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Wednesday, September 22, 2010
The Sal Mineo Principle
By Jeff Einstein
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 youth-
ful 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.
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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.
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