Ask a Stupid Question: The Irrelevance of Relevance - Jeff Einstein - MediaBizBloggers

Interested in Contributing Your Regular Blog to wwwMediaBizBloggerscom Contact Jack Myers at jmjackmyerscomYou39ve heard it said a thousand times before Ask a stupid question get a stupid answer Seems like a simple and unassailable hypothesis amp8211 at least for those with half a brain Suitably equipped and ever the contrarian therefore I set out the other day to challenge conventional wisdom yet again this time armed with my OBERSC Official Brothers Einstein Research Survey Clipboard and not one but two appropriately stupid questionsQuestion 1 Do you want more or fewer adsQuestion 2 How do you want your ads relevant or irrelevantWhat amazes me in retrospect is not that those with clear vested interests in behavioral targeting technologies persist with silly claims that consumers actually want relevant ads but that they a can find enough unwitting pigeons willing to stand still long enough to answer such abysmally stupid and patently selfserving questions in the first place and b are willing to pay for the resultsMy amazement is predicated in part on responses to my admittedly unscientific survey of 52 individuals all of whom I queried recently either at the Queens Plaza Mall 32 respondents or the Noguchi Museum 20 respondents both in New York CityIn response to question 1 only 42 said they want fewer ads good news for advertisers at least at first blush The other 58 however told me to get lost or less civil words to that effect Not a single respondent stated a preference for more ads even among those who didn39t threaten me right away with bodily harm Of course reaction to the first question all but eliminated any need to ask the second question one blatantly stupid question seemed more than sufficientUpon meticulous and painstaking crosstabulation of the resulting survey data a number of possible extrapolations emerged1 You don39t always get a stupid response to a stupid question those who refused to answer my stupid questions spoke volumes simply by walking or running away2 It39s critically important to incentivize bribe survey respondents or at least seal off their escape if you intend to ask more than one stupid question and3 The only way to justify stupid research is to ask the wrong stupid question firstAnd so it is with behavioral targeting advocates who claim consumers actually want relevant ads they prove their hypothesis by asking the wrong stupid question first Still it39s a brilliant and timehonored agency strategy designed to exploit the fears uncertainties and doubts the FUDs of the only ones insipid and lazy enough to foot the bill for it all the advertisers Those of you who have any agency experience already know that no agency ever went broke by overestimating the intelligence of its own clients You also likely know that virtually all performance metrics are devised by agencies as a means to bill for the research required to justify and defend the metrics however speciousFailed metrics that agencies can no longer defend and sell to their hapless clients like CTRs that now hover at statistical zero will be swapped ASAP for those that can like black box metrics designed to promote and sell quotrelevancyquot Of course the new generation of metrics to support behavioral targeting technologies and the pursuit of relevancy will require truckloads of research and analysis to defend not to mention tons of user data collected from thousands of disparate sources Ironically however the relevancy of the message becomes entirely irrelevant the very moment data replaces media as the dominant commodity in the pipeline Because who needs relevance if the real product being sold is dataOf course advertisers who invest in behavioral targeting are perfectly free to waste their advertising and marketing budgets any way they want But their investments in behavioral targeting technologies come with a perfidious hidden tax one no longer measured merely in standard currencies because the currencies at risk this time aren39t just their money and their brand equity The true currencies at risk this time are our privacy and our freedomAbout Jeff Einstein and the Brothers EinsteinJeff Einstein is onehalf of the Brothers Einstein a creative strategy and branding boutique The Brothers Einstein work with very select rapidgrowth clients to help define and execute healthy brand strategies in a toxic media environmentRead all the Einstein Brothers39 MediaBizBlogger commentaries at the Brothers Einstein MediaBizBlogger

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Ask a Stupid Question: The Irrelevance of Relevance - Jeff Einstein - MediaBizBloggers

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