speaking in clicks

[October 15, 2010]

What are the editors of Wired.com wired about? It’s hard to tell. From the manic display of topics, all you can gather is a generalized excitement about things technological. Otherwise this e-mag is simply a free-for-all of news and information.

Of course, there’s a definite appeal to this cornucopial approach to journalism. It’s heartening, in a sense, to know “Gee Whiz” enthusiasm still survives—even if only in a niche market.

But as infectious as this mood may be, it does nothing to contribute what Wired.com needs most: structure and a coherent voice. With no apparent frame of reference, the energy each headline generates quickly dissipates into an indifferent shrug.

A random array of articles: no news there.
As is true of the vast majority of online journalism, the factoid feast begins at the top, mitigated somewhat by colorful photography, and quickly descends into a list of lists by the bottom of the home page. Questionable in its own rite, this practice would make even the most devoted readers glaze over and click away.

Obviously, this is not an issue destined to keep present presidents or future futurists awake at night. But in terms of managing, collecting and coordinating the tidal wave of ideas that wash across digital space every minute, I think web sites like Wired.com have the potential to do the world a great service. If they could find a way to distribute this vast wealth of information, infotainment, editorial, advertorial and analysis more coherently—we’d all be a bit better off.

Why? It would contribute to a more rapid assimilation of the thinking behind technical developments by non-technical folk. The issue here is not just a matter of improving Science Education in the U.S. (a worthy cause on its own) but of preparing U.S. citizens to make informed decisions about the impact of technology on society and the environment.

The flood next time…
So, while there’s an undeniable glee in jumping from a news article about WikiLeaks, to a human interest story about Atomic Tom, neither article prepares Generation Goo-google to grasp major planet shifting developments like “Vertical Farming.”

Not that any of this is Wired’s problem. For Heaven’s sake, they’re free to publish any kind of e-mag they want. If their focus is entertainment, if their market niche is people with unbridled enthusiasm for what’s new, cool, and/or disturbing—so be it.

But looking at the unreadable blur of article links at the sides and on the bottom of every page, it’s hard to believe a large portion of the magazine’s diligent, incisive reporting isn’t going to waste. As it stands now, whether you’re an iPhone idolater or a devotee of the Droid, if we can’t find a way to organize and channel the flood of unfiltered data, your next best hope is for Hammacher Schlemmer to develop a digital poncho.

Because absent a better way to manage the flow of information, much that is good, useful, insightful and, in many cases, life-changing, will simply get washed away.

[October 9. 2010]

Of the many ambiguous topics that haunt an ambiguous business, the idea of what’s “consumer friendly language” ranks high on the list. Its ambiguity has its roots in other areas of continual confusion and controversy: What are the limits of language, and what is the definition of “consumer?”

Despite the fact that the answer to either question is subjective, brands and the agencies who represent them continue to act as if these issues can be resolved with mathematical precision.

Yet despite that conviction, long volleys of back and forth about “what people understand” are not uncommon in agency conference rooms. As with every other business issue, the answer “The Team” comes up with will inevitably have more to do with local politics than a reasoned search for global truths. 

That’s understandable. Though we would like to believe—and our clients demand—that advertising is a quantifiable endeavor, it remains what it always has been: a craft.

Attempting to elevate a craft’s rules of thumb to the status of scientific theory is, I’m afraid, one of the saddest delusions of the American marketing industry. 

False assumptions.
Just look at the phrase itself: “Consumer Friendly Language.” The underlying assumption, that there is, in the abstract, a universal Language of Consumers that “everyone” can grasp is a rank absurdity. Until such time as we have developed some sort of precision-crafted “psycho camera,” we’re never going to know what “everyone” understands.

Any definition of “Consumer Friendly Language” is therefore subjective. And the first step to addressing the issues implied by the term is to admit that, however we define it, we can only do so with a rule of thumb. 

Now, just for the record, by “rule of thumb,” I don’t mean we should use our thumb-knuckles to measure the length of the copy. Should I have used this idiomatic expression, which may or may not be familiar to an English speaker in Mumbai, Edenborough, Waco, Osaka or Oslo? Maybe I should run a focus group on the topic…

Or maybe I should just be me: a real person writing to other real people with the intelligence and experience to dial up a blog post, and who, should they really be confused by an idiomatic expression, have the aptitude to consult Google. 

