MADISON AVENUE IS TOO DRUNK TO DRIVE.

In last weeks' Ad Age, Bob Garfield wrote in a massive article that "The marketing industry is currently whistling past the graveyard and largely ignoring signs of massive, fundamental changes in how the business of mass marketing will be conducted in the near future. The broadcast TV model is working less well each year and will eventually cave in on itself as it reaches ever-fewer viewers with a fare of low-quality programming and mind-numbing clutter. Marketers will increasingly abandon it." Well that's not completely true. The changes are already happening.

The massive apparatus of global branding is slowly but surely being dismantled. Taken out of week hands and put into strong hands. Last week 15 companies asked me to come in and talk to their senior management about the Garfield article and where I thought he got it right and where I thought he got it wrong.

VOLUME
THIRTY
WEDNESDAY
APRIL 14,
2005

Now, it's not that I'm all that, it's simply that I've been ranting on the subject of Madison Avenold's enfeeblement for the past eight months and word finally got to the top. Maybe dude is on to something here. Every one of those companies asked me what I thought they should do. I gave them all the same advice. Tell your marketing directors to enroll their college-age sons, daughters, nephews and nieces in your agencies' Summer intern programs.

Give them the job of identifying the 10 smartest people in the agency. Give them the task of befriending those ten people during the course of the summer. Then when September rolls around hire those ten people and put them to work building a network of RSS News Feeds for your company.

I don't want you to take this the wrong way, because heaven knows you are pompous enough, but really...don't you think it's time you cleaned up your act? Typos, Broken links, Unfinished pages. If this is the road to "Great," somebody needs to call a tow truck.
Dan E, San Franciscoe-CA

Mia culpa. I'll put a man right on it. Really, I'm not being my usual smart ass about this. I promise to start cleaning up the site this weekend .-HW

RSS is an acronym for Rich Site Summary, an XML format for distributing news headlines on the Web. RSS, has been gaining momentum for the past year and a half, has the potential to overcome many of the content delivery challenges we are facing today. While it currently enjoys only marginal penetration, its usage is growing with astounding speed, powered by the activities of small businesses, Internet publishers, reputable news media, and large web portals.

According to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, based on two nationwide phone surveys conducted in the US in November (1861 Internet users), 5% (6 million) Americans online consume news and information through RSS or XML aggregators. As a content delivery channel RSS allows Marketers to easily deliver Internet content to their target audiences, while eliminating a large part of the external noise and shortcomings of other delivery channels through RSS feedsÐsimple files formatted a certain way.

But the exciting potential of RSS lies not in the technology but in the application of the technology that is currently being used to create a global network of NEWS RADARS. We are fast approaching a point of information overload and these News Radars are using the RSS protocol to create a second layer of filtered content that will allow users to filter the millions of terabytes of information on any given subject into a manageable format through dedicated information channels called News Master Feeds.

Lockergnome.com, one of the most popular tech sites on the Web today, used to distribute more than 400.000 e-mail newsletters weekly. Today, they have 5 times more RSS subscribers than e-mail subscribers. Also, their RSS clickthrough rates are 500% greater than their e-mail clickthrough rates, which means that now more people actually read their content and respond to it. BTI Communications Group is a small VoIP solutions provider, but has to complete with large VoIP corporations with much greater visibility and resources.

But using RSS they achieved #1 search engine rankings for their most important keywords, such as VoIP solution provider on Google. While their larger competitors are investing in Pay-Per-Click search engine campaigns, the BTI Communications Group is achieving top positions for free.

RSS also allows companies to publish their own "podcast", through a special RSS feed, which carries audio. In effect it allows them to create an audio "radio station" for getting interviews, webinars, and product demonstrations to prospects, without having to worry about too large e-mail attachments.

