The following article by Jeff Einstein was published 08/11/09 on JackMyers.com…

You’ve heard it said a thousand times before: Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer. Seems like a simple and unassailable hypothesis – at least for those with half a brain. Suitably equipped and ever the contrarian, therefore, I set out the other day to challenge conventional wisdom yet again, this time armed with my OBERSC (Official Brothers Einstein Research Survey Clipboard) and not one but two appropriately stupid questions:

Question #1: Do you want more or fewer ads?

Question #2: How do you want your ads, relevant or irrelevant?

What amazes me in retrospect is not that those with clear vested interests in behavioral targeting technologies persist with silly claims that consumers actually want relevant ads, but that they a) can find enough unwitting pigeons willing to stand still long enough to answer such abysmally stupid and patently self-serving questions in the first place, and b) are willing to pay for the results.

My amazement is predicated in part on responses to my admittedly unscientific survey of 52 individuals, all of whom I queried recently either at the Queens Plaza Mall (32 respondents) or the Noguchi Museum (20 respondents), both in New York City.

In response to question #1, only 42% said they want fewer ads, good news for advertisers — at least at first blush. The other 58%, however, told me to get lost (or less civil words to that effect). Not a single respondent stated a preference for more ads (even among those who didn’t threaten me right away with bodily harm). Of course reaction to the first question all but eliminated any need to ask the second question; one blatantly stupid question seemed more than sufficient.

Upon meticulous and painstaking cross-tabulation of the resulting survey data, a number of possible extrapolations emerged:

1) You don’t always get a stupid response to a stupid question (those who refused to answer my stupid questions spoke volumes simply by walking — or running — away);

2) It’s critically important to incentivize (bribe) survey respondents (or at least seal off their escape) if you intend to ask more than one stupid question; and

3) The only way to justify stupid research is to ask the wrong stupid question first.

And so it is with behavioral targeting advocates who claim consumers actually want relevant ads: they prove their hypothesis by asking the wrong stupid question first. Still, it’s a brilliant and time-honored agency strategy designed to exploit the fears, uncertainties and doubts (the FUDs) of the only ones insipid and lazy enough to foot the bill for it all: the advertisers. Those of you who have any agency experience already know that no agency ever went broke by overestimating the intelligence of its own clients. You also likely know that virtually all performance metrics are devised by agencies as a means to bill for the research required to justify and defend the metrics, however specious.

Failed metrics that agencies can no longer defend and sell to their hapless clients (like CTRs that now hover at statistical zero) will be swapped ASAP for those that can — like black box metrics designed to promote and sell “relevancy.” Of course the new generation of metrics to support behavioral targeting technologies and the pursuit of relevancy will require truckloads of research and analysis to defend, not to mention tons of user data collected from thousands of disparate sources. Ironically, however, the relevancy of the message becomes entirely irrelevant the very moment data replaces media as the dominant commodity in the pipeline. Because who needs relevance if the real product being sold is data?

Of course advertisers who invest in behavioral targeting are perfectly free to waste their advertising and marketing budgets any way they want. But their investments in behavioral targeting technologies come with a perfidious hidden tax, one no longer measured merely in standard currencies, because the currencies at risk this time aren’t just their money and their brand equity. The true currencies at risk this time are our privacy and our freedom.
Jeff Einstein, the Brothers Einstein, Jaffer Ali, Vidsense, Jack Myers

The following article by Jeff Einstein was published 08/05/09 on JackMyers.com…

The following is a transcript from a phone call between a behavioral targeting salesman and a certain Mr. Faust, CEO of Anything for a Buck Enterprises…

Faust: Hello, and thanks for calling Anything for a Buck. Faust speaking.

BT Salesman: Good morning, Mr. Faust. You don’t know me but have I got a deal for you!

Faust: Great! I’m always interested in a good deal. Tell me about it.

BT Salesman: Well, Mr. Faust, I’ve got this spectacular new technology that will allow you to collect the most intimate details of your customers’ online lives.

Faust: Sounds a little creepy. I like it.

BT Salesman: Exactly! You’ll know every move they make, every Web site they visit, how long they spend there, what they buy, what they do – everything!

Faust: Sounds downright diabolical. But what’s the point?

BT Salesman: You’ll be able to increase your online ad performance by up to 50%.

Faust: Well, hold on for a moment. Let me do the math: A 50% lift of my usual point one percent CTR. Hmmm. That brings my performance all the way up to .15%. But even with the added lift I’m still at statistical zero. Sounds like much ado about nothing to me.

BT Salesman: Well, you know the CTR is just the tip of the iceberg. You’ll also be able to sell the data you collect!

Faust: Sell the data? To whom?

BT Salesman: To anyone who asks. You could even give it away to the government!

Faust: Won’t people who come to my Web site object to being tracked like escaped convicts and having their data sold to the highest bidder or given away to the government?