Few generalities.
OK, perhaps there are a few general parameters we can use as a reliable measure of what’s “friendly” and what’s not. Certainly, jargon words from most technical fields are, by definition, off limits. That’s why I’ve studiously avoided the word “semiotic” in this discussion. Oh, my bad…On the other hand, sometimes jargon crosses over. 

Anyone, for example, who’s watched a Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movie in the last 25 years knows what “closure” is, a term taken from some branches of psychology. Try telling that to your VP of Marketing, however, and you might as well settle in. It’s going to be a long rant. 

But aside from a few generalities, the rest of our decisions have more to do with our assessment of our ownabilities than it does with our assessment of our audience’s abilities. “I understand this,” says the proud graduate of Albuquerque College of Business Sciences, “but then, I have a Master’s Degree in Communication. The consumer…”

Understanding: so misunderstood.
In the end, the problem really stems from a misunderstanding of how language actually communicates. Having evolved over 10,000 years, it’s a little too late to teach Human language to communicate like Chicken McNuggets, storing its meaning, all nice and tidy, in cute little red boxes. To clarify your message, the answer, in other words, is not to chop every sentence into bite size chunks, but to say less in each communication.

Ultimately, comprehension, Master’s Degree or no, comes down to how many different trains of thought you’re asking a reader to entertain at one time. This is something that can’t be fixed at the level of individual words or sentences. There’s no amount of “rewriting” that can make an overly dense message less so.

What, then, is “Consumer Friendly Language?” 
The answer’s irrelevant. What we should be asking—before anyone starts making tracked changes—is “What is a Motivating Message and How Can I Keep Secondary Topics From Interfering with It?” While this may disappoint the keepers of the flame of Added Value, it’s time we realize we’re drowning ourselves and our audiences in too much information. That’s what’s unfriendly and that’s where our editing process should begin.

[October 6, 2009]

Predicting the death of advertising has practically become a cottage industry. Google calls up 2,780,000 resultsfor the topic, dating back as far as 1999. Citing everything from smaller commissions to the rise of social networking, people seem downright anxious to kick the dead emperor.

As always, it’s an ideology thing. Question the alarm bells and you might as well lie down in the tar pits next to a triceratops. But this is exactly the kind of all-or-nothing thinking that drove American automakers into receivership.

Ironically, once you scratch the surface, you realize the doomsayers aren’t really talking about advertising. They’re obsessing over a decline in recall rates for TV commercials. Excuse me, but advertising is not about TV. Besides, maybe TV spots simply aren’t as memorable as they used to be, precisely because they’re shot under the baleful eye of knuckle-rapping statisticians.

Never mind, the issue isn’t critical, because TV isn’t advertising. TV is just a medium. Advertising is about brands—and people are more brand-conscious than ever. I mean, when was the last time one of your friends stored their music in anything else but an iPod^®?

Besides, if traditional advertising were so moribund, a trip to BestBuy would already be a nightmare. “Should I take the black box three rows down,” you’d wonder, “or the one on the top left? They all look the same…” Out in the real world, brands are everywhere. And they’re everywhere because advertising works.

Yes, things are changing. The social Web gives consumers a new voice. And sometimes they use that voice to complain about advertising. Why not? There have always been ugly, manipulative and stupid advertisements. “Before the revolution” one heard these complaints, offline, every day of the week.

But the issue has never been whether people like advertising. What matters is what happens in supermarkets, showrooms or digital forums. There you’ll hear people comparing the very product benefits and features they picked up from TV, radio, print, outdoor, retail or digital advertising.

Claiming that advertising is dead due to social media is like claiming that screwdrivers have made hammers obsolete. Brands have always been built with a variety of media. As I see it, people who insist that social media marketing is anything else but advertising are just whistling in the dark. When a popular blogger starts weaving product placements into every post, I doubt people feel any better about it than they do about Tony the Tiger on the tube.