Podcasting is now so effective that GM recently used it to announce its 2006 model line up. By leveraging this emerging RSS technology as part of their global e-marketing efforts, a company will be able to create a significant network of NEWS MASTERS for each of its business units. These News Masters can search out and disseminate a constant news feed of product news, edited user endorsements, product reviews, benchmark studies and consumer feedback information from around the globe, around the clock to and from the major search engines, the hi-tech blogisphere and the IT trade press.

The RSS protocol is just one of the emerging technologies the hijacked former agency brainiacs should be set to track on the horizon. Little by little I suggested they should do an entire litany of practices and procedures to prepare themselves for assuming the stewardship of their own Brand Destiny from their soon to be ineffectual advertising agency. Then we began to talk about the future.

The Future Of Advertising: The Targets

Meet the Dixons. They live in a "Flexiplex" a beautiful designed "Live/Learn/LogOn" space that was built in the middle of the first decade of the C21 in an effort to stem the flow of knowledge work out of the US and into the "FastTrack Four", India, China, South America and Africa.

Originally the concept behind the "FlexPlax was that a small community of 100 families with no more than 3 children could be trained and employed as knowledge workers in fast order if they were relocated to rural areas where life was healthier, distractions were minimized and family education and productivity were seamlessly blended into two four hour "logins" during each 2r hour pay period.

A noble experiment with phenomenal results. Not from the parents who more or less floated in and out of the virtual work teams, but from the children whose adoption to distance learning and the digital workplace soon created more teenage millionaires then at any other time in history.

The Dixons are second generation "Flexers" they have racked up so many Flexpoints or credits for hours worked on "the Grid" that now their work week is down to four hours a week which they knock off on Saturday Mornings.

Marge Dixon is a Genetic Engineer and Rod Dixon is an Anamatronic animator. They live and work in the Disney Flexiplex in Warren, Michigan in the summer and the IBM Flexiplex in the winter in Rincon Puerto Rico.

Like the vast majority of Flexers they seldom leave the FlexiPlex. Anything off the grid is highly speculative and speculative behavior raises the family's daily insurance rate by almost 80% Besides, there is hardly anything that is not readily available within walking distance of their FlexiPlex.

The Dixons have two children, Jack 4 and Samantha 9. Jack is a junior at Harvard Primary and Samantha is doing her Doctorate at Wharton High. Public Education is a thing of the past. The only learning is virtual learning, taught by Digital "Inspirators" who take the form of their subjects and follow a child from their first class until they enter the "Grid."

Rod Dixon, 33 has never known life outside of the FlexiPlex except for his one month vacation spent with the 1831 members of Pennsylvania RailPod 0334 who converge on Altoona, PA every year to do their part in building and running an actual working replica of a1950's railroad town.

This historic town complete with shop buildings, freight yards, steam locomotives and the identities of long dead railroad employees whose identities the members of the 500 or so "Pods" who vacation in Altoona assume for the 30 days they are there.

The rest of the 11 months the pod members are researching and debating and planning the millions upon millions of tasks that are dictated by the strict membership rules required to maintain their status in Pennsylvania RailPod 0334. On average Rod spends about 14 hours a day on some form of activity connected with his Pod membership.

The physical structure of Pennsylvania RailPod 0334 is maintained on the massive grid servers of American Express. This physical structure includes a complete digital replica of the entire 11,215 mile route of the Pennsylvania Railroad that exists in real time for the years 1899, 1948, 1961 and as if it were in existence in Rod Dixon's world of 2033.

When Rod logs into his pod down in the immersion room he is actually Rod Dixon, Road Forman of Engines on the Mountain Division of the PRR in 1948. The floor of the immersion room is a treadmill and meticulously detailed photorealistic images of his world are projected on the four walls and ceiling. For all intent and purposes Rod Dixon is in the year 1948. And those other players are there in Holographic form as necessary But where are the advertisers in this virtual real world. Everywhere. Just like real life. Only better.

Next week, The Future of Advertising: "The Grid" a World Wide Web on Steroids.

Stay Tuned

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