How The Higgs Boson Can Help You Build Customer Engagement

Executive Summary: Start by creating a Boson-link (Blink). Then co-create by sharing Blinks about your brand with a million billion trillion zillion other Blinks and, like, then those Blinks will, like, totally connect and grow exponentially and before you know it you're delivering brand messages and branded content and branded branding to everyone online without having to give a penny to that creepy Zuckerberg kid. 

Yes, the recent discovery of the Higgs Boson by scientists at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN changes everything for marketers.

First, it poses a huge challenge. How will you use the Higgs Boson to build stronger engagement between your brand and your customers?

Scientists tell us that without the Higgs Boson matter would have no mass. There would be no stars, no galaxies, and no cinnamon raisin bread. Without mass, we would have no mass media and no mass transit. Massachusetts would be called achusetts.

The calcified old-world thinking of Madison Avenue, with its TV commercials and display ads, relied on dreary, clunky electrons to deliver a one-way message to a passive viewer. But now, electrons are dead!  Today's particle-wave-connected consumer, or (as we like to call him) the average schmuck, is just another bump in an ever-expanding Higgs Field.

Messages embedded in a Higgs Boson bounce right off the average schmuck and create an immediate channel connecting him to someone else -- in many cases, a below-average schmuck.

Here's an example of how Higgs Boson marketing works in a worldwide, inter-globulated ecosystem of engagement: Let's say a Higgs Boson  passes through my arm. In the next instant it may pass through your foot. Or it might pass through some super-hot nympho's tiny skirt and go bouncing around in her thong. How awesome would that be? (We'd finally get some data-driven insights we could really use, if you get my drift.)

Today, the consumer is dead! I mean, she's in total control (unless she's had wine at lunch, then look out!) Scientists now estimate that somewhere between 14 and 600 million billion trillion zillion Higgs Bosons penetrate a typical consumer's body every moment. Can you imagine how many would penetrate it if she was totally naked?

According to one theory proposed by physicists at the Very, Very Small Teflon Collider in Rhode Island, there are actually more bosons in the universe than social media experts in Brooklyn.

Three Ways To Incorporate The Higgs Boson Into Your Marketing Plan Right Now!

1. Remember, activating Higgs Boson technology is only one part of your 360 degree marketing mix. It's actually about 154 degrees. So you still have 206 degrees to play with. Don't neglect all your other important marketing activities like tweeting, podcasting, crank calling, and going to Cannes to snort coke with Swedish account planners.

2. Collecting "likes" on Facebook is still a great way to stay busy without actually accomplishing anything. But it's not too early to start accumulating "Bosos." A "Boso" is like a "like." It occurs when a Boson interacts with another particle and then something amazing happens and your score goes up and you can win a new dining room set.

3. Three words: Gamify your bosons!

One warning. If you haven't activated your Higgs Boson integrated worldwide artisanal strategy already, it's too late and you and your brand and all your colleagues and friends and their families and pets are dead!

The Real Poop On Marketing

The Ad Contrarian is on sabbatical. For the sake of blogaholics I am reprinting some old stuff that is either still relevant or still silly. Here's a silly one from 2008.

Something I read recently got me thinking that we may be flushing millions of dollars right down the old crapper.

It turns out that in marketing today, poop is some valuable shit.

- A big-time Manhattan spa is offering a Japanese-style "Geisha Facial" which features all the goodness of real bird droppings.

- Peter Jones, an upscale retailer in London, is offering the world's most expensive cup of coffee. At 50 pounds (these days, that's about 10 million dollars) you can get a cup of coffee made with real cat excreta.

- If you want to send a note that says "I care", how about sending it on paper made of elephant shit?

- Sending photos to a loved one? Now you can send them in picture frames made from panda patties? (Panda's are so cute. Imagine how adorable their doodies must be!)

- And finally, if rubbing it on your face, drinking it, and sending it to loved ones isn't enough, now you can live in it. Michigan State researchers have developed the Eco-Floor, a floor for your home made of -- you guessed it -- cow shit.

Apparently, brown is the new green.

How To Be Happy In Advertising

The Ad Contrarian is on sabbatical. For the sake of blogoholics and other harmless sociopaths we will be posting stuff from years back that is either still relevant or still silly. Here's one from 2007.

Dr. Adcontrarian is on duty today to help you be a happier ad person. Please have a seat.

It's not easy being happy in advertising. It's a frustrating business. Modern life is filled with many horrors -- war, husbands, pizza topped with smoked chicken. And we ad people are closely aligned with something uniquely unsettling -- popular culture.

Advertising used to be about discovering what consumers wanted and creating messages that addressed those interests. Now it's about pretending to find out what consumers want but really trying to figure out what the next hot cultural thing is going to be and jumping on it under the pretext of understanding consumer interests. Call me cynical.

Paying such close attention to pop culture causes great anxiety. It is non-stop slime bucket stimulation . We secretly enjoy pop culture because it keeps us edgy and anxious. This works its way through our back-door neuroreceptors to stimulate us consciously yet make us miserable unconsciously (full disclosure - I have no idea WTF I'm talking about but, admit it, if your shrink said this you'd nod your head.)

Anyway, I was on vacation not long ago. I was out-of-the-loop for a while -- off-the-grid, so to speak. I came back 50% happier than I left. After thinking about it, I realized that I was so much less tense and anxious because I hadn't watched a tv show, or read a newspaper, or visited a website, or watched a news broadcast for weeks.

You may be thinking that ignoring current events and paying no attention to the news is not conducive to good citizenship. This may very well be true but it is not the subject of today's session, so shut up.

You wanna be happy? Unplug.

A good place to start is to stop reading blogs.