What's This Whole World Coming To? - Jeff Einstein - MediaBizBlogger

"What's this whole world coming to?
Things just ain't the same,
any time the hunter gets captured by the game."– Smoky Robinson

Back in 1994, I devoted one of my weekly MediaDailyNewscolumns to the unsuccessful search for an antonym for the word predatory -- used by a friend to describe the entire digital marketing industry. Now, half a decade later and no closer to success, it's time to revisit the whole marketer-as-predator theme…

Predators are hunters; they target, stalk and attack – just like digital media professionals. Evidence of our carnivorous behavior is found everywhere we look. Even the most casual survey reveals that the vast majority of digital marketing trade articles introduce, explore and debate technologies designed to target and deliver marketing messages -- this, despite the fact that our intended prey seems more than ever determined to avoid them at all costs. More disturbing still is the reverse technology-to-performance ratio that accompanies this massive cat and mouse game; the more time and money we invest in targeting technologies, the more performance declines.

The jury is in, folks, and the verdict against the digital marketing industry is guilty by reason of insanity(defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results). Our industry labors under a self-imposed mass psychosis that somehow convinces us that stupidity is okay as long as everyone is stupid. Don't get me wrong: I'm a big believer in ignorance as a key component of innovation and faith, but stupidity is a whole different creature. In an on-demand world where advertising seems to be the only thing no onedemands, the whole concept of targeting an audience that resists every effort to do so seems not only archaic and non-sequitur, but downright stupid and self-defeating.

We are so immersed in and enthralled with our own technologies and corresponding mythologies that we fail to see what's been in plain sight all along: In an on-demand world it makes far more sense to let the audience target us. To do so, however, requires a tectonic shift in our own thinking and a willingness to put our obsessions with all things digital on hold just long enough (on occasion) to entertain the rarest of jewels in a world gone mad: common sense.

Common sense dictates that we learn to distinguish between hunting and fishing. As mentioned above, hunters target, stalk and attack. By contrast…

"Any fish bites if you got good bait.
Here's a little something I would like to relate…"– Doc Watson

Common sense is what the Yaqui shaman Don Juan exhibits in Carlos Castaneda's The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledgewhen he sets out to hunt a rabbit. Like today's fathomless media landscape, Don Juan's native desert habitat is far too vast to cover and his prey too wily to stalk and hunt efficiently. So he doesn't stalk and he doesn't hunt at all. Instead, he sets a trap and invitesthe rabbit to make a choice: enter or don't. Thus he fulfils his own needs by honoring and respecting the free will of his perspective dinner. Likewise, wouldn't advertisers be better served in an on-demand world by a model that invites us to participate rather than by one that hunts us down like animals? Wouldn't advertisers be better served in an on-demand universe by a model that transforms them from hunters into the hunted?

Advertising is an art, not a science, no matter what the MBA-driven technocrats say. And in the art of persuasion, good bait trumps good ammo every time. On-demand media demand good bait, but we respond instead with more sophisticated ammo and launch the equivalent of laser-targeted carpet-bombing campaigns that not only further alienate our prospects, but convert the media landscape into a scorched wasteland in the process.

Wouldn't you know it? Just when we need it most, common sense goes fishing…

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.