is by implementing a 301 redirect. This is precisely what ChatGPT did and you can see that had Oppenheimer’s team visited chat.openai.com, it would have 301 redirected to chatgpt.com.

Traffic has actually accelerated over the past three months according to the immensely useful Similarweb:

So, what practical applications can website owners leverage with 301 redirects? A straightforward starting point is to redirect 404 pages that have backlinks, guiding them to a more relevant page on your website.

Backlinks were central to the original Backrub algorithm, the precursor to Google, developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. This algorithm was groundbreaking because it leveraged backlinks as a measure of a webpage's importance and credibility on the internet, which was revolutionary in the late 1990s

Although there are many factors, with UX and Brand strength being key components towards excellent organic visibility in Google, that form part of its multiple algorithms, backlinks are still a strong signal that you want to utilise.

This approach can be used for all types of business, although you’re more likely to find a high value redirect on a long standing business that has had a website for many years.

Archive.org

Archive.org is a great place to start to understand a website’s structure and internal links from a point frozen in time. Here we see Uber’s homepage from December 2013. The bigger the website, the more likely it is that you’ll have a number of screenshots to play with.

A 301 redirect opportunity that I found from browsing the archives is for the following:

The above page now returns a 404:

Although Uber sold off its Elvate product to Joby Aviation, they could still redirect this URL to the live page they have on their website to retain the link equity, as the original URL has a number of backlinks from reputable sources pointing to it:

Backlink analysis checker

There are numerous paid tools that you can invest in to discover. For the purpose of this section, I am using SEMRush, however ahrefs is a very good alternative and my personal favourite.

Plaid, a fintech offering an all-in-one banking solution, had posted a blog informing users they could “connect crypto wallets with Wallet Onboard.” This post gained several backlinks before it was later deleted.

You can see that the page now returns a 404, but it did exist one upon a time:

If this deletion was unintentional, Plaid could simply republish the post, adding a contextual internal link pointing to a relevant page. Alternatively, they could set up a 301 redirect from this URL to a high-priority landing page, like the Cryptocurrency solutions page.

Hopefully, this edition offered some actionable tips for identifying low-hanging fruit when redirecting broken pages with valuable links to high-impact pages on your site.

What I read this week

It’s been a bit light on the reading front this week, though I’m halfway through Malcolm Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers, which has proven to be an insightful read so far.

Tesco’s latest OOH ad causes quite a stir on LinkedIn

Though I’m a Growth Marketer, I’ve always had a keen interest in brand strategy and building brand demand through highly creative output. Earlier this week, Tesco’s latest campaign faced intense criticism, met with an equally strong defence.

I like the ad—it makes you think, which is precisely the point. This impact is only possible for an organisation that has invested significantly in its brand over time, building distinctive brand assets that many can instantly recognise.

I find the debate between performance and brand exhausting, as both are crucial for driving marketing effectiveness, and there’s no exact playbook for determining which to prioritize. Various factors influence this balance, from the brand’s history of marketing investment to the particular category it operates in.

From a creative perspective, I think the above is brilliant, which is backed up by data from Distinctive Bat, highlighting that the Tesco ads is outperforming rivals in the outdoor space and it is most likely to be recognised and recalled.

From a creative standpoint, I think the ad is brilliant, and data from Distinctive Bat supports this—showing that Tesco’s ads are outperforming rivals in the outdoor space and are highly likely to be recognised and recalled.

I didn’t quite understand the criticism directed at it, unless it was simply to stir opinions (as I am now) and drive engagement. With my marketing hat on, I instantly recognized the brand but had to pause to process what I was seeing.

“Every little helps” and the five blue lines are iconic—but “why the egg?” It made me think. I’d be interested to explore the ad placements and budget for the creative and media, but that doesn’t take away from how well-executed the ad is.

I saw a response f from Rizz-Chad Cook, Monzo’s social media lead, which made me laugh as he bundled every possible performance marketing suggestion into a Frankenstein-like ad.

I once worked for an organisation (not with Be Franc, but in a permanent role) where the marketing lacked any emotion or creativity; it was solely about capturing demand. Some of the output wasn’t too dissimilar from the example above. 😳 I didn’t stay long.

Discussions like this (and Cook’s mock ads!) remind me of what an effective marketing strategy truly requires and how fortunate I am at Be Franc to work with inspiring, creative people to build memorable campaigns that drive both long- and short-term business impact.

Src: https://www.marketingweek.com/ritson-zeigarnik-effect-ads-more/