The Sal Mineo Principle - Jeff Einstein - MediaBizBloggers

In the mid-1990s, both the financial and media industries were overrun and ransacked by a sudden tsunami of MBA-driven Cossacks. More Velikovsky than Darwin, more cataclysmic than evolutionary, the dot com era was nothing less than a high-tech youth movement populated by aggressive twenty-something shock troops with little or no appreciation for media history and no real-world knowledge of marketing, advertising and finance. Three trillion-dollar market crashes within the past decade alone might seem reason enough to question the wisdom of equipping ambitious, over-educated young people with such immensely powerful tools in the future.

The same young men and women who first evangelized the digital marketing industry are now – for the most part – in their forties with families and mortgages, but are still playing with the same basic digital toys, are still evangelizing, and are still – for the most part – oblivious to the damage they visit in daily doses upon our ailing media ecosystem. Mired in what seems to be an extended adolescence of permafrost depth, they perpetrate and perpetuate a Technopolistic hoax of epic proportions as keepers and purveyors of such durable and ubiquitous marketing myths as digital accountability, relevant ads, one-to-one marketing, consumer demand, ad-supported content and behavioral targeting – to name a few.

Absent the historical context and awareness to convert their knowledge into wisdom, they are clearly too young still – at least emotionally and spiritually – to know better. They still believe in their heart of hearts that digital technology is somehow a viable surrogate for wisdom and common sense. Consequently, all they do is chase their own high-tech string. That's why my partners and I have decided for the most part to stop talking to them. The first order of business for us nowadays is to establish whether the party at the other end is old enough to understand and appreciate what we have to say. So we no longer do business with anyone too young to remember Sal Mineo.

Here are some clues that someone is likely too young to remember Sal Mineo:

· If they ask, "Sal who?", they're likely too young to remember Sal Mineo.

· If they work for a media agency, they're likely too young to remember Sal Mineo.

· If they brag about their targeting prowess, they're likely too young to remember Sal Mineo.

· If they promote themselves as social media gurus, they're likely too young to remember Sal Mineo.

· If their smart phones carry more computing power than Apollo 11, they're likely too young to remember Sal Mineo.

· If they actually believe in change we can believe in, they're likely too young to remember Sal Mineo (or haven't been mugged yet).

Of course, deciding who we don't want to talk to is only half the exercise. The real objective of eliminating youthful string chasers from our prospect list is to attract those who don't chase string, those who won't waste our time – or theirs. I'm happy to report progress on both fronts: sending out the signal that we are finally too sober to entertain the follies of youth has sent a corresponding signal to others who – like us – have matured enough to realize that time is our only real inventory.

Thankfully, we now deal almost exclusively with those who understand from their own extensive experience that the biggest and best deals are never negotiated via email or smart phone, and require room to breathe and time to gestate. These same good folks understand that our obsessions with metrics and numbers can only diminish and demean the true value and dignity of the human struggle we call business, and that the biggest and best deals are – as a result – almost always dream-based and not numbers-driven. Better therefore to find inspiration and sit down together in great venues like Grand Central Station or Yankee Stadium – places built by big dreams and big dreamers, most of whom – I submit – remember Sal Mineo.

About Jeff Einstein

Digital media pioneer Jeff Einstein is one-half of the Brothers Einstein, a contrarian brand strategy and communications boutique. The Brothers Einstein have just announced the release of their Just BE Workshop,a full-day, hands-on seminar designed to help senior marketing executives lower the barriers to innovation and restore common sense to its rightful place atop the hierarchy of modern management tools.

Read all the Einstein Brothers' MediaBizBloggers commentaries at the Brothers Einstein - MediaBizBloggers.

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