Of course, saying “advertising is dead” is a lot easier than reimagining advertising for a digital age. But thinking it is more than misguided. Reductive thinking like this kills Innovation on sight—by demoting Strategy to a match game of ossified dos and don’ts.

Until, in the end, the only thing threatened with extinction is our collective imagination.

[September 24, 2010]

Out of necessity, laziness and unexamined habit, we tend to produce Web sites in stages, as carried out by specialists working in isolation. While there’s definitely a need for people to gather their thoughts in their own head space, everyone involved should start working collaboratively as soon as possible. 

One obstacle to meaningful collaboration is an inability to “grok” the meaning of the word. The copywriter who bakes a series of headlines into a pun and walks away is no more a collaborator than the art director who insists a couple of reams of stock art, a cloned navigation gimmick and a pre-fabricated color palette is a creative concept. 

Let’s be clear: Collaboration means you actually have to talk to each other.

On a digital project, additional creative partners, the information architect, and perhaps a content strategist, also need to be part of the discussion. It’s a confluence of influence thing many creatives never grasp—especially if their creative process is a cross between “Mad Libs” and “Broken Telephone.” 

So given my tape-loop obsession with this topic, how can a true, collaborative process yield better results?

Vamp ’til ready.
Consider, if you will, the typical site map, replete with landing pages for each section. Rigid adherence to this model often leads to reams of redundant content, dragging with it redundant images and redundant cross links. To eliminate all that “blah, blah, blah,” Copy and Architecture must routinely discuss whether the available content density actually needs to be summarized.

In other words, is there really enough to say about “The Product X Difference” to warrant a stand-alone section? Or would it be better to let “Difference” emerge from specific key points throughout the site? 

The answer becomes more critical the more your client insists on certain immutable phrases. Speaking as someone who was once required to weave the phrase “The Magic of Disney” into every page of a promotional piece, I’m here to testify the effect can be deadly. The more of this noxious offal the client demands, the leaner the rest of the content has to be.

Density Denial.
An understanding of content density is also important for the visual team. Because within the heart of every Art Director lives an idealized White Space Utopia in which a gloriously rendered image basks comfortably in a soothing aura of delicious proportion, shimmering light, demure shadow and sensuous color. It’s the hallowed realm of The Simple, The Balanced and The Pure that’s spoken of only in whispers. Left to their own devices, Art Directors will always draw from that happy place first. 

And that can be trouble. In most cases a quick look at the quantity of mandatory boilerplate copy would make the design process a lot more realistic. Sadly, the battle for white space is often lost before the project starts, when a client decides to pick up acres of existing copy, no matter how amateurish, in the name of a doubtful Efficiency. 

Again, the solution is collaboration. Copy and Art need to talk about content density from the start. There’s no use going into denial about it, just because you’d like to see your name in OneShow.

Listen. Invent. Enjoy.
Moving from this analytical view to the specific creative landscape, a writer must also be prepared to work within the confines of that reality. While the well-worn phrase “less is more” will never have much meaning outside of its original context, a collaborative writer knows when it’s time to shut up. That’s good for the site in a number of ways, but chiefly because it helps writers maintain a conceptual orientation to the project.

It also helps them welcome the problems that, when solved collaboratively, produce some of the most enjoyable, insightful moments this line of work has to offer.

[September 17, 2010]

If you’ve gone into copywriting because you love to write, you may someday realize you’ve chosen the wrong path. Stripped of sugar coating, the profession boils down to a simple truth: The more narrowly you define yourself as “a writer,” the more likely you’ll drown in the whitewater thrill-ride of agency life. 

There are several reasons for this, but the most important is the common perception that “anyone can write.” People who believe that also believe a copywriter’s function is analogous to a carpenter’s. 

“Make it shorter,” one hears, “make it stronger,” make it:

• Faster
• Harder
• Hipper
• Punchier
• Wittier
• Sexier
• Sassier

…and my personal favorite, “more woman-friendly,” as if women belonged to a different species, spoke a different dialect than men, or worse, as if an essential delicacy required writers to type more softly when they wrote for women. 