BT Salesman: Naaah. Not to worry. Most folks won’t even know.

Faust: What about those who do?

BT Salesman: We’ll solicit their informed consent.

Faust: Informed consent? What idiot would agree to something like that?

BT Salesman: Anyone who wants relevant ads.

Faust: Relevant ads? Who the hell wants any ads?

BT Salesman: Studies conclude that consumers prefer relevant ads to non-relevant ads.

Faust: Studies, eh? So where’s the informed consent part?

BT Salesman: We’ll provide you with a simple boilerplate privacy statement and consent form.

Faust: Now you’re talking. How long is the consent form?

BT Salesman: Well, the standard privacy statement and form is eight pages, but you can add to it if you want.

Faust: Eight pages? Who the hell’s gonna read eight pages?

BT Salesman: No one I know. But they don’t have to read it to accept it.

Faust: You mean people will consent to something they never read?

BT Salesman: Of course. You think any laws would get passed by Congress if they actually had to read what they sign?

Faust: Good point. But that’s hardly informed consent. Seems more like uninformed consent.

BT Salesman: Informed, uninformed. Let’s not split hairs, Mr. Faust. Whattaya say?

Faust: I don’t know. Sounds a little ethically challenged to me.

BT Salesman: Exactly! I knew you’d appreciate it! Can I write you up?

Faust: Well, much as the idea of spying on everyone who visits my Web site appeals to me, and much as the thought of selling the most intimate details of my customers’ lives to the highest bidder…

BT Salesman: And don’t forget the government.

Faust: Right. Right. Right. And much as the corruptive union of corporate and state power entices me, I gotta say that I just don’t feel right about this one. Just seems way over the top and without any ethical or moral foundation whatsoever – even for me.

BT Salesman: Well, Mr. Faust, I appreciate your candor. Would it be okay if we keep your phone number and email address on file to keep you posted on future product updates?

Faust: I suppose. You need my email address?

BT Salesman: No thanks, Mr. Faust. We’ve already got it. (Click…bzzzzzzzz.)

Faust: Hello?
Jeff Einstein, the Brothers Einstein, Jaffer Ali, Vidsense, Jack Myers

The following article by Jeff Einstein was published 05/13/09 on JackMyers.com…

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save. — Will Rogers

In Part 1 of Gimme a Break, I suggested that the reason why advertising doesn’t work very well anymore is because we’ve essentially eliminated the commercial break from our lives – especially during the commercial break, which nowadays more closely resembles a digital feeding frenzy, and hence destroys the very ad model it’s designed to serve. In fact, our entire on-demand lives have devolved into extended digital feeding frenzies, with no time for reflection, no tolerance whatsoever for intrusion, and no breaks from the media action.

What bothers me most about the current state of advertising and marketing, however, is how utterly predatory and atavistic we’ve become since the mid-1990s, when twenty-something digital evangelists decided that advertisers and marketers should a) engage in brand dialogues with consumers (mostly because there was suddenly a shitload of new digital technology to foist on them), and b) conduct said brand dialogues in a thoroughly mediated and seamless digital world, which of course renders impossible the requisite intrusion and time to establish and maintain any meaningful dialogue – brand or otherwise – with anyone. Baffled and besieged, older, more sober generations of advertisers and marketers deferred immediately and stepped aside, mostly because they couldn’t reboot their own computers without the help of the twenty-somethings. The days of the commercial break were clearly numbered.

Of course the predatory attribute I assigned above should not be confused with anything or anyone forward-thinking or proactive, and is wholly reactive instead (hence its atavistic nature), far more akin to the desperate pride of lions that haunts a watering hole during a deadly drought than the same willful pride that hunts at night when water and game are plentiful. Thus today’s generation of advertisers and marketers, all clustered like starving lions around the same watering hole, truly believe that they owe their jobs to consumer opinion, and are therefore compelled to react like lemmings as quickly as possible to perceived consumer demand – with every digital technology in their arsenal. By contrast, their displaced predecessors knew otherwise: that there is no such thing as consumer demand except to the extent that marketers and advertisers create it. The good ones knew something else also: that job one in creating consumer demand was to create and protect the integrity of the commercial break, what Bill Bernbach called the environment to buy.

But how can we possibly expect others to take a break long enough to engage our brand messages if we can’t take one for ourselves? Remember, we as marketers and advertisers create and shape consumer demand. And if we can’t control how we spend our own time, how can we as marketers and advertisers possibly hope to influence how others spend theirs?

The following is an excerpt from a recent post I made to the Oldtimers Foundation listserv:

To the question of how we can affect change in the midst of our day jobs and selfish best interests, I would reply, “First, slow down.” Our agendas are already far too full and far too hectic to engage in or otherwise entertain meaningful thought and discourse. We’ve turned time — our only real inventory — into an enemy. We cannot begin to accommodate new thoughts and behaviors unless and until we find a way to intervene in our own lives long and frequently enough to prepare the soil of our souls for new seeds. We cannot affect meaningful change in ourselves or others unless and until we reclaim our time.

