In Search Of Digital Simplicity
by Jaffer Ali

As Einstein once said, “I wouldn’t give a nickel for
simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give
my life for simplicity on the other side of complexity.”
It has taken me thirty years of my professional life to
become a simple guy. Starting in the home video business
in 1980 and progressing from analog to digital, in
retrospect it seems that business was an ongoing exercise
in complexification.

Nowhere is “complexification” more apparent than in online
marketing circles. Here, jargon is supreme. A visit to
half a dozen websites only serves to prove the point.
Marketing problems can’t be solved, let alone even
explained through complex, tortured language, despite the
fact that the digerati have elevated double talk to an art
form.

In fact, complexity often seems to be the end goal for
digital mavens.

But as is the case with most things, what we need is some-
thing quite different. We notice that everything is rushing
by us at increasingly faster speeds. Time frames for every-
thing have grown shorter. Our digital tools were supposed
to help us cope with the faster pace of life and all they
have done is pave the way for even more frenzied activity.

I suggest we heed the advice of the late British economist,
E.F. Schumacher, who said “any intelligent fool can make
things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a
touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the
opposite direction and contemplate a wholesale change in
thought and attitude.” The more you ponder this, the more
sense it makes, because the more deliberate we are in our
pursuit of simplicity, the better able we are to separate
the wheat from the chaff between our ears and recognize
the challenges that confront us.

Deliberate simplification doesn’t come easily. It took
Albert Einstein a lot of work to arrive at e=mc2.
Deliberate simplification means stripping away the
nonessential to discern what is important. But the online
media landscape is anything but simple or discerning.
Indeed, complexity has become a virtual means to its own
end. Behavioral targeting is just the latest manifestation
of this reactionary complexity that in reality creates
more problems than it solves.

As our lives have become systematically more complex,
we have replaced essential human pursuits with mindless
activity and details. Is it any wonder why the great
spiritual traditions always speak of the virtues of
simplicity? Is it any surprise that in an ever-more
complex world this simple truth falls on deaf ears?

In my opinion, moving to the other side of complexity makes
good marketing sense. I want you to think of the last five
marketing campaigns that made an impression on you. Dollars
to navy beans you are thinking about a jingle or catchy
phrase. Messaging was and will always be primary in the
marketing hierarchy. But any cursory glance at a typical
agency website reveals one specious technological solution
after another, with no emphasis whatsoever on the message.
This growing complexity, in a vain attempt to harness
accountability and scale, in actuality achieves the exact
opposite and only serves to further obscure and confuse
the big picture and drive performance down.

Case in point, Google is not a scalable marketing platform.
That’s why it needs 1.5 million advertisers. The more
complex solutions become the less genuine scale they
engender. Television scales precisely because it is so
simple.

To the MBAs still reading, here’s a little secret:
Simplicity not only works better than complexity, it
costs less. Complexity adds costs and that’s why the
intermediaries in the media ecosystem – the media
agencies, ad networks and technology vendors — continue
to champion it, and why content players and publishers by
the thousands can’t afford to stay in business.

Listen to Thoreau: “Our life is frittered away by detail…
Simplify, simplify, simplify! …Simplicity of life and
elevation of purpose.” Deliberate simplification is a
matter of looking inward; a process of rediscovering
essence and harmony. It is authenticity in action and the
necessary basis for any worthy marketing campaign.

Let me leave you with a quote from the linguistic
philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein that simply says it all:
“The aspects of things that are most important to us are
hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity.”

————————————————————
Questions? Comments? Email me at: quote (at) Quotes2u.com
————————————————————

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————————————————————
End of MEDIA PERSPECTIVES
Copyright 2010 by NextEra Media All rights reserved.

If you don’t see that the online media ecosystem is in
distress, then you’re just not paying attention. Click-
though rates, according to DoubleClick, have crashed,
plummeted, descended (insert your description of abysmal
failure here) to less than .1%.

For the mathematically challenged, this bears repeating.
It means that on average, less than one person per
thousand impressions is clicking though to an advertiser’s
Web site!

So, how are many industry leaders reacting? When current
metrics no longer justify their own existence, instead
of adjusting thinking, “experts” will simply develop and
then adopt new ones. And, of course, there are plenty of
research companies ready and willing to help. (What’s the
metric du jour? I don’t know, but they got one every day!)
Simply fund the research, add a pinch of clever framing,
craft some self-serving questions, and, voila…conclusive
research for any occasion!

