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

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You've heard it said a thousand times before: Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer. Seems like a simple and unassailable hypothesis – 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 questions:

Question #1: Do you want more or fewer ads?

Question #2: How do you want your ads, relevant or irrelevant?

What 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 self-serving questions in the first place, and b) are willing to pay for the results.

My 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 City.

In 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 didn't 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 sufficient.

Upon meticulous and painstaking cross-tabulation of the resulting survey data, a number of possible extrapolations emerged:

1) You don't always get a stupid response to a stupid question (those who refused to answer my stupid questions spoke volumes simply by walking -- or running -- away);

2) It's critically important to incentivize (bribe) survey respondents (or at least seal off their escape) if you intend to ask more than one stupid question; and

3) The only way to justify stupid research is to ask the wrong stupid question first.

And 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, it's a brilliant and time-honored 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 specious.

Failed 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 "relevancy." 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 data?

Of 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 aren't just their money and theirbrand equity. The true currencies at risk this time are our privacy and ourfreedom.

About Jeff Einstein and the Brothers Einstein

Jeff Einstein is one-half of the Brothers Einstein, a creative strategy and branding boutique. The Brothers Einstein work with very select rapid-growth clients to help define and execute healthy brand strategies in a toxic media environment

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