Let’s face it – we all drank the Kool-Aid… some more than others. It was an enticing elixir. If nothing else it was a proxy for progressiveness. It was Digital Media Mania.
There are many less rules and truths in marketing as there are probabilities and likelihoods. This leads to varying and sometimes wild interpretations of data and transient schools of thought that flow freely among the herd and over time. In ways similar to politics or economics, the abstract subject matter of marketing tends to coalesce in more basic forms to serve groups that are bound by individuals sharing a common interpretation. If collectivism takes root, those individuals which need the group in order to satisfy a desire for individual power which they cannot achieve on their own, give up a certain level of autonomy. Could Digimania merely have been a surrogate activity that covered up insecurities, inferiority complexes or other stigmas that affect people as a result of environmental, interpersonal or psychological trauma?
There’s a good explanation for such a plume of dogmatic digital ideology to have spread so far/wide and for so many billions of dollars to have been wasted for so long; the innate desire for people to be a part of something bigger than themselves. For the meek, logic went out the window and heads nodded in a constant state of mindless acceptance. For the critical thinkers, fear of going against the crowd ensured their silence.
Finally, the narrative that reverberated inside the echo chambers of conferences, the trade press, agency board rooms and around the watercolor, has been exposed for what it is; a fantasy. Conversations with brands, addressability, the death of traditional media, interactivity, brand advocacy, relevant ads, co-opting the consumer, precision targeting, segmentation, vanity metrics (Likes, Brand Buzz, Value Perception, Sentiment), co-creation, relationship capital, “consumers in control”…. It was all lipstick on a pig. As one famous blogger put it, “the online ad industries preposterous assertions were swallowed whole by a naive and enchanted advertising industry.”
But we were all complicit in one way or another. Most of us at least took a few sips of the Kool-Aid, while some continue to guzzle it. Either way, all we can really do is pretend it never happened…. and move on!!
