You Can Skip This Ad in 5, 4, 3 …

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How pathetic that we create a product we know to be so loathsome that if people could avoid it, they would. But, if we can just hold them hostage for the minimum amount of time for which a client can be convinced to pay, we consider our jobs done, and sadly, done well. And, while we spend our days convincing clients to spend money on a product no one much wants, we spend our nights avoiding that very same product.

Can you imagine a product manager at Pepsi-Cola who refused to drink a can of Pepsi? Avoided it at any cost … and who knew that you hated it too, but was paid based upon you taking just a sip or two before throwing the can away?

Ridiculous! Scandalous even … because there is a cost, and therefore a related valueassociated with the Pepsi.

Ads have no cost, and therefore, not surprisingly no perceived value.

But what if they did?

What if there were a direct relationship between the content that we wanted and the marketer that helped bring it to us. If the marketer were in fact a key part of the value of the product delivered?

Imagine if you will, that instead of “interrupters” of a person’s digital journey, brands became the sponsors of those journeys.

Think for a moment about the nature of a “sponsorship.”  Athletes get them.  Projects get them. In today’s digital world, why can’t we?

If instead of brands choosing us to “target” as “consumers” we chose the brands we wanted to have with us as sponsors, to unlock the great content that lives behind pay walls.

Wherever we went, we would have only those marketers with us that helped to make the experience better. Brands would compete for the chance to have us choose them. And when we did, we would identify ourselves as of high value to those marketers, and in turn, those marketers as of high value to the content they help to unlock.

The industry, the ecosystem of consumer/content/marketer is morphing faster than many people in leadership positions would wish for, and for many this inevitable change was supposed to wait until they were out of the cat-bird seat.

But change, like good news, doesn’t wait for anything.

So, for the few, the brave and the willing, a threshold awaits to a wholly new, wholly good world in which brand, marketer and the people they serve will all be in much better places.

A world where we don’t have to wait for the countdown between what we want, and what we get.

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