Of course the reclamation of our time is easier said than done, but — in all earnestness — I would suggest the following remedial steps:

1. Change your career objective right now. Aspire instead to take a nap, go for a walk, read a good novel or otherwise tune out completely for at least an hour during the course of each work day. No digital devices or electronic media allowed (with the sole exception of music). We spend our entire work lives striving for the moment when we can retire, put our feet up, and take a nap. My suggestion therefore is to eliminate the career middle man and head straight for the nap. You (and just about everyone else you know) will thank me later. It ain’t about money at the end of the day; it’s about time, and how and where and with whom we spend it. The rest of your work day will fall magically into place once you aspire — first and foremost — to take a nap as your new career objective.

2. Be conscious of your tools. Move your personal and professional communications up the emotional impact ladder at every opportunity. In other words, consciously choose communications tools that require more deliberation and deliver more heart and soul — like a phone call or a well-crafted letter or a face-to-face meeting over an email, text message or tweet — whenever possible. Always choose quality over quantity (because it’s always your choice), and always choose deliberateness over speed; don’t communicate on the run except in emergencies. Remember: speed kills.

3. Resist the narcotic impulse to check your email inbox for the first hour of every day. Each time you sit down first thing in the morning to check your email inbox, you automatically put your own agenda dead last behind the collective agendas of all the emails you find there. In doing so you invite a purely reactive mindset that forces you to play catchup for the balance of your day (and life).

Each of the above suggestions requires time and conscious deliberation. But that’s the point. We can choose to intervene in our own lives and industry or someone or something else will intervene for us — guaranteed.

Advertisers, take a nap, and when you wake up encourage your agency contacts to take a nap also. Mandate a no-email period each morning. Get them out of the fire-fighting business and into the fire-starting business. Their performance will improve and so will yours.

Agencies, create a digital media-free area where your employees can sit down and talk quietly, read a book, or just stretch out and take a nap. Their performance will improve and so will yours.

Time is of the essence, but only when we honor it, only when we befriend it. Consider therefore the words of Jim Goodwin and Sydney J. Harris:

“The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.”

And entertain right now the sage advice of Lily Tomlin:

“For fast-acting relief, try slowing down.”
Jeff Einstein, the Brothers Einstein, Vidsense, Jaffer Ali, Jack Myers

The following article by Jeff Einstein was published 04/29/09 on JackMeyers.com…

A generation or so ago, before the introduction of the World Wide Web, and before broadcast television became the alternative to cable, TV viewers actually took a break during the commercial break. That’s when we went to the can, fixed a snack, chatted with friends or family, and otherwise engaged in more recognizably break-like, flesh-and-bone behaviors.

Fade out, fade in: There is no more commercial break, at least not in the sense that anyone older than thirty might remember or recognize from days past. Today’s commercial break is instead an exercise in media-induced ADD, a programmed license to pick up the nearest digital device(s) and go virtually nuts – text an old friend, make a new friend, make a dozen new friends, make a hundred new friends, tweet, tweet again, tweet once more, fast-forward, channel surf, download a tune, upload a video…ad nauseam. In short, there is no commercial break, no break, in fact, of any kind. There’s only the stress that comes from living life immersed in a break-free media environment, and stress – according to psychotherapist and author Richard Carlson – is nothing more than a socially acceptable form of mental illness.

We functionally eliminate the commercial break from our lives when we populate each and every moment of them with dozens of digitally-driven media alternatives to whatever media we happen to be consuming at the time. In fact, the very page on which this article appears will likely offer no fewer than forty links to other pages, each vying to compete for your already beaten and battered attention. Multiply this single moment in time by the fact that the average American now consumes almost twelve hours of media each and every day. Not only do we now spend our entire waking lives immersed in media, but we do so under relentless pressure to be somewhere we’re not (anywhere, to be precise) each and every minute. The ensuing stress is interpreted by Zen writer Natalie Goldberg as a state of ignorance, a destination of sorts for those who no longer understand that ignorance is a far better place in which to begin our journey than to end it.

Of course, all of these competing interests per moment of media consumption exact a toll on all of us (not least on advertisers and marketers), and drive down performance, especially when we consider that all this digitally-induced neurosis is delivered in a seamless user interface designed explicitly to eliminate any potential intrusion and get us where we’re going (wherever that is) in record time. This is problematic only because advertising relies almost exclusively on its ability to intrude upon and otherwise interrupt our lives.

