Keeping Current: The Old and the "New"

These days posting thoughts online is a little like the question of whether a tree falling in a forest makes a soundIf you know something it39s not enough just to know it you have to broadcast the fact that you know it on social media Unless and until you do that you may as well not have gone to the trouble of knowing it in the first placeThen you gather hundreds or thousands of comments from those praising you for thinking of something that if truth be told has been known for an age At least you39re spreading the word sharing the knowledge around wherever it comes fromIn this way you build your reputation It39s how you sustain yourself how you know you have a professional lifeThis may sound unnecessarily bitchy but there is a serious point to be madeIf you look around the industry you see people doing things that experience tells you won39t end well These may be huge and consequential or small and only annoy obsessives like meTake personalized advertising as the old joke goes please doThe sales story is easy consumers like to see ads that are relevant The data we have on who39s consuming media forms can now be taken to the n39th degree of granularity So let39s offer up smaller and smaller audiences and thus personalize the messages they seeThere is such an obvious flaw in this that it39s embarrassing to point it outConsumers like to see ads that are relevant This means the content has to be relevant The timing has to be relevant Whether one other person sees it or 10 million others see it is irrelevant to my liking of the adThe size of audience may do lots of other things like making it easy to amplify the message but at the point that I39m reached I really don39t careNo consumer ever saw an ad and said quotI hate that media planquotThe whole point of personalization is around the creative not the media planThis is as old as the hills We39ve had personalized comms channels ever since someone invented speakingIf I39m told something by someone I trust and if the message is appropriate to me I39ll likely react to it quotTrustquot quotAppropriatequot Two key planks in any successful ad campaignAnd yet the likes of LinkedIn are full of people who it seems have only just worked this out quotPersonalization is all about personalizing the message amp8230quot quotYou need to look beyond the media reach amongst an evermore segmented audience to the nature of the messagequotDuhTake online tracking following consumers around the web Take retargeting Take excessive frequency levels Take dodgy audience figures that need to be revised when noone is hopefully lookingThese things are so clearly bad ideas and are seen to be so by anyone with an iota of experience in advertisingThe only people who think these are good ideas are the geeks those for whom a very big gross number is always more important than the message conveyed And who have worked out that a bit of adjusting of audience numbers will be forgotten long before the image that this thing has been seen by half the people on the planetThose who lead and those who advise the tech companies and the giant platforms should listen not only to the accountants and the management consultancies but also to those who39ve built successful careers understanding and communicating effectively with consumersLearn from the mistakes of others they39re all around usPS Thanks so much for all the generous good wishes ideas and thoughts following last week39s post on Crater Lake You39ll notice us cranking up our SM presence but in the meantime check out the blog post on the site and our lovely photosClick the social buttons above or below to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Keeping Current: The Old and the "New"

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