With the whirlwind of contradictory impulses driving the copywriter to revise and revise and revise again, it’s easy to see why many talented creatives get swept into the backwaters of the business. Too busy to look up from Word, they shuffle from meeting to meeting, surviving only by virtue of their ability to edit out the most egregious violations of common sense—that “everyone who can write” wishes to impose on the text.

Shift your focus.
There is, however, a way off that treadmill. You must realize that the job is, fundamentally, not about writing at all. You must shift focus from “What words should I use?” to “What message will motivate my audience?” 

Instead of writing “catalog copy,” “retail copy,” “CPG Copy,” “pharma copy,” “brochure copy,” “envelope copy,” “banner copy,” “website copy,” learn all you can about the person you’re trying to move. Then with a clear vision of the target, create an underlying message platform. Why? Because real creative copy, like any other living organism, needs a backbone, a focal point for the central nervous system that will transmit a meaningful message from one real person to another.

But building such a platform—in concert with an Art Director who can see past the light box—is only Step One. 

Sell it…but not with words.
The next step is to sell this platform to the internal team. Terrific copy is a key component of success, but no more so than clean clothes or the absence of garlic breath. What counts is whether you can sell your message platform as a clear path to motivating consumers. But you won’t sell it with words. You’ll sell it with charm, humor, enthusiasm and drama.

Once the internal race is run, you’re ready to assume yet another role that, on paper, has nothing to do with being a “writer.” At the client presentation, your ability to sell needs an extra boost from your talent as an educator. 

Whether out of inexperience or an addiction to the role of Devil’s Advocate, clients typically can’t accept a creative idea on its own merits. Clients need context, numbers, competitive analysis—and reassurance that your concept is a considered response to the brief. While a strategist can create the backdrop, and an account exec can set up the lighting, only you and your visual partner can teach the client how to grasp your concept’s underlying drama. 

Finally, you must perform. Your presentation must embody your belief in the concept and your confidence in your team’s ability to bring it to life. 

Drop the mouse and back away from the keyboard.
And should you get the green light, that’s still not your cue to crawl back to the keyboard and pig out on prepositional phrases. You must help the Visual team create a visual environment that meets the demands of language. For if a picture is worth 1000 words, it’s still up to Copy creatives to ensure it’s the right 1000 words—the ones that teach consumers “the name of action.”

Seen from this perspective, “Copywriter” is a woefully inadequate job title. Yet, handed down as it is from an utterly different era, the title is only as limiting as the vision of the person wearing it.

[September 10, 2010]

Take a job as a Copywriter and you’ll barely get the chair warm before a brief slides across your desk. Buried somewhere on page 37, you’re likely to find some mention of “conversational tone.” It’s a reasonable, long-standing request, but one more often defined by what it’s not than what it is. 

We all claim to recognize the stiff, formulaic writing of “the old days.” But since conversational styles change over time, vary by region and feel the impact of age, gender and belief system, a universal definition of “conversational tone” is hard to nail down. In many respects, we’ve simply replaced old, stiff generic formulas with new, stiff generic formulas. 

Set the conversation-a-tron to “earnest.”
Over time, a species of bland patter has evolved. It has that familiar rhythm of alternating short and long phrases or the adorable use of ellipsis at just the right moment to…you know…create the illusion the writer is…um…making the text up in real time. Next in line for induction into the Faux Authentic Hall of Fame is the evocation of classic comic book diction. Ouch. 

My question is, does this ritualized representation of conversation actually connect to consumers any better than a formal essay? While it might not turn people away as fast as The Queen’s English, I’m not convinced it helps them retain your message, much less act on it. 

By itself, writing style can’t guarantee results. Striking a genial tone or peppering the text with anecdotes accomplishes nothing. At most, it can associate a brand with “what’s hip,” or rather, with the simulacrum of hip currently condoned by the agency business and/or mainstream Hollywood dialogue. 

Why even go there, Dude?
To write effective conversational copy, it’s important for the writer and everyone else with “input” to grasp the difference between conversation and:

•Entertainment
•Atmosphere
•Fictional Narrative
•Syrupy Rhetoric

It’s not, in other words, a question of style or format. What matters is whether the writer has a real desire to get something specific across to someone in particular. Despite the soothing allure of statistical reduction, the people you’re trying to reach have many more shades of emotion, personality, interest and intellect, than the pale paradigms of market research will ever allow. 