Some years ago I introduced a term to describe the percentage of each media dollar that ultimately goes towards overcoming the inertia (the sum total of those things that inhibit advertising engagement) generated by each medium. I called it the Inertia Tax, and today it consumes more than 99 cents of every digital media ad dollar spent — a fact that digital media acolytes would rather ignore than confront. Apparently, it’s still easier to sell a .3% CTR than explain a 99.7% failure rate.

Along similar lines, digital old timer and seasoned ad pro Larry Smith recently introduced SOX, a new term to describe an advertiser’s Share Of eXit links on any given digital page. The more exit links per page, the lower the advertiser’s SOX, and the more likely they are at the end of the day to be eaten alive by the Inertia Tax. I wish Larry more traction with SOX than I engendered with the Inertia Tax.

Is it any wonder, therefore, that ads don’t work? Who’s got the time for them and who among us will still tolerate the intrusion? There’s simply no break in the media action anywhere anymore, no breathing room, not even the remotest possibility for intrusion, commercial or otherwise. There’s no time for meaningful relationships to incubate and emerge. Each additional layer of compensatory targeting technology drives performance down a notch as marketers become increasingly predatory in an escalating pattern of digital aggression — behavior that does not go unnoticed by our elusive prey. Behavioral targeting and other hyper-aggressive digital technologies can only further wreck the media ecology as they change the very behavior they seek to track and exploit — the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle amplified by a billion microchips.

We tell our audiences that we only want to engage them, but they know better by now; they know that we want them to capitulate, to surrender, to raise the white flag in utter defeat. We want their heads — like big game trophies — on our office walls, and that’s why we hunt them down like animals. So in self defense they offer up only virtual shadows of themselves for us to target, then they scatter those shadows everywhere all the time to confuse and confound us to wit’s end.

We’ve simply worn out our welcome. In an on-demand media universe, marketing and advertising can survive by invitation only. It’s time to change our vocabulary from “Can I?” to “May I?” It’s time to take a break. Next week, fellow marketers, I’ll explain how, because it all begins with you, and the virtual switch between your ears. Until then, remember the sage words of author Hartman Jule…

Sometimes a headache is all in your head. Relax.

Vidsense, Jeff Einstein, the Brothers Einstein, Jaffer Ali

This article by Jeff Einstein was published 04/13/09 on JackMyers.com.

Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate,
but that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us.
It is not just in some; it is in everyone.

And, as we let our own light shine, we consciously give
other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.
– Nelson Mandela

The search for meaning, commiseration, and escape clearly finds motivation in fear and uncertainty, and it’s not for nothing that deep recessions typically witness sharp increases in church attendance, bar traffic, and box office sales. These are deeply evocative days. Why then are we marketers and advertisers of the digital era so fearful of our own power to evoke? Why do we shrink from substance and seek refuge in trivia?

Offered in honor of Easter is a passage in the Gospel of Mark in which Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome go to Christ’s tomb to anoint him, a simple act of respect imbued nonetheless with considerable risk under Roman rule. They find the large rock that had sealed the tomb the previous day mysteriously rolled aside, and inside sits a young man clothed in a white robe, but no Jesus. The young man tells them that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth has risen, then instructs them to tell the disciples and Peter that Jesus had gone ahead to Galilee, where they will meet again, as promised.

The three women had confronted their fears that morning when they went to the tomb of Jesus, expecting to pay their homage, complete their task, and move on with their lives, the terrifying crucifixion of Jesus now behind them. Apparently, however, no good deed goes unpunished, and they are instructed instead to confront their fears once again, this time as disciples in Galilee. What they thought was the end turned out in fact to be just the beginning. The antidote to their fear proved to be their faith – over and over and over again.

What they and other heroes learned over the eons is what successful marketers have known for decades: that the true key to success in marketing and advertising is found precisely in the confluence of fear and faith. The best among us search out those fearsome intersections and confront them with deliberate faith. The best among us will gladly trade true uncertainty for false security any day.

But as digital marketers we’ve lost faith in ourselves and now share our loss with others via technology-mediated, emotionally and spiritually destitute encounters measured in the tens of millions and billions. We are playing impossibly small when we define success as a 17% lift on a .3%, CTR, and we are compelled in the process to redefine powerful words like “relationship” and “friend” downward to meet our own impoverished expectations. We systematically strip all meaning and substance from our own language – just so others won’t feel insecure around us. In the end the medium becomes the sole message, a lonely and soulfully empty place whose only call to action is more of the same.

Marketing and advertising should liberate and inspire others to act. Online marketing and advertising does neither for a simple reason: we cannot liberate and inspire others to act unless and until we first liberate and inspire ourselves. But we choose instead to remain mired in fear. We choose to remain small for fear of our own power.

