Please Don't Use That Word

There is a universe that a certain kind of digital marketing bonehead comes from that has a language of its own. It's a horrible language. It is hugely annoying, but it is unrelenting and it seems to be spreading.

It gives us compound words and neologisms that must seem terribly clever to illiterate nitwits, but make anyone with a sense of propriety want to commit hideous acts of violence. Some of the "words" it has given us are...

• Phygital 
• Glocal. 
• Tradigital.
• Gamification. 
• Communiting

These almost-words are just cute enough that they must make these vapid dullards people feel very clever and creative.

Well, get ready. I just heard a new one -- mocial.

No, I'm not kidding. In case you don't work at a second-rate digital agency and don't know what mocial is, it is apparently the combination of mobile and social.

Or moron and atrocial.

From what I hear, mocial is ready to explode all over the digital ecosystem. Be careful not to get any on your pants.

Mocial gives me nausarrhea.

My friend Jason Headley writes and directs great little movies. Here's one he just made that is hilarious.

The Taxman Cometh

Since the stupidity of the I.R.S. is all over the news, I thought I'd weigh in with my own I.R.S. story.

This probably means they'll come to my house in the middle of the night and drag me off. But, as I'm sure you know, my dedication to my readers is more important than my freedom.

So it's about 4 or 5 years ago and the I.R.S. decides to audit my agency. They came into the agency and went through every piece of paper and every email and every memo and every invoice and every leftover cranberry bagel in the joint. As the majority shareholder, they also demanded my personal tax returns for the previous year.

We had the best CFO in the history of the world. Seriously. After going over everything, we came out of this inquisition 100% clean and lovely.

So they packed up their calculators and their microscopes and went home.

A week later I get a phone call...

THEM: Mr. Hoffman, during our audit I noticed that you had sold some of your shares in Hoffman/Lewis back to the company.

ME: That's correct.

THEM: I need to confirm that you paid proper taxes on the sale of your shares.

ME: Okay, well you have my tax retu....

THEM: So I need your tax returns for last year.

ME: You have my tax returns for last year. I gave them to you during the audit.

THEM: Yes, but they are in someone else's office.

ME: Excuse me?

THEM: They are in another office so I need for you to send me another copy of your tax returns.

ME: Wait a second. May I suggest something? What if you call down to the other office and get them?

THEM: To get your file from the other office to my office I have to apply for a file transfer and that will take about four months.

ME: WHAT? Four months to get a file from one office to another? I can send a refrigerator to Denmark over night...

THEM: Please send me another copy of your tax returns.

ME: I don't have another copy of my tax returns. You have my tax ...

THEM: No, I don't, Mr. Hoffman. It's in someone else's office. This will go a lot smoother if you cooperate with us.

I wish I could say I made this up, but you cannot make this shit up.
  
We posted something on our business website yesterday that's been very popular. If you're interested, it's called "Agencies Never Take Their Own Advice" and you can find it here.

Native Advertising: Traditional Advertising On Line

Last week, Mashable asked the question, "Is Native Advertising Just Another Term For Good Advertising?" The answer is no, not quite.

From what I can tell, native advertising is a horrible and misleading term that is being used to describe something that may actually turn out to be a good idea -- the application of traditional advertising principles to online advertising. Let me explain.

Online advertising was supposed to be interactive. It was supposed to rescue us from having to force people into looking at our ads. Consumers were going to want to interact with us, they were going to want to have conversations with marketers, they were going to want to have relationships with brands.

It was all fantasies and delusions based on naive interpretations of consumer behavior by people who had a whole lot of ideological commitment to the web, and very little experience with real world marketing.

Now we’ve learned that, for the most part, consumers want no part of interacting with online advertising. What we are calling "native advertising" is a recent reaction to this realization and to the very disappointing history of online advertising, particularly banner advertising.

Nobody seems quite sure what they mean by native advertising. But I think I know what they mean. They don't know it yet, but they mean using traditional advertising strategy on the web.

They mean that if you insert advertising into an appealing environment and you make the advertising entertaining or beautiful or interesting, you’re more likely to attract some attention from consumers. Which is the exact premise on which traditional advertising is built.

What is TV advertising about? It is about finding the most appealing programming and inserting into that programming messages that are either entertaining or interesting or beautiful.

Native advertising represents the marketing industry finally starting to grasp that consumers do not want to interact with banner ads, do not want to have conversations with brands, and do not want to have relationships with marketers.

It is still early days for this realization, and marketers don't quite know yet what they've realized. They think they have to trick people into seeing their advertising by pretending it's part of the content.

They don't yet understand that the effectiveness of "native advertising" -- just like all other forms of advertising --  is going to be proportional to how interesting, entertaining or beautiful they can make it.

Native advertising may represent the first stage of the marketing and advertising industry growing up and coming to terms with the fact that the best hope for online advertising is not pie-in-the-sky nonsense about conversations and relationships.

It is taking the traditional principles of interrupting and grabbing attention, and applying them to the web.

For more, check out the BeanCast podcast which I was on last night discussing this and other subjects.