Keepers of the one true style.
Yet, even in rare cases when a writer has an intimate understanding of the core audience, obstacles to effective conversational writing crop up everywhere. Chief among them is the persistence of archaic ideas about grammar. 

There’s no better way to stiffen up a writer’s diction than to insist on “the rules.” Ironically, the most fanatical grammarians are those who know least about the topic:

Send the copydeck to myself when it’s ready.

…says the person most likely to get all wet in the waistband about the use of “like” as a conjunction. 

Another obstacle to establishing a true conversational tone is lack of awareness about idiomatic expressions and regional variation. Long after mainstream acceptance of an idiom has been documented in TV, film, literature, drama and theater, there are still plenty of people with a bee in their bonnet about “correctitude.”

Trying to hop when your “hip” is broken.
At the same time, even the most benign creative environment is only as good as the creative who steps into it. For their part, writers need to develop an unerring sense for when a familiar idiomatic expression is past its prime. If you catch someone writing, “bee in their bonnet,” take them aside. They’re in danger of sounding like a character in a British comedy from the early 1960s. 

Why does this matter? For one and only one reason: Whatever device of tone, intent or metaphor advertising takes, it exists solely to sell. Whether it’s a miracle towel or an urgent plea to support medical research, the impact must be immediate, driving, motivating and memorable. Derail your customer’s train of thought with a “Huh?” and their attention starts to wander. 

Yet even the most finely-tuned sense of idiomatic time and place is of no use, unless the writing conjures up a believable, well-rounded persona. The hollow, unctuous tone adopted by the average press release is no more appropriate for our purposes than the sterile, pseudo-objectivity manufactured by mass media news organizations. 

Especially now, when your customers’ idea of “what sounds natural” has been influenced by the snippy snippets they trade with each other in social space, just being perky is no longer enough. Want to start a revolution in copywriting? You could do a lot worse than to address your audience simply and honestly—as people you might meet someday in a post-global warming lifeboat.

[September 3, 2010]

It’s no surprise that the topic of branding is an ongoing obsession for American businesses of any size and shape. As a one-way, no-frills trip to Alltop can tell you, there seem to be a fair number of people who’d much rather talk about branding than actually talk to their customers. To that extent, they’re a lot like some politicians or radio personalities who pour a lot more effort into building a better megaphone than in having something coherent to say.

Not that there’s anything wrong with tinkering with the mechanics of a discipline or using an intellectual apparatus to help fine-tune your perception of the issues. But kept up indefinitely, its productive value slides down to zero. As far as I can see, the only people who profit from a constant crisis of thought or consciousness are cult leaders. “More work is desperately needed, to stem the tide of [insert ideological bogeyman here].”

At some point, that is, you need to stop talking and actually say something. 

Which came first, the icon or the iconic?
Of course, at a superficial level, branding is just an icon, in the broadest sense, that engages our shared vocabulary of cultural symbols. Even if, for instance, Lightbulb Ideas, LTD didn’t go for the obvious in its logo, the sense of burgeoning creative productivity comes across fairly well. You could say the company name and this magic wand imagery give the company two hooks into our consciousness. 

But before anyone cries “mixed metaphor,” remember, an icon is just a starting point. This company—whatever it is—is by all appearances just starting up, as of 9-3-10. Should they produce a fabulous product or steer CEOs to fantastical profits through consulting wizardry, who’ll care that their icon is one part Edison, one part Harry Potter and one part popcorn popper?

I’m symbolizin’ it.
In a related sense, while the “I’m Loving It” campaign has given McDonald’s a slightly more contemporary voice on paper, my impression of its value is far more shaped by the condition of its washrooms than this latter day variant of “Singing in the Rain.” For my money, the globe spanning restauranteur rapide would get far more value from holding its franchise owners to higher standards of cleanliness. After all, what reason do I have to believe the kitchen’s any cleaner?

