Commentary

Einstein's Corner: Patient, Thoughtful Education 101

In his January 11 MediaDailyNews commentary, Chris Schroeder counseled the digital marketing industry to consider "...patient, thoughtful education on the clear distinctions" between illegitimate spyware and legitimate adware in response to Congressman Joe Barton's recent introduction of spyware legislation HR 29.

But who are we educating, who would do the educating, and what would that education look like? Are we educating lawmakers? Isn't that the basic function of lobbyists and political action committees (PACs)? Would we expect the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and/or AIM to launch a consumer-based advertorial campaign to explain the benefits of adware and the dangers of spyware?

Who outside the industry would even bother to notice or care? Perhaps we should borrow a page from the American Beef Council or American Dairy Association playbooks and introduce a grade school education campaign to help promote safe advertising and marketing practices.

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Who wants to make the argument against HR 29's call for "...clear and conspicuous notice" for third-party cookies? Who wants to make that argument when millions of individuals and tens of thousands of corporations are already voting with their purses and wallets by investing billions of dollars in time-shifting and ad filtering technologies? Who wants to promote the delivery of more ads to people who are so clearly willing to pay extra just for the opportunity to zap them?

Moreover, any investigation of the technologies under the hood will lead inevitably to a discussion of the ethical application of those same technologies. Who exactly wants to educate parents on the benefits of the marketing technologies deployed in campaigns that target and market directly to young children, and what would that argument look like?

Patient, thoughtful education may be an appropriate remedy to the problem, but only in a world where someone actually has the patience for thoughtful education. In such a fantastic place, digital marketers and advertisers probably need not apply. After all, we can't very well counsel patience and thoughtfulness while we extol the very same folks to "Buy now while supplies last!"

I would suggest that as digital marketers (and as a society) we long ago moved beyond any real capacity for patient, thoughtful education, and that patient, thoughtful education has instead evolved into a generic industry strategy to promote the interests of any less-than-savory idea, product or service that we are paid to sell.

Patient, thoughtful education is a platitude we invoke whenever we have no real answers but nevertheless are compelled to respond in self-defense. This is why the fast food industry is now among the leading distributors of nutritional information in schools, why Philip Morris now leads the fight against smoking, and why the media industry promotes the War Against Drugs. It's what happens when the addiction and the addicts take over the debate.

No one can argue the notion of patient, thoughtful education on face value. But does the marketing industry really want to educate consumers on the benefits and perils of media technology? Of course not. The best way to win that debate is simply to sell more TVs, more computers, more digital cable, more Internet access, more iPods, more music, more game consoles, more radios, more cell phones, more newspapers, and more magazines. The best way to win that debate is to create an environment wherein obsession and addiction become the primary arbiters.

Patient, thoughtful education has evolved over the years into a defense strategy to buy time so we can sell more. Industries under fire always encourage government studies as a preface to anticipated regulation, not so some over-bloated and pandering government agency can eventually confirm what industry insiders already know, but so the industries themselves can borrow the requisite time to adjust strategies and resources accordingly before the rules change.

In retrospect, patient, thoughtful education is everything the current media environment isn't: patient and thoughtful. We don't want to wait for patient, thoughtful education any more than we want to wait for a slow server to confirm our next online or ATM transaction.

"Privacy and technological efficacy and efficiency are not mutually exclusive in these new worlds, in fact they go hand in hand," according to Mr. Schroeder. Much as I'd like to, I just can't subscribe to that theory. Not when I know for a fact that marketing technologies are expressly designed, purchased, and applied to help someone I don't know invade my privacy and stay in my face and in my dreams on a potential 24/7-basis. Not when marketers know it won't work nowadays unless I can -- at the very least -- see them or hear from them no matter where I am or what I'm doing.

So bandwidth -- and who owns it across the most channels and devices in the most places (locally and globally) -- eventually becomes the dominant issue. After all: "Eat all you want, we'll make more" is the essential media message.

It's not too surprising therefore that our media consumption habits only continue to escalate. Nor is it altogether surprising when our appetites for everything else -- including food, money, celebrity, sex, gambling, drug, and consumer credit (each representing billions of dollars of advertising revenue) -- escalate as well. And it all comes at the cost of our privacy. Let's be clear: Someone has to pay for all this.

Your thoughts?

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.

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