The problem that ails the online media ecosystem cannot
be solved with redefining metrics. Any real marketer knows
– or should know — that the best place to engage the
audience is on that marketer’s own Web site. Marketers and
advertisers who can’t grasp this obvious truth are worse
than Luddites; they should be hung from the highest
yardarm.

Click-through rates now flirt with virtual zero because
the industry remains fixated on the completely reactionary
practice of viewing consumer behavior through the rear-
view mirror. What do I mean?

PAST searches…PAST Web site visits…PAST relevance…
all with no eye on the road ahead. Think about how much
time, energy and bandwidth deals with this obsession and
how pitifully little we have to show for it.

Data-mining technologies have assumed a life of their own
– have become a means to their own destructive end, just
like they did in the financial markets. Financial trading
based on PAST transactions “worked” for a time. It worked
until the caravan drove off the cliff because everybody
was driving looking in the rear-view mirror and didn’t
see the looming precipice.

Driving with the rear-view mirror will ALWAYS…let me
repeat… ALWAYS lead to a crash. It’s true for driving a
bus, driving financial trading, or driving marketing. An
occasional glance in the rear-view mirror is a good idea.
But it’s no way to get us safely where we want and need
to be.

The marketing bus is in free fall, and yet most marketers
are still looking backwards. But the proof is in.
Reactionary methodologies like behavioral targeting and
the specious metrics they spawn defy logic and don’t work.
They only provide fodder for a data-driven marketing
infrastructure desperate to delay the day of reckoning,
which I contend — and which our once vaunted and now
vanquished CTRs bear out — we have already reached.

Google Domestic Trends was recently launched on Google
Finance with the express purpose of predicting future
economic indicators through exclusively rear-viewed search
behavior. At least they had the good sense to suggest that
these predictions not be used for trading purposes.

We all carry the lessons of the past, the challenges of
the present, and the promise of the future wherever we
go. By focusing only on the past, we wreck the present
and rob our own future. If we’d just stop looking
backwards, we’d have a much clearer view of the road
ahead.

————————————————————
Questions? Comments? Email me at: quote (at) Quotes2u.com
————————————————————

Follow Your Favorite GopherCentral Publications on Twitter:
http://www.gophertweets.com/ More Coming Soon!

————————————————————
End of MEDIA PERSPECTIVES
Copyright 2009 by NextEra Media All rights reserved.

A realization struck me just a couple days ago: I was
thinking about the steady dose of critical assessment that
characterizes my weekly musings and my propensity to use
a rather large and heavy sledge hammer to bang away at
what passes for conventional marketing “wisdom.”

But amidst the headlines on torture, stock market
uncertainties and rising unemployment, perhaps it’s time
to point to some positive things our industry offers. Just
as there are more and more critical articles surfacing
that challenge the online status quo, I want to turn the
other cheek—or at least give it a try. Why? Who knows.
Maybe I’m just growing tired of preaching to the coterie
of folks who agree with me!

I recently was asked to speak at the CMMA (Chicago Media
and Marketing Association) monthly gathering. Together
with a video SEO expert, we discussed online video and
its enormous potential. I was struck by how few had heard
of the term “video snacking.” Given that nearly 80% (77%
to be exact) of all video viewing online is the result of
“video snacking” rather than search, we should talk about
this.

So what exactly is video snacking?

Simply put, it is spontaneous video viewing that occurs
while doing something else. It could be a link to a video
sent by a friend or a link inside a news story. Or it
could be viewing some editor’s picks on a video site like
YouTube.

Video snacking stands in direct contrast to actually
searching for, and then viewing a particular video clip.
And again, for anybody doing the math, more than three
times as many video views occur through random video
snacking than through purposeful search.

Yet most of the trade ink surrounding online video is
geared to search technology, SEM, SEO. But if we really
want to understand online video and how to harness its
innate power and appeal, it behooves us to examine how
people actually consume it.

Advertisers, in particular, should pay closer attention to
how video is consumed. Why? I think my friend, Tom Cuniff,
VP of Marketing at Combe, Inc. (Just For Men, Cepacol,
Grecian Formula, Vagisil, and about a dozen other brands)
may have the answer. Here’s how he replied when asked why
video snacking was important to him and his company:

I really like marketing within the video snacking mindset
because I have the opportunity to intervene into his/her
awareness much easier than if they were doing purposeful
searching… unless they were searching for my brands.

