The rise of conspiracy theories’ (CTs) public profile and media impact is giving place to a stream of research and publications. Not that CTs area new but their impact in politics and elections has given them a high profile in public attention and increased public authorities and scholars' concerns with the phenomena.
Exposure to fantasist thinking and being targeted with ads or other communication that has no real support is nothing new to the generations that lived in the TV era and beyond.
Advertising bears many similarities with CTs both in the lack of fact-based support to its claims and in the attempt to change the receptors' perceptions and behaviors.
In this “age of CTs” brands find increasing difficulties to communicate their message, in part due to the difficulty they find making consumers believe their messages. On the other hand, we also notice everyday growth of conspiracy theories in many fields (politics, health, social relations, …) who seem to find it easier than ever to convince believers.
Can marketing learn something from the success of major CTs and their facility in reaching people’s attention and earning their trust? Should it?
Should marketing fear the success of conspiracy theories as they seem to result from decentralized and uncontrolled forms of communication and tribe creation?
This special issue sets up to start these discussions by gathering contributions about the way people see both phenomena, how people judge their information sources and how (if) each phenomena influences the other.
The aim of this special issue is to contribute to existing knowledge about this very relevant phenomenon (CTs) and particularly how it relates to advertising and marketing in general. Papers should help better understand how this CTs age came to be, what contribution marketing/advertising made to that evolution and what problems/opportunities does it create for marketing strategies.
Contributions are expected to help brands deal with this new world and also decode what lessons can be drawn for marketing strategies, particularly for startups and SMEs.
The subjects of this special issue:
(1) Can we then claim TC's success is based on people's habituation to fantasist advertising?
(2) The other way around, can we take lessons from TC's fast spread and use them in marketing, particularly for SMEs facing big incumbent competitors?
(3) Can CTs make people become so suspicious of all "official" communication that brands will find it impossible to communicate with customers, rendering marketing useless?
(4) Do you know TCs phenomena well enough to understand how they are spread, how they gain people’s attention and belief and can we predict who (if anyone) is more likely to believe in them?
Keywords:
- Conspiracy Theories
- Advertising
- marketing
- SMEs
- startups
- communication strategies
- brand marketing
