Gimme a Break: Part 1 of 2 - Jeff Einstein - MediaBizBlogger

A generation or so ago, before the introduction of the World Wide Web, and before broadcast television became the alternative to cable, TV viewers actually took a break during the commercial break. That’s when we went to the can, fixed a snack, chatted with friends or family, and otherwise engaged in more recognizably break-like, flesh-and-bone behaviors.

Fade out, fade in: There is no more commercial break, at least not in the sense that anyone older than thirty might remember or recognize from days past. Today’s commercial break is instead an exercise in media-induced ADD, a programmed license to pick up the nearest digital device(s) and go virtually nuts – text an old friend, make a new friend, make a dozen new friends, make a hundred new friends, tweet, tweet again, tweet once more, fast-forward, channel surf, download a tune, upload a video…ad nauseam. In short, there is no commercial break, no break, in fact, of any kind. There’s only the stress that comes from living life immersed in a break-free media environment, and stress – according to psychotherapist and author Richard Carlson – is nothing more than a socially acceptable form of mental illness.

We functionally eliminate the commercial break from our lives when we populate each and every moment of them with dozens of digitally-driven media alternatives to whatever media we happen to be consuming at the time. In fact, the very page on which this article appears will likely offer no fewer than forty links to other pages, each vying to compete for your already beaten and battered attention. Multiply this single moment in time by the fact that the average American now consumes almost twelve hours of media each and every day. Not only do we now spend our entire waking lives immersed in media, but we do so under relentless pressure to be somewhere we’re not (anywhere, to be precise) each and every minute. The ensuing stress is interpreted by Zen writer Natalie Goldberg as a state of ignorance, a destination of sorts for those who no longer understand that ignorance is a far better place in which to begin our journey than to end it.

Of course, all of these competing interests per moment of media consumption exact a toll on all of us (not least on advertisers and marketers), and drive down performance, especially when we consider that all this digitally-induced neurosis is delivered in a seamless user interface designed explicitly to eliminate any potential intrusion and get us where we’re going (wherever that is) in record time. This is problematic only because advertising relies almost exclusively on its ability to intrude upon and otherwise interrupt our lives.

Some years ago I introduced a term to describe the percentage of each media dollar that ultimately goes towards overcoming the inertia (the sum total of those things that inhibit advertising engagement) generated by each medium. I called it the Inertia Tax,and today it consumes more than 99 cents of every digital media ad dollar spent -- a fact that digital media acolytes would rather ignore than confront. Apparently, it’s still easier to sell a .3% CTR than explain a 99.7% failure rate.

Along similar lines, digital old timer and seasoned ad pro Larry Smith recently introduced SOX,a new term to describe an advertiser’s Share Of eXit links on any given digital page. The more exit links per page, the lower the advertiser’s SOX, and the more likely they are at the end of the day to be eaten alive by the Inertia Tax. I wish Larry more traction with SOX than I engendered with the Inertia Tax.

Is it any wonder, therefore, that ads don’t work? Who’s got the time for them and who among us will still tolerate the intrusion? There’s simply no break in the media action anywhere anymore, no breathing room, not even the remotest possibility for intrusion, commercial or otherwise. There’s no time for meaningful relationships to incubate and emerge. Each additional layer of compensatory targeting technology drives performance down a notch as marketers become increasingly predatory in an escalating pattern of digital aggression -- behavior that does not go unnoticed by our elusive prey. Behavioral targeting and other hyper-aggressive digital technologies can only further wreck the media ecology as they change the very behavior they seek to track and exploit -- the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle amplified by a billion microchips.

We tell our audiences that we only want to engage them, but they know better by now; they know that we want them to capitulate, to surrender, to raise the white flag in utter defeat. We want their heads -- like big game trophies -- on our office walls, and that’s why we hunt them down like animals. So in self defense they offer up only virtual shadows of themselves for us to target, then they scatter those shadows everywhere all the time to confuse and confound us to wit’s end.

We’ve simply worn out our welcome. In an on-demand media universe, marketing and advertising can survive by invitation only. It’s time to change our vocabulary from “Can I?” to “May I?” It’s time to take a break. Next week, fellow marketers, I’ll explain how, because it all begins with you,and the virtual switch between yourears. Until then, remember the sage words of author Hartman Jule…

Sometimes a headache is all in your head. Relax.

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 select rapid-growth clients to help define and execute healthy brand strategies in a toxic media environment.