As
an Engineer, my respect for the Advertising/Marketing/PR, as an
industry, is diminishing daily. I see what is gorged behind the
curtain and I see what is barfed in front to the curtain. The degree of hypocrisy defies social responsibility.
While many Marketing and PR professionals have a deep commitment to
social values and the empowerment of people and their communities, many
also see society as a big fat consumption machines whose collective
minds can be mapped and channeled into “basic-needs” reactions designed
to ultimately meet Wall Street priorities over social priorities.
Meet your maker
It is also not surprising that the advertising industry is also on
the front line of social media where savvy gamers call themselves
strategists, gurus, and experts over the very game that they cannot
control. They are quick to define “Social Media Innovation” as new
ways to penetrate the hearts, minds, and eyeballs of people and their
paychecks.
Social Media Innovation
The REAL “Social Media Innovation” is actually a means for
communities to better discern the crappy products from the great
products. The so-called Guru’s make a living pitching manure because
those are the products that need the most expensive social media
strategy.
As such, advertising – as an industry – has devolved further in its
dependence upon the existence of overpriced substandard products, idle
and complacent audience, and insecure people living in divided
communities. Almost every square inch of available land, air, and mind
space in America is polluted with advertising. It’s everywhere. Guess
what, nobody – absolutely nobody, wants to see it. Innovate that.
Innovation is Disruption
What most social media Ad-strategists fail to see, despite their
formidable ability to create disruptions, is that their very existence
is about to be disrupted beyond recognition, if not eliminated
entirely. This tsunami on the horizon is a financial instrument that
manifest in the integration and capitalization of human knowledge.
They don’t have a clue what we’re talking about, they don’t have a clue
what’s about to hit them in a few short years – a virus beyond
description whose hypocrisy defies social irresponsibility.
By the time you see it, it’s too late.
Clayton Christensen, author of the book, Innovator’s Dilemma,
identifies this condition in great detail: Disruptions, by definition,
are rarely seen by the victim until it’s too late to respond. The
disruption that is currently rising up against the advertising industry
is apocalyptic in it’s simplicity. A few will survive – those who see
it coming. Here it is:
The last Mile of Social Media
Good companies with good products will put their advertising budget
into an “affinity pool”. The money will be distributed directly to the
top social media mavens that dominate the affinity space thereby
rewarding them for doing exactly what they would do anyway – they will
talk about their life experiences, and the products that enhance it, to
their galaxy of family, friends, and followers.
Game Over
Pay the mommy bloggers, auto enthusiasts, Pet lovers, sports
clubbers, and local fashionistas directly from a pool of money
insulated from ‘payola’. Let people earn a living doing what they do
best – building community. The result will be an astonishing increase
in social innovation, entrepreneurship, community development and
economic growth – not to mention infinite R&D, business
intelligence, and the decimation of low quality competition. No ad
agency or PR firm in the world could match the empowerment value of
such a simple financial instrument.
If you can’t see this, your days are numbered.