• by Jeff Einstein , December 14, 2004

Many media theorists view media as its own distinct ecology. If so, today's media would have to rank among the most polluted ecosystems on the planet, so much so in fact that we now invest billions of dollars in time-shifting and filtering technologies just for the opportunity to clean up our own private media environments.

The media ecosystem now reflects massive pollution and sustained abuse at every level: personal (between our ears), local, national, and global. Increased bandwidth is interpreted exclusively as an opportunity to pump more tonnage through the pipeline, irrespective and mindless of any potential damage either to consumers or to the advertising and marketing industries involved.

There is currently a war afoot between media professionals intent on clear-cutting each new media forest they find, and media reform and media literacy advocates who rue the fallen trees and suggest alternative forms of media (to which the media professionals say, "Great, more new forests to clear cut.").

The only way to respect our media ecology is to first accept the notion of discrete media ecosystems with distinct limitations, ecosystems that like all others may require active oversight and management (not to mention the regulatory equivalent of an occasional "No Dumping" billboard) to prevent the extinction of the species that call them home.

I would suggest that the broad acceptance of time-shifting and filtering technologies is an early indication of individual and collective consumer efforts to protect media ecosystems, even if we don't actively identify them as such.

All organizations, corporate or otherwise, already moderate and control their internal media ecosystems, usually as a means to prevent abuse and what any potential abuse may expose them to: escalating carriage and delivery costs, reduced productivity, and increased liability. As individuals, we do the same things for the same reasons.

All of the above, however, alludes only to half the equation, and speaks exclusively to defensive efforts to protect ourselves against the media onslaught that threatens the quality of our lives. So far, we are only talking about the cleanup efforts, and haven't addressed the source of the pollution itself. What about the obligations of the upriver media and marketing companies to monitor and mitigate their own media effluence, before it floats downstream and creates another media Love Canal?

Why do media and marketing companies feel entitled to abuse the media ecology? The answers are manifold:

• because technologically and legally they can • because financially they can afford to • because they make more money when they do • because they can always hide behind the First Amendment when anyone demands social accountability • because entitlement is what the media sells, first and foremost.

According to the media, we are entitled to a new car regardless of our credit histories. We are entitled to a college diploma and better job no matter how often we cheat or lie. We are entitled to acid-free digestion and slender waistlines regardless of how much we stuff our faces. We are entitled to free or subsidized health care. Poor people are entitled to Internet access, while wealthier people are entitled to high-speed bandwidth, and equally entitled to the requisite spam filters and pop-up blockers to help justify the experience. The list of modern entitlements - not to mention the regulations that enforce them - goes on forever.

Of all the reasons to pollute the media ecology cited above, the prevailing sense of entitlement causes me the most concern. Entitlement as a social motivator is a modern plague. It suppresses innovation and increases inertia and resistance to change, both at work and at home. Why should anyone work for something they already feel entitled to? Indeed, why should anyone work at all? Or try anything new?

Why should any media professional show restraint beyond that mandated by budget and fear of the FCC? The answer is simple: Because restraint - the opportunity to say no to our conditioned default response mechanisms - creates opportunity and fuels innovation.

The long hours, impossible deadlines, and excruciating pressures that characterize the ROI-driven media business today mask a subtle contradiction: that ROI - with all of the requisite hours, deadlines, and pressures - is the easy solution, the minimum daily adult requirement. ROI is now a conditioned default response, a concession to digital technologies that we seek to control but in fact control us.

By contrast, restraint in the media ecology forces us to think outside the box and find solutions that are more sustainable (and more creative) than our current path. Just as government-imposed factory emission standards have done much in the past two decades to clean our air and water and improve the quality of life, restraint - self-imposed or otherwise - will do much to clean a polluted media ecosystem, and much to restore the creative culture to the agencies, the real reason why clients contract them in the first place.

Creativity is the byproduct of restrained chaos. Anyone can shout or turn up the volume (the current state of advertising and marketing arts). But few agencies (and even fewer advertisers) have the cultural wherewithal nowadays to resist the default ROI imperative long enough to consider more creative and less damaging alternatives. For the most part, the agency culture is just plain exhausted, and rightfully so. And thus comes the default attraction to ROI. For all of its enervating attributes, it still represents the easy way out, the course of least resistance.

Two existential questions now face the agency and marketing cultures:

1) Can we sustain a business model that puts ROI first in lieu of other motivations? The Utopian promises that drove the dot-com boom workforce - unlimited wealth and prosperity, the prospect of early retirement, and the sheer adrenalin rush from being part of something so big and powerful - are gone, shattered in the dot-com bust. Gone accordingly is much of the creative talent that fueled the boom and heated our passions. What remains is an ever-expanding and insatiable bandwidth, and the digital tools to fill it. The quality of the message loses out to our increasing ability to deliver it. Forget the adrenalin high: We have now reached the stage where we require ever-larger and more expensive doses of the same drug just to keep the cold sweats at bay.

2) Who will be the first to impose restraint: the industry itself, consumers, or the government? In lieu of any meaningful industry efforts to protect the media ecology, the task will fall by default to consumers and the government, both of whom seem increasingly inclined to exercise their power. It will likely be only a matter of a few short years until the first civil action lawsuits against the media industry start naming names.

Next week I will suggest concrete methodologies to reinvigorate the agency/client relationship through the re-introduction of creative restraint as a productivity tool, and as a means to protect the media ecology.

Many thanks, as always, and best to you and yours this holiday season...

Please note: The Einstein's Corner discussion group at http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/einsteinscorner/ is dedicated to exploring the adverse effects of our addictions to technology and media on the quality of our lives, both at work and at home. Please feel free to drop by and join the discussion.