Tom is a savvy marketer. He understands that creative
“intervention” is what advertising and marketing is all
about. Intervening while people are “snacking” is a chance
to tap and satisfy this insatiable appetite for distraction
in a very positive manner. Besides, why try to intervene
with the 23% of consumers whose video attention is other-
wise focused? Those searching for a particular video clip—
their minority status notwithstanding—have already
“declared” their intention, described nicely in this
analogy from Mr. Cuniff:

Say someone is walking across the room to get a fire
extinguisher. They are focused on getting to the fire
extinguisher and I really will have a hard time getting
that person’s attention. But with video snackers, I can
get their interest more easily. It’s just common sense.

What Tom is saying is another formulation of what Bill
Bernbach said many years ago. Bernbach spoke of advertisers
creating “environments to buy.” Video snacking presents an
opportunity to resonate with those 77% of video-hungry
consumers looking for a satisfying video snack. In essence,
this proven behavior and the mindset that fuels it combine
to produce the ultimate environment to buy.

The wonder of the Internet is that we now have a virtually
unlimited supply of tasty video snacks to share. And we
definitely have the appetite. So advertisers, what are you
waiting for? It’s time to pony up to the nearest video
snack bar!

Jaffer Ali is CEO of Vidsense, the Web’s largest video
advertising network. With more than 80,000 advertiser-
friendly video clips licensed from major film and TV
studios, the Vidsense network of more than 50,000 safe-
for-work partner websites delivers millions of qualified
visitors directly to advertiser websites on a pure
Pay-Per-View (PPV) basis.

———————————————————–

Ever see one of those human evolutionary charts? You know,
the ones that provide a visual timeline of our journey
from primordial ooze to glass tower?

Let me suggest that this same chart provides a good analogy
for our industry, except we need to hold it up to a mirror
to get the full impact, because advertising in general,
and media in particular, are heading straight back to the
swamp.

What’s more, whereas we’ve been perfecting our posture for
7 million years, our virtual devolution has taken only six
decades.

To illustrate this thesis, let’s equate the sponsored
content model that spawned the golden age of radio and
television back in the late 1930s and ’40s with today’s
Homo sapiens. Back then, content was king and advertisers
controlled their own destinies. Agencies were named after
real people, and audiences were easily reachable and happy
to oblige.

Enter the commercial pod in the 1950s (Homo clutterus), and
the beginning of our trek backwards begins in earnest, with
more advertisers competing for and encouraging shorter
attention spans through a growing assault on our senses and
sensibilities.

The downward pressure continues to build with the introduct-
ion of FM radio (Paranthropus Marconius) and independent
television stations soon thereafter. Momentum takes control
and the audience grows more fragmented; the media gene pool
more diluted and polluted.

The TV remote control (finally, a real use for opposable
thumbs) and cable television (Australopithecus Ted
Turnerus) arrive on the scene and our backs begin to
stoop under the weight of too much media The Internet
(Dryopithecus Googleus) explodes before our very eyes and
we feel our knuckles reaching for the ground.

What did our soap-peddling ancestors understand about the
causal relationship between content and audience that we’ve
lost sight of over the past 60 years? With online video
content all the current rage, perhaps the answer lies
within one of three cogent questions advertisers can and
should ask themselves and/or their agencies:

1) Am I better off rubbing elbows with video content, other
advertisers, and audiences on a third-party publisher’s
site?

2) Am I better off rubbing elbows with video content, other
advertisers, and audiences on the content provider’s
site?

3) Am I better off hosting both content and audience all by
myself on my site?

With industry-average CTRs based on “legitimate” impressions
(no RON crap allowed) now congregating south of .1%,
question #1 answers itself with a resounding “NO”. The
same goes for question #2.

But if you answered “Yes” to question #3, congratulations!
You’ve escaped the revolving door to Darwin’s waiting room
(thanks, Dennis Miller) and are well on your way to media
survival in the 21st century!

Interestingly enough, content providers and publishers also
stand to benefit through this re-discovery of what works by
abandoning their misguided territorial claims to content
and allowing it to work its magic where it can work best,
front and center within the branded surroundings of the
advertiser who’s picking up the tab.

