Ask a Stupid Question: The Irrelevance of Relevance
By Jeff Einstein

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, there-
fore, 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.

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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 market-
ing 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.

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Jeff 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.

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