Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Rotogravure. Dauguerrotype. Frequency Modulation. 35mm.



The words in the title above are technologies that we in the advertising world use, or used to use, to help us deliver the messages we are paid to create and deliver. They are not strategies, or media, or anything more.

Now, turn the page and traipse over to the world of digital. We have digital creatives. Digital marketers. Digital strategists. Digital digitizers. Specialists that have propagated like binary bunnies to the point where in most agencies you can't spit without hitting one.

Now to be clear, I have nothing against anyone based on race, religion, gender, sexual or media preference. But I do find digital diarrhea daunting, dumb and deleterious.

Communication is communication. You either make me think, laugh, cry, feel pain, feel comfort, act, dream, sleep, protest or you don't. You can't user-interface me into loving a brand or wanting a product. You can't information-architecture me into becoming a loyal customer. It's that simple. Regardless of media, you either give me useful information or you don't. If you don't, again regardless of media, I want nothing to do with you.

I think it was the great Billy Wilder who said, "A man entering a room through a door is nothing. But when he enters through a window, you have a scene."

In other words, digital, schmigital. It had better be interesting.

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