Recessions should be and typically are opportunities to reaffirm our faith, opportunities to rediscover meaning and recover substance in our lives. Don’t let this one pass you by simply because your email inbox is full or because you’re too busy with social network pissing games. Play big instead. Look for me at the intersection of faith and fear, and together we’ll forge a better future for ourselves, our families, and our industry. Phone me at 347-561-4465 and we’ll get started today. I’ll meet you in Galilee…

Jeff Einstein, Brothers Einstein, Vidsense, Jaffer Ali

The following article by Mike Einstein appeared 3/17/09 on JackMyers.com…

No, I’m not referring to Willie Sutton’s famous response when asked why he robbed banks. I’m talking about our “free” press (a.k.a. media), and the larger lesson contained in Mr. Sutton’s honest reply.

Case in point: Last week the whole country became caught up in the duel between Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and CNBC’s Jim Cramer. Stewart had taken issue with a CNBC correspondent who, in an ill-advised live-TV rant, blamed our economic woes on the over-leveraged “losers” whose mortgages were in default. Sensing a true people-who-live-in-glass-houses moment, Stewart took off on CNBC as a bunch of jock-carrying wannabes who do more to feed the beast than tame it. Jim Cramer, by association, became the de facto poster boy for a network that has always been longer on style than substance.

My problem with all of this is that when Stewart had Cramer and CNBC squarely in the cross hairs, his shot went wide and missed the mark entirely. The only question Stewart needed to ask was the one that would have revealed the only answer that counts: What would your advertisers — you know, those trusted bedrock institutions we just bailed out to the tune of a trillion bucks — do if you told the truth?

Speaking of shots, it doesn’t take an Einstein to figure out who calls them at CNBC (the same guys who call them at Comedy Central). So, when Stewart had Cramer right where he wanted him, why didn’t this self-appointed protector of the masses simply tell it like it is and go after the sponsors who underwrite this blatant abuse of the public trust? Sure, he danced around the issue, but that only made it worse. He stopped just short of biting the hand that feeds him — the same hand that ultimately feeds Jim Cramer et al. I guess he figured there was no sense defaulting on the mortgage to his own glass house.

For my money, the only sober reality to emerge from this shameless demagoguery is a better understanding of the real cost of our “free” media. When our global economic meltdown is reduced to a cheap ratings ploy between two comedians, we’re in big trouble, right? Actually, no. In fact, it all becomes clear once you realize that Christopher Dodd and Barack Obama are the two biggest individual recipients of campaign cash from AIG. Who are Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer to let the truth get in the way of a good story? Why shoot them? They’re just the messengers.

Advertisers have always called the shots, which in its own perverted logic, makes perfect sense. After all, it’s not commercials between programs, it’s programs between commercials, and always has been. That’s why soap operas were and are more soap than opera and why Star-Kist preferred tunas that tasted good over tunas with good taste.

This diatribe notwithstanding, let me get off of my high horse (before I fall off) by suggesting that — while legions of spreadsheet-driven quants labor day and night to wreck the marketing industry forever and drive consumers deeper and deeper into smaller and smaller digital retreats — there is one online advertising model that still gets it. It’s called Vidsense, a totally contrarian alternative to the digital status quo. Vidsense takes a giant step back to the future by using the proven power of popular video content as bait to lure prospects to an advertiser’s home turf where a single agenda — the advertiser’s — prevails. Taking its cues from the golden ages of radio and TV (back when advertising actually worked), Vidsense doesn’t put ads in front of people. Vidsense puts people in front of ads. Imagine that! Hmmm, maybe those soap guys were onto something.

With a billion+ channels all competing for the same eyeballs, targeting your audience has become a fool’s errand. It’s like trying to teach a pig to read. It doesn’t work and all you do is piss-off the pig. Doesn’t it make more sense to do your talking in your own showroom? With Vidsense, it’s still all about tunas that taste good, because that’s where the money is…
Mike Einstein Brothers Einstein Vidsense

The following article by Jaffer Ali appeared 3/17/09 on JackMyers.com…

“To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is to be ridiculous.”
– Chinese Proverb

My modus operandi after graduating college was to eliminate as much uncertainty in my life as possible. Maybe that’s because I believed my only alternative was to be like the feather in the wind at the beginning of Forest Gump.

After becoming the CEO of a direct marketing company, “visibility” became my magic word. I wanted predictable results, predictable processes. I craved the comfort of certainty. When uncertainty reared its head, I armed myself with all the data I could muster and fought back.

But something didn’t feel quite right. I hungered and thirsted for information, yet was starved of real knowledge.

“…rare events cannot be estimated from empirical observation since they are rare.”
– Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan

Our most profitable catalog mailing ever featured over 1500 military videos. It took four months to get this catalog from product selection to mailbox.

Then one day after sending out a few million catalogs, President George Bush (the original) launched a massive military operation named Desert Storm. Our response rates plummeted 80% and nearly bankrupted us. Nobody wanted to watch videos of past wars when there was a brand new one live and in color on CNN.