So in this instance, “branding” of a less abstract variety would be far more motivating and maybe even cheaper than the 60 second spots I’ve had to endure for decades now. Of course, the joke’s on me, since Ronald McDonald has the last laugh in terms of sales. Here again, however, this positive outcome has much more to do with the appeal of its actual product than its clever merger of The Golden Arches from the 1950s with Mr. Smiley Face from the 1960s.

Millions of people like Chicken McNuggets, end of story. And according to any meaningful definition of branding, the McDonald’s brand is the promise of delivering a predictable fat, salt, slurp, crunch and sugar buzz—”healthy salads” not withstanding. 

Mr. Vader? It’s your mom on Line 2.
What? No, I will not take a message.
That’s why, the longer I hang out in this industry, the more convinced I am that ad agencies should spend more time advising brands to deliver a valid product—and less time teaching them to whistle a happy tune. 

You want to sell more, want better press? Instead of asking us what shade of lipstick would bring out your pig’s eyes, how about dropping the arrogant posture, actually honoring your legal commitments and, excuse me, prepping your CEO’s compensation package for bariatric surgery? Do that and then we might have something to sell. Fact is, for example, no one will believe BP is destined to get “Beyond Petroleum” if it can’t get beyond its callous disregard for human lives or, for that matter, the future of life on this planet.

In this context, then, what does “branding” matter? I mean, we all love a paycheck, but if I’m going to earn my pay, my best advice to companies like BP or AIG, etc., etc. is “Clean up your act.” Trust me on this, running an honest business will do a lot more for your brand than 19 rounds of changes on your logo font or mission statement could ever hope to.

But if, in the end, the advertising industry’s only raison d’être is to make the social crimes of major corporations more palatable, it’s time we took a closer look at our own brand—and stopped wagging our tongues about “retooling for an era when consumers demand and get more control over the brand narrative.”

[September 30, 2010]

As of 9-30-10 there are 78,100,000 Google results for the phrase “This Changes Everything.” Allowing for redundancy, that’s still pretty hefty. So it surprises me to see this same phrase as the umbrella headline for Apple’s iPhone4 Web site.

Why, I wonder, would someone devote so much ingenuity to developing a product with, for example, the most comprehensive video-phone solution available, and then attempt to promote it with the very tatters and rags of traditional marketing?

“This Changes Everything. Again,” the headline ineffectively and arrogantly proclaims. “Everything” is, after all, kind of a tall order. Irony aside, it has the unintended effect of placing iPhone’s promotional envelope in the same neighborhood as the American snake-oil merchants of nearly two centuries back.

Worse, it helps to further enlarge the scope of the technoconnection mania that is gradually warping Americans’ sense of what’s real. Since technoconnection is the center of the universe, so the subtext goes, any product that enhances your ability to technoconnect makes “everything” essentially better. 

Losing touch via touch screen.
If there were any doubt that the ease of manipulation and transmission of digital data is warping the American mind—not to say the American political discourse—two examples give me cause for grave concern. One is the recent smearing of U.S. Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod with a doctored video “shared” by Andrew Breitbart. The other is the unfathomably cruel posting of captured spy-cam video on a college campus earlier this month.

I mention these incidents to highlight the unintended consequences of the hysteria over “new media.” People of all ages are losing touch with reality. As the Sherrod incident shows, we’ve reached the point where the mere presence of a video in digital space is enough to validate its truthfulness. 

Firing Sherrod based on this kind of evidence is appalling, not only in a moral sense, but because of what it says about our decaying faculties of critical thinking. That it should have been done by the very people we look to to lead the fight against mass-media trash-talk just shows how far the disease has progressed.

OK, maybe this is a lot of weight to put on a home page headline. 
But I can’t help being disturbed by this shoddy, irresponsible use of language by a major brand, especially when hyping anything associated with such a deep, social malaise. On the other hand, no one can blame Facebook for the appearance of a mythmaking movie about “The Social Network.” 

We have to take responsibility for that ourselves. While on a certain level, there’s plenty of evidence that the primate brain is hard-wired for mirror gazing, I’ve never seen such a blatant example of narcissism as people going on Facebook to discuss their viewing of the Facebook movie. 

Excuse me, but if anything were “everything” it wouldn’t be sharing photos or “Likes” with your phone on a social media platform. It also wouldn’t be pretending to save the world by counting the plastic bottles you purportedly don’t use.