Whether we choose to believe it (let alone accept it) or
not, we are now playing witness to the demise of advertis-
ing as intermediary and to the resurrection of advertising
as destination. That’s because no other model except
advertising as destination embraces the three truths of
media on-demand:

1) Nobody demands more advertising.
2) Everybody demands more video.
3) Nobody and everybody are the same people.

Because we’re so invested in the advertising as intermediary
model our industry keeps targeting behavior hit-and-miss in
the rearview mirror rather than tapping behavior that we
know for certain already exists. We’ve devolved to where we
now define ad-supported media as advertisers supporting
content, rather than content supporting advertisers.

The course is clear. The way forward is to head right
back where we started.

————————————————————

About Mike Einstein and the Brothers Einstein

Mike Einstein is one-half of the Brothers Einstein, a
creative strategy and branding boutique. The Brothers
Einstein work with very select rapid-growth clients to
help define and execute healthy brand strategies in a
toxic media environment.

———————————————————–
Questions? Comments? Email me at: quote (at) Quotes2u.com
————————————————————

Article Link: http://www.jackmyers.com/commentary/Jaffer-Ali/44816567.html

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the
mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all
science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can
no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as
good as dead: his eyes are closed. — Albert Einstein

This article was inspired by Dr. Robert Fuller of Bradley
University. He is a professor of Religious Studies and my
son sent me a link to his brilliant lecture which was
taped and made available online:
http://admissions.bradley.edu/clients/bradleyedu/btvplayer/index.php?videoid=14&btv=off

Some may find it odd that I could gain marketing inspira-
tion from a religious scholar, but as I listened and
watched Dr. Fuller, I could not help but think that the
major problem today with marketing in general and with
online marketing in particular, is the conspicuous absence
of the essential and vital capacity to wonder.

Our sense of wonder has been crushed under the weight of
false promises promulgated by technological clay idols of
our own design. In fact, I contend that the failure of
these algorithmically precise yet dispassionate media
models is in direct correlation to our estrangement from
that special sense of awe.

So, what is wonder? Perhaps it’s easier to describe through
what Jung called circumambulation… or talking around the
subject. Wonder involves the unexpected, those inexplicable,
spontaneous feelings that inspire our thoughts and actions.
And isn’t that what good advertising and marketing is all
about?

Wonder invites possibilities. This is in stark contrast
to algorithmic limitations. In fact, if your marketing
campaign does not evoke a sense of wonder, you should
immediately go back to the drawing board. Why? Two reasons:
1) Because wonder gives new meaning to the world around us,
and 2) It’s our job! If we decide that what we do is indeed
a sacred journey, then not only will we be enriched through
wonderment, we will enrich all around us.

That’s because wonder connects us. We live in a fragmented
world and wonder draws us into something greater than
ourselves and unites us. Great marketing sustains this
sense of wonder by reaching and touching something inside
of us. It is an emotional connection, a transcendent state
through which soul is injected into the process.

We have become so enamored of numbers that we have closed
ourselves to the possibilities and potential in what we
do. Wonder emanates from within. But the growing noise in
our heads has all but drowned out the wondrous feelings
our hearts beg to express.

It is not our possession of knowledge that threatens our
sense of wonder. It is our abandonment of wonder and
mystery as essential, that is destroying it. You have to
remain open to the possibilities in order to experience
wonder. And you need to experience those possibilities
before you can articulate them.

It’s a damn shame that our online industry has ceased to
wonder, because we could all use a healthy dose of what
could be. That being said, I find it interesting and
utterly appropriate that the antidote to what ails us
would come from a professor of religious studies.

Reawakening our sense of wonder is really the task at hand.
If you can do this, from the inside out, you will transform
your life. This inside-out transformation will manifest in
your business model… in your advertising campaign… and
most of all, in your relationships with others and the
world around you.

Carl Jung said, “The self is our life’s goal, for it is the
most complete expression of that fateful combination we
call individuality.” Once we experience wonder for our-
selves, we then can then transcend our individuality and
speak to others in a shared language of the heart.

If we believe that life is a sacred journey, then wonder
is our roadmap to a great life. It’s also the blueprint
for true marketing. If you are heading up an advertising
or marketing campaign, please heed this simple advice
from one of Dr. Fuller’s heroes:

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he
needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share
it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery
of the world we live in. — Rachel Carson

————————————————————

About Jaffer Ali Jaffer Ali is CEO of Vidsense, the Web’s
largest video advertising network. With more than 80,000
advertiser-friendly video clips licensed from major film
and TV studios, the Vidsense network of more than 50,000
safe-for-work partner websites delivers millions of
qualified visitors directly to advertiser websites on a
pure Pay-Per-View (PPV) basis.