Yet Albert Einstein’s famous saying, “God does not play dice with the Universe,” remained terra firma for me. Randomness and uncertainty could be tamed by working harder than everybody else. In those years, I often left home before my kids awoke and got home long after they went to sleep. Hey, eliminating uncertainty is hard work!

After selling the catalog operation, the non-compete provision allowed for TV direct response and online marketing. The year was 1996 and we contemplated re-purposing some of the top titles from previous DR campaigns; among which was a Shirley Temple compilation. We tested in early December of 1996 and produced a cute commercial of a very precocious 6-year-old Shirley Temple.

Then on Christmas day 1996, JonBenet Ramsey was murdered and garnered nationwide headlines. Suddenly, our little Miss Temple didn’t seem so “cute” anymore. The promotion died after a promising test, brought to its knees by my old nemesis, uncertainty.

Now, here’s where it gets really interesting: Concurrent to our Shirley Temple debacle, we were also in test with two Riverdance commercials. The results were marginal, but unbeknownst to us, Michael Flatley’s company had made a deal with PBS to air the entire Riverdance performance in late 1996. Conventional thinking suggested that a commercial-free airing would hurt our sales. But just the opposite occurred. Sales jumped AFTER the PBS airing! Riverdance became the hit DR product of 1997, thanks in no uncertain terms to uncertainty. I was beginning to appreciate uncertainty in the context of its alter ego, otherwise known as LUCK.

Fast forward to the world of online marketing…

Online marketers are heavily vested in the notion that predictive modeling of human behavior is a rational process. This is what happens when MBA-driven venture capitalists pour billions of dollars into behavioral targeting methodologies hell-bent on eliminating — or at minimum taming — uncertainty. And yet, what does our most recent report card reveal? Industry-standard click-through response rates of .35%. That’s a 99.65% failure rate for anyone who’s not certain of exactly how to interpret the data.

Thankfully, life’s lessons cured me of my quest for certainty. But I ended up in an online arena which still clings to the illusion that rational behavior is something that can — and should — be measured. Interestingly enough, I came to learn that in the original Sanskrit, “measurement” and “illusion” had the same meaning.

Behavioral Targeting (BT) promised a new way to accountability. But the underlying assumption that humans are rational creatures is flawed; it becomes even more specious the closer we look. We need delve no further than the stock market to see what we get when we place blind faith in BT models that tell us who, what, where and how, but never “why.” As Dr. Phil would say: “How’s that working for ya?”

So let me say as emphatically as I can that eliminating uncertainty is not a strategy. The way out of the mess is to EMBRACE UNCERTAINTY!

“The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.”
– Erich Fromm

We need to manage a portfolio of uncertain futures. Forget about trying to out-think chance. It is a fool’s errand. We live in a quantum reality of almost infinite possibilities. We can let our creative juices flow and pursue an ongoing and unending journey guided by uncertainty.

If we wake up every day open to these possibilities, certain or not, we will go to sleep each night a little wiser. We must welcome and embrace what we do not understand. It is when we question our assumptions that we begin the creative process. It is through uncertainty that greater truths emerge. On that note, I leave you with a precious quote from Van Gogh:

“For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.”
– Vincent van Gogh

The following article by Mike Einstein appeared in the 2/27/09 issue of JackMyers.com.

I think I’ve figured out why I just don’t get this new media thing. It’s because I speak English, and the movers and shakers in the online space have their own language which I simply can’t wrap my brain around.

To wit: the following lead paragraphs from two trade articles today:

“Industry veterans Tim Daly and Al Gadbut are launching a ‘next-generation’ behavioral targeting company called ClearSight Interactive that uses intelligent matching techniques and predictive data strategies that won’t violate user privacy. ‘We have effectively termed our business model permission-based multichannel behavioral targeting, an entirely new concept for the marketplace given that current BT providers have limited permission from the consumer and can only collect data and disseminate advertising through the online channel,’ Daly said.”

“Havas Digital has entered into a multi-level strategic partnership with Media6°, which uses ’social graph’ data to connect marketers to customized potential audiences, Online Media Daily has learned. Under the agreement, Havas Digital agencies will become early adopters of Media6°’s social graph targeting capabilities in order to integrate consumer insights with hyper-targeting.”

No offense, but I defy anyone — in the ad business or not — to read either or both of these paragraphs without his or her eyes glazing over, let alone with a straight face. It’s time someone called the emperor’s bluff and told him to put on some clothes; or to at least take a long look in the mirror before heading out again!