Every day, the elevation of digital media to Messianic status leads us farther away from actually dealing with crushing social, cultural, environmental and economic issues that threaten to rip the world apart. Even digital communities with a less trivial focus are only as good as the action members take in the real world. 

Selling reality for a handful of beams.
If what started as a complaint about bad craftsmanship on a home page has morphed into a discussion of larger issues, it’s only because it’s no longer possible to see what happens in digital space as “just an ad.” At least until such time as there’s a vaccine against our current addiction to techoconnection, brands need to think more deeply about the long-range implications of their messaging. 

In a world where many people’s grasp of reality has been seriously eroded by media hype, even a bad headline can have an enormous impact. Unless something is done, we’re rapidly moving to a situation in which Reality itself will be totally co-opted: kidnapped during the night and replaced by a digital changeling.

[August 27, 2010]

The appeal of sharing photos, video, mp3s or website faves comes from a basic impulse to connect. Sent and received spontaneously, it’s the equivalent of the quick wave across a crowded supermarket, the “just checking in” call or the abbreviated hieroglyphs of SMS-ese. It is, for a wide swath of the population, the main reason they enter digital space and why they find it hard to leave for an increasingly nebulous real world.

Yet when every major news service, political action group or cause has staked out a plot of leptonic real estate, there’s less need every day to de-virtualize your perception of the world. As with the person I saw in an elevator yesterday with a smart phone in each hand, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest “the world” is being replaced by “the screen.”

What this adds up to is a permanent change in our definition of civilization and perhaps of humanity itself. Like it or not, the incursion of digital space into every aspect of our lives doesn’t have the feel of a passing fad. It’s a structural change that will see its first culmination in the development of true artificial intelligence. 

At that point, one-on-one interaction with data streams will reach a peak of customization and personalization. “What do I want to know?” you’ll ask, and a metadigital brain stem will tell you—based, at least nominally, on your stated preferences.

Disposable or sustainable?
Given that, there’s a certain irony in the current state of digital space, especially in terms of how it shapes and manages shared content. Five years after Facebook, uploaded material still sits in the equivalent of an offline landfill: uncatalogued, uncross-referenced and unregarded by those outside the intended inner circle.

Failing a randomized Stumble, or Googlian metatag malfunction, there it sits. Privacy issues aside, and not to minimize them, it seems like a colossal waste. 

Take, for example, Toyota’s Facebook presence. As of 8-26-10, it’s dominated by an agreeably cute campaign, encouraging fans to share their “Auto-biography,” the story of their experiences in and around the world’s most recalled car. The stories are engaging enough on their own, but taken together, they’re part of a bigger message about the American experience. 

Trouble is, this message buried under layers of access: Sign on to Facebook, find the Toyota page and, of course, own a Toyota since, without membership in that inner circle, you’d never think to listen in.

Message in a bottle, bottle in a landfill. 
Yet it’s a message we need to hear, to work out the next phase of our cultural evolution—as we move from a society oriented toward nature to a society oriented toward technology. While it might seemed that process is complete, I argue that our frame of reference is still deeply rooted in nature. Think about this the next time you call someone a “pig,” a “cougar,” or a “mall rat.”

As a culture, we’re in a state of transition that’s badly stalled. The resolution of this identity crisis, as worldview gives way to screenview, can only come from understanding how it changes our definition of ourselves. The seismic anxiety this has caused in the collective unconscious is reflected in our frantic embrace of electronic sharing.

People are searching for guideposts, asking for consensus, demanding to be noticed, praying they won’t be drowned out by the cultural tsunami on the shoreline. The longer this cumulative message stays indecipherable, the longer we’ll be stuck between two cultures. 

Living in the “hear and know.”
As I see it, how we manage this extraordinary outpouring of aspirational, visionary, emotional and intellectual energy will determine the course of our cultural evolution. So far, the landfill-warehousing model isn’t working: vital information is being lost or ignored. 

At the very least, I believe, we need to do more to integrate the output of shared content into the ground plans of every website, “webvertorial” or any other form of distributed content. Are we creating content that’s sharable? Are we speaking fluent “Share-lish,” that highly layered language of text, still- and moving-images? 

