In Praise of Lag

The Greek Chorus of technologists and the digerati continue to belittle marketers for their slowness in shifting ad budgets online.

The rationale is that 2/3 of consumers now use social networks for something or another, and online and portable music usage has soared.  Yet 4 out of every 5 ad executives polled in a survey conducted by IBM said that they were "...at least five years away from being able to deliver cross-platform advertising, encompassing sales, delivery, measurement and analysis."

"Marketers don't have to wait five more years only to realize that they are now twenty years behind," explains one expert, with some disdain.  "Everyone -- both on the agency and client side -- can fix this laggard attitude starting right now."

If anyone else claimed that the solution to a problem was (1) do something entirely logically flawed and untested, and (2) spend lots of money on it right away, they'd be laughed out of the room. When it comes to marketing ideas, however, we still give such nonsense credence, as if the insistent conclusions of their promoters are objective or true.

They're not. So I say congratulations to any marketer who has the fortitude to resist the siren call of cross-platform advertising, encompassing sales, delivery, measurement and analysis.

The strategy and content of brands emerged in lock-step with the technology available to reach consumers: distribution of news/entertainment via mass media print, followed by radio and television, allowed marketers of the mid-20th Century to present vague, emotionally-based promises before an audience of consumers who'd been trained to believe and follow. Image was reality, and the pretense flourished for at least a generation.

But those days are long gone. Reality begets image -- first, foremost, and continuously -- thanks to the Internet, and to our new-found "old" habit of relying on one another for info and affirmation. That means the ideas used to communicate with consumers can't just be adapted to digital tools, but need to be utterly redefined. 

The idea that brands (and their advertising) should be migrated online is like saying buggy whips should be reformatted for automobiles.

When Marshall McLuhan said "the medium is the message," he was partially correct: the way we interact with electronic media is as formative to our experience as the content delivered thereby. Ads may never work on Facebook because we're simply not there to read or care about them, just as faux billboards or other product placements in video games might prove unmemorable (just as they do in the real world, strangely enough). 

Yet now know that the message is the message, too. Content matters. 

So when claims of new and improved fall on deaf ears in TV or print ads, it's not because of a failure of the medium, but rather the message; people haven't rejected advertising as much as tuned out the stuff that doesn't tell them anything relevant. Similarly, when it comes to social media, it means that we have far to go in understanding the utility and practice of behavioral outcomes. Social networks require social activities as their lingua franca, but said activities need some ultimate purpose beyond, well, being activities.  Underlying the digerati idea of brands is that branding should consist of people talking about branding. 

How gloriously circular, and ultimately pointless. Digital engagement without actionable outcomes (other than more engagement) is no better than analog navel-gazing.

It makes sense that marketers are leery of these pitches. I wouldn't blame their fear, or laziness, or lack of futuristic vision. Maybe they're aware, however viscerally, that there's an absence in all of the guru disdain of any substantive and meaningful conversation about what, when, how, why, and if doing it makes sense.  

Online delivery of cross-platform advertising, encompassing sales, delivery, measurement and analysis isn't a foregone conclusion... it's a question in need of answers. Perhaps the best way to explore it isn't to "fix this laggard attitude."

I'm all for some responsible, thoughtful lag.