There’s a great advertising parody from the 1960s starring Jack Lemmon and Edward G. Robinson entitledGood Neighbor Sam. The movie’s seminal moment occurs when Jack Lemmon (Sam Bissell), an ad agency lackey turned account savior, counsels agency client Robinson (Mr. Nurdlinger of Nurdlinger Dairies) to forego the “sham and pretentiousness” of modern advertising (remember, this movie was made forty-five years ago) and return to the basics by merely stating: Nurdlinger milk is better! His simple suggestion is greeted with 100% buy-in by the client and kudos from bossman Mr. Burke (played by the inimitable Edward Andrews) who proclaims: “In the face of such truth and honesty, I feel somewhat diminished!” Concludes an agency yes-man played by Robert Q. Lewis: “This could start a whole new trend in advertising!” What would Bissell, Burke, Nurdlinger et al think of“…social graph targeting capabilities in order to integrate consumer insights with hyper-targeting”?

Nearly 30 years ago, I handled the television advertising for an upscale women’s clothing store called Ethel’s. The store owner, a very nice older Chinese lady named Ethel (go figure), asked me what she could do to reach younger shoppers. I suggested that instead of targeting a younger audience she might do better to entice younger shoppers to target her – simply by changing the name of her store. Little did either of us know that all we had to do was wait a few years and let “…permission-based multichannel behavioral targeting” render the entire Ethel’sconundrum moot. Bottom line: Ethel didn’t go for my suggestion and I think her last customer just passed away from old age.(But boy was she dressed for the occasion!)

Let’s be clear: Good advertising begins with the seller, not the buyer. It’s the message, not the medium. Brands succeed on the strength of the feelings we have about them, not through interpretation of the data they have about us.

You’ve read in this same space before the way my brother Jeff and I feel about all this algorithmic erudition that has everything to do with technology but little or nothing to do with advertising. And if it bugs us, imagine, for example, how GM will feel if they ever wake up to realize that their ad agency knows much more about the people who aren’t buying cars than they do about their client who builds them.

This 2/19/09 article by Mike Einstein appeared on JackMyers.com.

I remember when I first discovered the power of “no”. I went to work for a mid-market independent television station in the early 1980s with a mandate to increase commercial production revenues. The department I inherited had billed $30,000 in commercial work the previous year, all of which proved to be uncollectible. So, for all intents and purposes, my new crew and I started at zero.

Our challenge was to overcome a market mindset — not unlike virtually every local market in the country — conditioned over the years to expect free production as part of the deal.

Obviously, we couldn’t hit our revenue goals by giving away the store, so we cultivated a new language that always started with “no”. We quickly learned that saying “no” opened more doors than it closed. Saying “no” raised our stock in the market because it represented a unique (although somewhat perverse) selling proposition. As the only ones saying “no” to lower prices, we became by default the only ones saying “yes” to higher value!

And don’t think for a minute that saying “no” on the production side had a negative impact on air-time sales. Quite the opposite, in fact. By pressing the value argument on the creative side, we imbued more value on the media side. What was previously a toss-in became a valuable investment. By saying “no”, we drew battle lines that pitted us against everyone else and forced us to perform to our own, ever-higher standards. We had to walk the talk, and it made us stronger.

But let’s be clear. Once you drop your price or give something away, you can never really hope to restore or reclaim it. In fact, you establish its worthlessness the very moment you start giving it away or deep discounting. So don’t blame your client for nickel-and-diming you; they’re only reinforcing the bargain basement price tag you establish when you always say “yes”. Weakness at the outset of a negotiation sets the tone for the future. That’s why so many sales people feel victimized by their account lists. They begin by giving away the only inherent power they possess — the power to say “no”.

I used to turn this to my distinct advantage when a prospect would tell me how my counterpart at another station was “throwing in” free production as part of the deal. I would reply: “That’s because he knows it’s worthless. And aren’t you glad he doesn’t work for you?” I’d even offer to get the other station rep on the phone right then and there, claiming that part of my job was to keep my competition busy working for nothing. “Heck,” I’d say to the beleaguered soul seated across from me, “it’s only your image.”

The bottom line to our value-driven approach was an increase in annual revenue from dead zero in 1984 to more than $900,000 in 1989! In acknowledgment, INTV Journal crowned us “National Champions of Local Production”. The sales culture we spawned influenced every facet of our operation, especially business development. While the other stations in the market were busy wholesaling their futures, we purposely held back inventory, secure in our knowledge that when push came to shove we’d be the only station able to accommodate anyone looking for added media weight. We were more than happy to say “yes” to the highest bidder. But we had to consistently say “no” before we were taken seriously.

You’re probably thinking: Given current market conditions, who can afford to say “no” to anything? The more cogent question is: Who can afford not to? Media fragmentation and a down economy notwithstanding, it’s always a seller’s market if you know how and when to say “no”. And it’s never too late to learn.

This article by Jeff Einstein was published 02/11/09 on JackMyers.com.

Call me Ishmael. Our obsessive quest for precision and certitude via all things digital is a great white whale that — like Ahab — we chase at our own peril. Of course, great white whales aren’t designed to be caught, only chased. But now — fifteen years later and well past the point of no return — we find that our ability to innovate in the overwhelming evidence of diminished performance across all media channels is likewise compromised and greatly diminished.