Now, I’m the last person to say text alone doesn’t communicate. But to engage and maximize the positive impact that shared content can have on our future as a culture, any web presence with more than one content module needs to merge with moving traffic that—come what may—is taking us into a new realm of consciousness.

[August 13, 2010]

[This post reflects the state of the sites discussed at the time. The issues raised are still relevant to the discussion of digital financial advertising in the US.]

Imagine the following conversation:

“Hello, I want to tell you something important.”
“OK, what?”
“It is something that will meet your conversational needs.”
“That’s cool…I guess.”
“I promise it will be something you value, appreciate and may find entertaining.”
“Can you get to the point?”
“Click here for more information.”

While it might read like a free translation of Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano or a deleted scene from Becket’s Waiting for Godot, this latter-day reenactment of théâtre de l’absurde is a perfect likeness of what takes place on countless Web sites across digital space, especially in the B2B realm.

Case in point, schwab.com. It practices a kind of communication we might gently refer to as “ritualized.” True to its origins in classic absurdist drama, everyday phrases are strung together in ways that evoke sense without actually making any.

Take for example, the subheads lying under the headline “How to choose an investment firm:”

Get the information you need to evaluate investment firms
Find the right investment firm for you

But wait, your entry into the Palace of Redundancy isn’t complete. At the bottom of the page you’ll find:

To get started, visit Steps to Consider, learn the
Facts and Figures for comparing firms, or read about
finding The Right Fit for you.

Are we there yet? Apparently not:•

• The first link takes us to: “Take the right steps as you choose a firm.” 
• The second link: “Identify the facts you need to compare firms”
• And the third: “Choose the firm that feels right for you”

So, from “How to choose an investment firm” to “Choose the firm that feels right for you” we’ve traveled six clicks. Throughout the site, this wind-up-to-the-wind-up-to-the-wind-up continues unabated.

The next nav-tab, “Why Schwab” continues along the same absurdist lines:

The personal relationship you want
The fact-based guidance you need
The value you look for

For my money, these subheads deliver nothing except a textbook example of parallel verbal structure: “The blank you want. The blank you need. The blank you blank.” At least if the writing committee had filled in the blanks with the words “roast beef” they might have caught my attention. That’s something I value.

Nor does the body copy deliver even a hint of substance as, here again, each subsection leads me to another branch of this creaky, informationless architecture. Only two tabs into this site and this constant cross-reference to another section is starting to remind me of an old fashioned shell game, where my attention is always distracted from the truth.

Instead of delivering value upfront, schwab.com gives me hollow reassurances. I’m not convinced because:

• Quality time with an over-cologned investment broker doesn’t sound like a plus
• Advice based on facts is the minimum I expect from a professional consultant
• Excuse me, you don’t know what I value

And no matter how deep I dig into this dreary site, it never gets to the meat of the matter. Keep in mind that underlying this initial one-two punch is a deep message running something like this:

“To choose the right investment firm, get the facts. And when you get the facts,
  you’ll realize: The only choice is Schwab.”

That message, however, is drowned out by the hollow ring of platitudinous nonsense. As a final example, I offer the following subheads, found under “Banking & Lending:” 

Great rates and personalized service
for all your banking and investing needs.
Put the power of Schwab behind your trades. 

It’s another instance of B2B marketing’s favorite hall of mirrors: “We have the services you need to meet your needs and the needs of those who need to see your needs met.”

Now, in the same example there’s the intriguing phrase: “The power of Schwab.” More intriguing is the question it begs. If we’re to believe that “the power of Schwab” is the key differentiator for this brand, why is the one link to Charles Schwab himself relegated to a tiny thumbnail on a few feature navigation panels? His “advice to investors,” you’d think, would sing out on the home page.

Oh, but there’s not enough room. All the space is taken up with critical praise from Kiplinger’s and JD Power and Associates. Hmm. I kind of thought Charles Schwab was the expert here. If he needs validation from Kiplinger’s and JD Power, maybe I should be going to them for financial advice.

Or am I just being absurd?