———————————————————–

A realization struck me just a couple days ago: I was
thinking about the steady dose of critical assessment that
characterizes my weekly musings and my propensity to use
a rather large and heavy sledge hammer to bang away at
what passes for conventional marketing “wisdom.”

But amidst the headlines on torture, stock market
uncertainties and rising unemployment, perhaps it’s time
to point to some positive things our industry offers. Just
as there are more and more critical articles surfacing
that challenge the online status quo, I want to turn the
other cheek—or at least give it a try. Why? Who knows.
Maybe I’m just growing tired of preaching to the coterie
of folks who agree with me!

I recently was asked to speak at the CMMA (Chicago Media
and Marketing Association) monthly gathering. Together
with a video SEO expert, we discussed online video and
its enormous potential. I was struck by how few had heard
of the term “video snacking.” Given that nearly 80% (77%
to be exact) of all video viewing online is the result of
“video snacking” rather than search, we should talk about
this.

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So what exactly is video snacking?

Simply put, it is spontaneous video viewing that occurs
while doing something else. It could be a link to a video
sent by a friend or a link inside a news story. Or it
could be viewing some editor’s picks on a video site like
YouTube.

Video snacking stands in direct contrast to actually
searching for, and then viewing a particular video clip.
And again, for anybody doing the math, more than three
times as many video views occur through random video
snacking than through purposeful search.

Yet most of the trade ink surrounding online video is
geared to search technology, SEM, SEO. But if we really
want to understand online video and how to harness its
innate power and appeal, it behooves us to examine how
people actually consume it.

Advertisers, in particular, should pay closer attention to
how video is consumed. Why? I think my friend, Tom Cuniff,
VP of Marketing at Combe, Inc. (Just For Men, Cepacol,
Grecian Formula, Vagisil, and about a dozen other brands)
may have the answer. Here’s how he replied when asked why
video snacking was important to him and his company:

I really like marketing within the video snacking mindset
because I have the opportunity to intervene into his/her
awareness much easier than if they were doing purposeful
searching… unless they were searching for my brands.

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Tom is a savvy marketer. He understands that creative
“intervention” is what advertising and marketing is all
about. Intervening while people are “snacking” is a chance
to tap and satisfy this insatiable appetite for distraction
in a very positive manner. Besides, why try to intervene
with the 23% of consumers whose video attention is other-
wise focused? Those searching for a particular video clip—
their minority status notwithstanding—have already
“declared” their intention, described nicely in this
analogy from Mr. Cuniff:

Say someone is walking across the room to get a fire
extinguisher. They are focused on getting to the fire
extinguisher and I really will have a hard time getting
that person’s attention. But with video snackers, I can
get their interest more easily. It’s just common sense.

What Tom is saying is another formulation of what Bill
Bernbach said many years ago. Bernbach spoke of advertisers
creating “environments to buy.” Video snacking presents an
opportunity to resonate with those 77% of video-hungry
consumers looking for a satisfying video snack. In essence,
this proven behavior and the mindset that fuels it combine
to produce the ultimate environment to buy.

The wonder of the Internet is that we now have a virtually
unlimited supply of tasty video snacks to share. And we
definitely have the appetite. So advertisers, what are you
waiting for? It’s time to pony up to the nearest video
snack bar!

————————————————————

About Jaffer Ali

Jaffer Ali is CEO of Vidsense, the Web’s largest video
advertising network. With more than 80,000 advertiser-
friendly video clips licensed from major film and TV
studios, the Vidsense network of more than 50,000 safe-
for-work partner websites delivers millions of qualified
visitors directly to advertiser websites on a pure
Pay-Per-View (PPV) basis.

————————————————————

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?

————————————————————
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————————————————————

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 other-
wise 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).

————————————————————
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————————————————————

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.”

————————————————————

About Jeff Einstein and the Brothers Einstein

Jeff Einstein is one-half of the Brothers Einstein, a
creative strategy and branding boutique. The Brothers
Einstein work with select rapid-growth clients to help
define and execute healthy brand strategies in a toxic
media environment.

