We just finished a training on technology and education at Johns Hopkins University. Because of the nature of offering new services that people have probably never heard of, such as LinkedIn.com, people get suspicious about our motive. Are we sponsored by the companies we push in our trainings?
One audience member said, “Plug!” as we talked about LinkedIn as a great social networking site to find a job post college. Having not heard about the claim until after the talk, we missed an opportunity to say we are currently not sponsored by any companies, which may have created more trust in the room.
It doesn’t mean we won’t ever be sponsored, as we have talked about a sponsorship from Apple since we use all Mac equipment, and are giddy about the new iPhone.
Next time we will make it a point to let our audiences know ahead of time if we are sponsored or not. The bigger learning is how quickly this younger generation is to call out a plug or marketing slight of hand. Advertisers try everything they can to fuse their message into the brain, and pure education may not be so pure anymore.
