We note with interest an item regarding advertising in the August 6th New York Times: "It's an Ad, Ad, Ad, Ad world."
The gist of it is that David Kenny, CEO of the Boston-based Digitas Advertising, envisions, "a global digital ad network that uses offshore labor to create thousands of versions of ads. Then, using data about consumers and computer algorithms, the network will decide which advertising message to show at which moment to every person who turns on a computer, cellphone or -- eventually -- a television..."
This little gem has a number of offensive facets -- starting with the name of Mr. Kenny's advertising agency -- Digitas. It's one of those abysmal, depressing, futuristic, made up and focus grouped names. The spell check feature in Microsoft Word underlines it in red, for heaven's sake. Harrumph.
Then there ist the phrase, "...global digital ad network that uses offshore labor to create thousands of versions of ads..." IJust look at that cascade of offending words.
"Global." "Digital." "Ad." "Network." "Offshore labor," And, "Thousands of versions of ads."
Fully twelve of the sixteen words in the phrase help impart an image of a Big Brother, techno-dismal future, where digital coolies halfway around the world tend servers that send you and me customized advertising messages -- penis patch spam on steroids, I guess -- while smug advertising executives in more occidental environments monitor spreadsheets and make billions.
This in lieu of 30-second television commercials, and newspaper and magazine ads -- including those in which beautiful, near-naked, pouty, androgynous models hawk fashionable clothing even as they make the print version of Vanity Fair all but impossible to read in bed.
Get the pitchforks and torches. Start boiling the oil. They're coming. With their web crawlers and cookie enablers and God only knows what, the smug new masters of messaging are opening soon on a cell phone near you. Time to develop a strategy to fend them off.
I would suggest we -- all of us -- assume the same nom (and persona) de web -- a universal alter ego. Let's all become the same fictitious person, and make it impossible for the David Kennys of the world to isolate, profile and then to assail us one at a time with customized advertising messages. There is safety in numbers. Like a school of fish evading the sharks or one of those symphonies of seals evading a pod of killer whales, lets zig and zag as one.
From this point forward, let us be "Rose" -- a 34 year-old, 257 pound librarian in Valentine, Nebraska. Fill in the rest of her persona as you like. Let her be married or divorced, straight or lesbian, Democrat or Republican -- as Rose herself would say, "What-EV-er."
Give the Digitases of the world the old middle digit. Send them a message: Rose says, "Customize this."