We need to disabuse ourselves ASAP of the narcotic but tragic notion that industry innovation is a byproduct of technology, and that every problem will be solved as better technologies inspire better metrics, better methodologies, and better management decisions. This blind and backwards faith in better business through better technology inhibits and truncates our true ability to innovate in much the same manner that our massive inventories of time-saving devices now consume and steal so much of our precious time. As Dr. Phil might ask: “How’s it workin’ for ya?”

In response to the above, I’d like to re-introduce my formula for innovation, the same formula I introduced several years ago when it was already painfully apparent that we had surrendered our individual and collective futures to swarms of youthful, well-funded technologists who — predictably and without delay — converted the financial, media, marketing and entertainment industries into ersatz extensions of global technology companies. So here’s my formula for innovation: Ignorance + Intent = Innovation. Translated into less secular terms, the same formula might read: Uncertainty + Faith = Inspiration. Both are predicated on our willingness to embrace what we don’t know as the path to wisdom.

Despite what those with vested interests in the vast, technology-driven knowledge industry may claim, few of the world’s intractable problems remain so for a lack of knowledge, and in the end our failure to resolve them has little to do with how much we know or don’t know. Our failure to resolve them is largely a failure of imagination. Some would say that we lack the will as well, and that may be perfectly true. But the will to do something assumes something to do, and we can’t begin to do something that we can’t imagine first. Contrary to the claims of experts (those who promote knowledge as the panacea for all things), the key to imagination and innovation is uncertainty, not knowledge.

Uncertainty, not knowledge, is the essential human condition for a reason, just as knowledge is the Godhead for a reason. The Big Bang and Creation were God’s jobs. The tasks to imagine, explain and replicate them (albeit on a far more modest scale — until recently) are ours. Imagination is our very own little big bang, and nowhere is our imagination more threatened than in the reductionist arrogance of our own digital media world, where — for some reason — we seem perfectly content to take our little big bang and render it ever smaller at every opportunity.

There are two great battles currently in progress in digital media: the battle for bandwidth, and — more recently — the battle for data. The battle for bandwidth is a face-first battle for brute power while the battle for data is a backdoor skirmish for knowledge that will translate into brute power. Neither, however, have much to do with marketing and advertising — which are really all about wonderment and mystery, the offspring of uncertainty.

Consider the words of King Solomon, certainly among history’s wisest of men, on his own mastery of knowledge:

I said to myself, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” And I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind. For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow. – Ecclesiastes 1:16-18

We shouldn’t delude ourselves: The battle for data is — first and foremost — a battle to obliterate uncertainty via the attainment of absolute knowledge and absolute power. Now consider the words of Jacob Bronowski, author of The Ascent of Man, as he stands ankle-deep in the ash ponds of Auschwitz:

To this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.

Science, is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known. We always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error, and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: ‘I beseech you in the name of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.’

…I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died at Auschwitz, to stand here by the pond as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.

The battle for data is nothing less than a battle to acquire the knowledge of gods, a battle to reduce the hearts, minds, and souls of men, women and children to commercially parsed and endlessly brokered bits and bytes. The battle for data — like all great power struggles — is a battle characterized over and over again by arrogance, dogma, and ignorance.

There’s a far better, far more effective way. It begins by accepting that the true opposite of knowledge is not ignorance, but uncertainty, and that wisdom (the true opposite of ignorance) only begins to accrue when we fully embrace how little we can know with any certainty at all. Wisdom begins to emerge with a more explicit understanding that pride comes before the fall.

Those who wish to succeed in marketing and advertising in the years ahead will embrace and invest in uncertainty, not knowledge, as our most potent and plentiful resource for success. The best way to restore advertising and marketing performance to the media channels (now that we’ve polluted them so thoroughly with technologies that have so little to do with advertising and marketing) is to cure our itch for absolute power and knowledge, and pursue instead a more profound sense of wonderment in ourselves and others — something that will only happen if and when we embrace our own uncertainty. Otherwise, we will lose our ability to touch people entirely (as witnessed by the current collapse in performance across virtually all media channels), and the only human act we are likely to encounter in our desperation to recover what we’ve already lost is the callous disregard that further reduces our hopes and dreams to oceans of faceless data.

Rather than devoting our time and money to technologies that target and hunt down those we want to engage, we should be devoting our time and money to the creation of things worth engaging in the first place. Translation: Stop thinking quantity and start thinking quality. Once we turn that switch between our ears we’ll realize that we don’t have to spend our time and money hunting down our audiences because they’ll be hunting us down instead. We need only make ourselves easy to find, and set a nice table for our guests. The true feast begins when we embrace our uncertainty. Or we can settle for more table scraps and call it performance…