Of Men And Magicians

"There are two kinds of geniuses: the 'ordinary' and the 'magicians'. An ordinary genius is a fellow whom you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what they've done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians. Even after we understand what they have done it is completely dark." - Mark Kac

A few weeks ago I wrote a piece called Advertising And The Future Of Apple. It received a lot of attention.

One of the points I made in the piece was  that I did not agree with the pundits who were asserting that Apple would be an equally innovative enterprise with Steve Jobs stepping down as CEO.

I want to talk a little more about this.

Steve Jobs is a magician. To paraphrase Mr. Kac (pronounced Kahts), even after we see what he has done, we don't understand how he did it.

I'm a half-assed amateur musician who likes to write music. I'm pretty lousy at it. Actually, I'm very lousy at it. When I listen to music written by Bruce Springsteen or Bob Dylan, I can understand how they did it. I can see the underlying structure. I can imagine, if I were just a thousand times better than I am, I could have written that music.

But when I listen to music by George Gershwin or Duke Ellington, I am lost. I have no idea how they did it. I could sit at a piano for all eternity and not be able to do it.

I am sure there are brilliant people all over the Apple organization. But there is a special kind of creative brilliance that is unique. It cannot be replaced or replicated by "ordinary geniuses."

This does not mean that Apple won't continue to be a great company. It doesn't mean that it won't continue to be extraordinarily successful. It just means that over time, the creative leaps are likely to become less astounding and less frequent.

Perhaps Jobs will continue to be the true leader of Apple from his position as non-executive chairman.

If not, the idea that Apple will be as imaginative without him leading just does not seem believable to me.

Magicians are hard to find.

Clicking Toward Oblivion

"What was once digital advertising’s dirty little secret is now its big, ugly problem. Online ad performance figures are dismal..." Adweek, 8/24/11

Just when you thought banner ads couldn't get any less effective, oops, click-through rates dropped another 10% last year.

Mashable reports that a Google study, seen as the "the industry standard" reported recently that click-through rates dropped from .1% to .09% in 2010. That means that CTRs dropped from 1 in a thousand to 9 in ten thousand.

So, Mr. Online Advertiser, for every 10,000 times your online ad appeared, you got a solid 9 clicks. Good job.

If you were a shortstop, you'd be batting .0009

Oh, and by the way, the 9 people who clicked are no more likely to buy your product than the 9,991 people who didn't.

“A click means nothing, earns no revenue and creates no brand equity." says Starcom USA SVP/Director, Research & Analytics John Lowell.

Which, I'm afraid, is not a terribly encouraging statement about the value of "interactivity."

Meanwhile, undeterred, the advertising industry continues selling clients more and more display ads. In June, eMarketer doubled its projection for online ad spending in 2011.

You may be asking yourself how display ads -- with such "dismal" performance -- can continue to provide large income to online publishers? This, my friend, may go down as one of the great con sales jobs in advertising history. The logic, again from Mashable, goes like this:

"...banners work like most advertising, which is to say in a fairly complex manner.

For instance, click-through is actually a poor measure of performance. It’s impossible to click through a billboard ad, for example, but that doesn’t mean it’s not effective...

The same is true for TV ads..."

Oh, I see. The now famous "nobody ever clicked on a TV spot" defense.

So here's what has really happened. Online ad hustlers experts told us that banner ads were much more effective than traditional advertising because they were so "measurable" and "interactive." Then the facts started rolling in and they shit their pants refined their message.

Now the story goes like this: Banner ads really aren't any more measurable or interactive than traditional advertising. In fact, the erstwhile key metric -- the click -- don't mean shit. Now, we are told, banner ads work just like traditional advertising, in a "fairly complex" manner.

The only trouble with this baloney new story is that you have to be both blind and delusional to believe that some invisible ad on your Facebook page is as conspicuous as a TV spot or a billboard. In fact, while your average TV spot or billboard is an annoying, intrusive pain in the ass, nobody ever complains about Facebook ads. Which is just another way of saying nobody notices the darn things.

It seems that the worse online advertising performs the more of it we can sell. C'mon gang, if we can just get the click-through rate down to zero, we'll all be rich!

Mr. President, Here's An Idea

Here at The Ad Contrarian World Headquarters, we are always looking for ways to help our industry and our country. Later this week, President Obama is going to make an important speech about the economy. A few years ago, we had a fabulous idea for improving the economy. As usual, no one paid any attention. We are going to proffer it again today in the hope that the American people will see the merit of this idea and rise up to demand its immediate implementation.

I have an idea that I think we can all agree on. It won't create any further hardship for a single American citizen, and will save the country a lot money.

I think we need to do more recycling.

Specifically, I think we need to recycle our laws. I don't think we need new laws every year. We should use our laws for two years.

If we only need a new president every four years, why do we need new laws every year?

Each year our elected officials make thousands of new laws. And to tell you the truth, I can't really tell the difference. I mean, what was the difference between, say, 2007's laws and 2008's? Did all those guys really need to ride around in limos for twelve months and have hearings and caucuses and debates and televised town meetings? Do you remember noticing a difference? I don't.

So let's say we only make new laws on even numbered years. Then every odd year we can send all our federal, state, and municipal lawmakers home and close down their offices. They can get back to annoying their families instead of us. This will save the country a lot of money and, honestly, who's gonna know? 

Frankly, I don't think we have a shortage of laws. I think there are plenty of them. And if we're careful, we ought to be able to squeeze another year out of the ones we already have.

If you don't have enough laws where you are, my neighbors and I here in California will be happy to let you use some of ours.

I acknowledge that sending our legislators home may have an adverse economic affect on certain industries, like prostitution. Also the phenomenal growth of social media may slow as the number of naughty tweets drops significantly. But isn't it all about trade-offs?

We can make the idea palatable to both Democrats and Republicans by giving it a fancy Washington-style name like "The Sustainable Legislation Act of 2011." We'll tell them we're just trying to preserve our precious statutory resources.

Here are some other benefits of this idea:

• 50% less shouting on cable tv
• Lessen our dependence on foreign oil and reduce global warming because congressmen won't be flying off to China and France on "fact-finding" missions every Monday morning
• Reduce the number of political blogs from a trillion to half a trillion
• Maybe with more time on their hands they'll get better face lifts and hair plugs

Frankly, I think we can do just fine recycling last year's laws. They weren't so bad.