————————————————————

Article Link: http://www.jackmyers.com/commentary/Jaffer-Ali/44816567.html

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the
mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all
science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can
no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as
good as dead: his eyes are closed. — Albert Einstein

This article was inspired by Dr. Robert Fuller of Bradley
University. He is a professor of Religious Studies and my
son sent me a link to his brilliant lecture which was
taped and made available online:
http://admissions.bradley.edu/clients/bradleyedu/btvplayer/index.php?videoid=14&btv=off

Some may find it odd that I could gain marketing inspira-
tion from a religious scholar, but as I listened and
watched Dr. Fuller, I could not help but think that the
major problem today with marketing in general and with
online marketing in particular, is the conspicuous absence
of the essential and vital capacity to wonder.

Our sense of wonder has been crushed under the weight of
false promises promulgated by technological clay idols of
our own design. In fact, I contend that the failure of
these algorithmically precise yet dispassionate media
models is in direct correlation to our estrangement from
that special sense of awe.

————————————————————
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So, what is wonder? Perhaps it’s easier to describe through
what Jung called circumambulation… or talking around the
subject. Wonder involves the unexpected, those inexplicable,
spontaneous feelings that inspire our thoughts and actions.
And isn’t that what good advertising and marketing is all
about?

Wonder invites possibilities. This is in stark contrast
to algorithmic limitations. In fact, if your marketing
campaign does not evoke a sense of wonder, you should
immediately go back to the drawing board. Why? Two reasons:
1) Because wonder gives new meaning to the world around us,
and 2) It’s our job! If we decide that what we do is indeed
a sacred journey, then not only will we be enriched through
wonderment, we will enrich all around us.

That’s because wonder connects us. We live in a fragmented
world and wonder draws us into something greater than
ourselves and unites us. Great marketing sustains this
sense of wonder by reaching and touching something inside
of us. It is an emotional connection, a transcendent state
through which soul is injected into the process.

We have become so enamored of numbers that we have closed
ourselves to the possibilities and potential in what we
do. Wonder emanates from within. But the growing noise in
our heads has all but drowned out the wondrous feelings
our hearts beg to express.

It is not our possession of knowledge that threatens our
sense of wonder. It is our abandonment of wonder and
mystery as essential, that is destroying it. You have to
remain open to the possibilities in order to experience
wonder. And you need to experience those possibilities
before you can articulate them.

It’s a damn shame that our online industry has ceased to
wonder, because we could all use a healthy dose of what
could be. That being said, I find it interesting and
utterly appropriate that the antidote to what ails us
would come from a professor of religious studies.

————————————————————
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————————————————————

Reawakening our sense of wonder is really the task at hand.
If you can do this, from the inside out, you will transform
your life. This inside-out transformation will manifest in
your business model… in your advertising campaign… and
most of all, in your relationships with others and the
world around you.

Carl Jung said, “The self is our life’s goal, for it is the
most complete expression of that fateful combination we
call individuality.” Once we experience wonder for our-
selves, we then can then transcend our individuality and
speak to others in a shared language of the heart.

If we believe that life is a sacred journey, then wonder
is our roadmap to a great life. It’s also the blueprint
for true marketing. If you are heading up an advertising
or marketing campaign, please heed this simple advice
from one of Dr. Fuller’s heroes:

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he
needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share
it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery
of the world we live in. — Rachel Carson

————————————————————

About Jaffer Ali Jaffer Ali is CEO of Vidsense, the Web’s
largest video advertising network. With more than 80,000
advertiser-friendly video clips licensed from major film
and TV studios, the Vidsense network of more than 50,000
safe-for-work partner websites delivers millions of
qualified visitors directly to advertiser websites on a
pure Pay-Per-View (PPV) basis.

————————————————————

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

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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.

————————————————————
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————————————————————

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…

————————————————————

About Jeff Einstein and the Brothers Einstein

Jeff Einstein is one-half of the Brothers Einstein, a
creative strategy and branding boutique. The Brothers
Einstein work with select rapid-growth clients to help
define and execute healthy brand strategies in a toxic
media environment.

————————————————————

———————————————————-
Walking the Talk – Embracing Uncertainty
– by Jaffer Ali

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 one 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, Author of The Black Swan

————————————————————
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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 market-
ing. 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.

————————————————————
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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 account-
ability. But the underlying assumption that humans are
rational creatures is flawed; made 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 under-
stand. 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

————————————————————