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Wednesday, May 26, 2010
The Search for Scalable Reach: Razing the Digital Ghetto
By: Jeff Einstein
First things first:
A brief history on how and why the digital ghetto came to
pass... It started back in the mid-1990s, when the youth-
ful digital marketers of the dot com era first decided
(unconsciously) to abandon brand reach for the sudden,
technology-driven promise to micro-target audiences ? all
in an effort to distinguish the digital channels from their
more established (and credible) analog counterparts. In
retrospect, it was a tragically bad idea, for manifold
reasons, but mainly because the practical result was to
eradicate online the one thing big brands truly want ?
scalable, big brand reach ? irrespective of the medium.
In the myopic fog of their big-budget envy, digital market-
ers saw fit to raise a firewall between themselves and
other media professionals. The same self-imposed firewall,
however, very soon gave rise to a digital ghetto mentality,
one with its own unique marketing vernacular, and its own
rules of engagement. The digital denizens inside the ghetto
"got it" while those beyond the ghetto walls were consigned
to derision and dismissal ? in spite of their obvious
success and big agency clout.
Sure enough, digital marketers became their attention, and
the frustration they felt at their utter inability to crack
big media budgets at big media agencies soon evolved into
a doleful refrain that continues unabated to this day.
Digital media budgets remained disproportionately small,
and digital media campaigns never truly evolved beyond what
might be described as a perpetual test mode. Meanwhile,
evolutionary thinking in the digital media channels pretty
much started and stopped with search marketing in the late
1990s, while almost all subsequent digital contributions
to the larger brand advertising dialogue continued the
micro-targeting folly. Predictably, niche audiences
continued to shrink with each technological iteration,
until the tallest midget competition that ensued resembled
a variation of the Maccabi Games ? fun perhaps for the
digital ghetto dwellers to debate amongst themselves, but
without much gravitas or impact in the much larger world
beyond the ghetto walls.
Fast forward: There's only one thing at the end of the day
that will raze the digital ghetto walls, only one thing
that will set the digital ghetto dwellers free. Digital
marketing's messiah ? like that of every other commercial
medium ? is scalable big brand reach, the same big brand
reach that made print, radio and television so immensely
powerful and successful throughout the last half of the
20th century, and the same big brand reach whose sudden
absence in the first decade of the 21st century now
threatens virtually all media channels across the board.
Ironically, while the ability to deliver big brand reach
in the digital era is now greatly diminished across print,
radio and TV franchises, the prospects for scalable big
brand reach online are finally ? with the saturation of
online video ? poised to emerge.
Fortunately for digital marketers, the successful emergence
of big brand reach online (not to mention the access to
big brand media budgets that will surely ride shotgun with
it) doesn?t require the development or addition of any new
technologies whatsoever. Quite the contrary: if anything,
the promise of big brand reach and big brand budgets online
can only be delivered by a process of deliberate simplif-
ication, one that begins ? as always ? with subtraction
and disintermediation.
What does that mean? First and foremost it means we need to
stop trying to finagle new ways to distribute intermediary
ad messages to consumers who just don?t want to see them
and are thoroughly equipped and utterly inclined to avoid
them. It means we need to remove the intermediary layers
of targeting technology and messaging that currently stand
? like the walls of the digital ghetto ? between consumers
and brands, the same layers of targeting and technology
that have driven up costs and otherwise done nothing to
enhance brand communications for the past generation.
Heretically, it means we need far less targeting, not more.
It means we need to replace the ads that no one wants with
something everyone wants instead: video. Everyone with high-
speed access snacks on short-format video; indeed, there's
almost no other conceivable reason for anyone to pay for
high-speed access. And while we're at it, it means we need
to change our marketing metaphors as well. Instead of
targeting, instead of hunting elusive consumers with high-
tech ammo, we're far better advised to cast a line with
better low-tech bait, and let them come to us. We're far
better advised to fish rather than hunt.
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In reality, commercial media is and always has been on-
demand, regardless of the medium, and audiences everywhere
always behave in the same binary fashion: either they
deign to show up or they don't. Either way, their decision
to show up is their choice alone, and has little or nothing
to do with our ability or desire to target and hunt them
down, and everything to do with the bait we use to attract
them. Thus, in the much larger reality just beyond the
digital ghetto walls, we never really reach the audience
at all; we don't reach them because they reach us. And
here's the kicker: they always qualify themselves en route.
The fundamental audience/content dynamic always remains
constant, regardless of the medium: certain content
attracts certain audiences, plain and simple.
Razing the digital ghetto...
Attract, deliver and engage: the three component parts
of a successful online ad campaign. Clearly, the current
advertising-as-intermediary model can't measure up. It
doesn't attract consumers ? who don't want the ads in the
first place ? so it can't possibly deliver them anywhere
in scale, and the quality of the engagement at the
destination site (like everything else) has taken a
distant back seat to our obsession with targeting.
What to do? We need to invert the model. Instead of bury-
ing the ad message in the content under the current model,
we need to bury the content in the ad. We need to attract,
deliver and engage the audience in a manner and place
that...
1. doesn't intrude upon consumer privacy,
2. doesn't put the brands themselves at risk in the
process, and
3. puts the terms and conditions of the engagement itself
completely in the hands of the advertisers (who pay for
everything).
The best way to accommodate all three of the above
conditions is to...
1. use the lure of quality video content as bait to attract
consumers,
2. deliver them ? self-qualified, of course ? directly to
advertiser destination websites, where
3. the promised video content is consumed on site as an
integral component of more immersive, risk-free and
engaging brand environments.
Attract, deliver and engage. Of course it's harder now than
in years past, in large part because ? until recently ?
brand advertising was only expected to engage and deliver
(no one in their right mind expected the ads to attract
anyone). The early media pioneers knew full well what
the first generation of digital marketers seem to have
forgotten (or never learned in the first place): that no
audience would ever be attracted to a program for the ads,
and that the ads were ? at best ? tolerated, and only then
because no one wanted to get up off the couch to change
channels. Well, those days are long gone, and the only
excuse for the legacy advertising-as-intermediary model
that still dominates to this day is sheer industry inertia
and the perceived absence of viable alternatives.
While no amount of technological lipstick can turn this sow
into a silk purse, we have the opportunity ? right now ?
to raze our digital ghetto walls and replace them with the
real Holy Grail of advertising: scalable, big brand reach.
But we can't do it by targeting our audiences to death.
Nor can we do it with wishful thinking, by convincing
ourselves that audiences somehow demand relevant ads.
Technology is not the answer (Albert Einstein once
observed that no problem can be solved by the same think-
ing that created the problem). So remember the simple
keys to advertising success online: First, subtract and
disintermediate; get rid of what you know doesn't work.
Then, design your online campaigns to attract, deliver and
engage.
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About Jeff Einstein
Jeff is one-half of the Brothers Einstein, a contrarian
brand strategy boutique.
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