The same idea has been reiterated on the Slide a few times now – that people, not platforms, are the true medium. I touched on it a couple months back in my post “We are the medium and the message,” and was excited to see it fueling debate between Dondy Razon and Stuart Thursby in the comments section of another post a couple weeks ago. People are the basis around whom technology is developed. They fuel its content. They establish its design.
Then, I came upon an interesting article last week that explores whether or not the Internet has failed advertising. I found this an absurd notion, because it presupposes that the Internet is some sort of massive coupon machine.  To my mind, the title should actually be “Advertising has failed the web.”

To accuse “the Internet” of failing advertising loses the point. The Internet is organic. We grow it through our habits. It’s infinitely elastic. It is a far different beast than the advertising platforms we are used to for one reason: it requires the input of human behavour to fuel its growth.

Advertisers shouldn’t shy from this fact. The internet has the benefit of providing metrics against behaviour. This behaviour reveals need, which in turn defines what gets developed. In fact, Nielson has announced new tools that will allow brands “to combine data from its panels with data from third-party contributors, like Facebook, to more accurately measure how many people are viewing advertisements online.” Do TV, radio or print ads have the ability to self gauge so accurately?

It’s an organic give-and-take between product and people. We can’t shoehorn previously held expectations of what advertising has always been into an organic structure like the web. The way we define advertising has to change when faced with a new medium.

Take banner ads, for example. They have an almost laughable overall clickthrough rate, with the notable exception of rich media and video banners. What does this tell us? That digitizing billboards is a tall order. Is this a shock? The equivalent is like throwing your average commercial for car insurance on YouTube and asking for it to perform the same way. Again, metrics indicate where people are, and what they do when they get there. The internet isn’t failing advertising, our insights are.

It’s a question being pliant about how we interpret behaviour online. The Internet is a playground shaped around people. Their fickle natures. Their need for stories that move them somehow. Their need to be social, to feel connected to something. Their need for personal response.

I’d like to close by bastardizing a George Carlin bit:

There’s nothing wrong with the Internet. The Internet is fine. The advertising is fucked.

It’s our job to discover why.

I was reflecting on some of the brilliant articles on the Big Orange Slide and it dawned on me: most of them are about digital advertising. Unsurprising, given the zeitgeist need for consumers to “like” an application to gain traction. But in recognizing this, there’s something that made me want to step back and consider some of my favourite campaigns, and consider what made them so appealing to me.

And then I realized that my default favourites were TV ads. And that I’m an interactive guy. I know, ballsy.

Going back, waaaay back, I decided to reacquaint myself with the infamous “Wassaaaa!” Budweiser commercial (actual number of ‘a’s varies from search to search).

As unlikely as it seems, some of you may not remember the iconic choral screaming between friends over a Bud. Relive one of the defining moments in 1990s advertising here.

Dispelling assumptions: I’m not only referring to the Bud Spot because Labatt is a client. Any advertiser would admit that this campaign undeniably attained mythic status and mass appeal the minute it was released. It was urban, it was hip, it was cool. It became part of how we talked – a catchphrase as embedded in our culture as “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing” and “Where’s the beef?” were in the 70s and 80s. And yes, it was a series of TV spots.

Since the first phlegmy “waaassaaaaa” met my virgin ears, it was inescapable. I greeted my crew and my family like, I imagine, a copywriter in Chicago gleefully intended me to. In a series of :30 spots that were heavy on story and light on hard sell, my slang changed. To my mind, there are few mediums that have the same ability to capture imagination, and tongues, the way TV has done. The web gives us an incredible opportunity to open conversations, change products and services, and co-create. But there will always be a place in my heart for a solid story told in :30, delivered when I least expect it. An example of how delightful things can wait between the blocks of TV programming.

I’m not dismissing the web. It’s my first love, and, let’s face it, the source of my paycheck. But I still think there’s a huge realm of opportunity to channel short, sweet and thoroughly catchy stories in a way that the :30 second format has done for so many brands.

If you can think of an online campaign that has carried as much cultural clout as some tv commercials out there, I’m happy to hear it. And don’t say Old Spice. They may have exploded on the Internet, but they began as :30 spots too.

Don’t hate me for quoting Marshall McLuhan before noon. I know it’s one of those unspoken rules, like “don’t call before 9 a.m. on a Saturday,” or “don’t microwave fish at work.”

I was thinking about Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man the other day, the seminal McLuhan work that has driven cultural theory students to Advil for decades. When McLuhan said “the medium is the message,” he was defining how the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived.

Getting nightmare flashbacks of those college electives yet? I’ll get to my point now.

I work in the interactive industry, a playground of tools, web apps and devices that frame our relationship with the rest of the world. Every hour, we are introduced to more. These applications act as the medium by which we voluntarily inundate ourselves with messages. We shape them to optimize how much we can get, how quickly, and from where. We are not simply receiving messages through the medium – we are customizing our capacity for receiving as many as possible.

This is especially true with social networking. If 500 million Facebook users are any indication, we’re building our media to indulge our need for messages about ourselves. I’d argue that Facebook isn’t the medium anymore, it’s the people that drive the Facebook ship forward. In some ways, we’re the medium that was so famously described by Marshall McLuhan.

How much more can we push the mechanisms to drive content into people’s minds and actions? McLuhan also said “invention is the mother of necessities.” If that’s the case, then we’re piloting ourselves into an age where constant access to information – and to each other – is a psychological necessity. How many other avenues are available to us to learn from each other, sell each other, or stalk each other?

If “each other” is the medium and the message, how much more can we interact with each other without impacting how we interact with each other offline?

Now where’s my iPhone? I have to condense this post into 140 characters.

For every million marketers throwing their hard-earned resources at social media, there are a few lucky players who just seem to get it right from the start. Somehow, someway, they’ve found a way to engage legions of fans with their ongoing brand story.

For your consideration, here are a few of my favourite social media mavens:

Celebrity: Shaquille O’Neal
Platform: Twitter

Key Points
• Funny
• Free ticket giveaways
• Enticing commentary and a candid view into his life

Why do I like it?
• Goes against the mold of athletes who don’t want to connect with their fans
• Open, honest communication
• He will tweet back to his fans
• It’s a real connection: he’ll show up at a random location, for example, and tweet his location, offering up free basketball tickets to the first person who connects with him. The winners then tweet about seeing him and winning tickets.
• It’s just cool

Barack Obama’s Drive for the Presidency
Platform: Facebook

Key Points:
• More than 7.4 million Facebook fans
• Raised $500 million+ in donations for his campaign through Facebook
• End result: he became America’s first black president

Why do I like it?
• He knew where his audience was
• He showed a willingness to take risks and reach out to us
• Quick reaction time to crises and celebrations
• He made me want to hope for a better world

Total Blender
Platform: Youtube, Twitter, Facebook

Key Points:
• Hilarious BlendTec “Will it blend” YouTube videos
• Premise: a blender that can blend anything
• Showed videos of blending iPhones, sneakers, glow sticks, etc.
• Exponential increase in sales

Why do I like it?
• Silly, easy to remember
• Daring
• Great demonstration of product benefit
• Novel idea in taking a calculated risk
• Very shareable with my friends

#shitmydadsays
Platform: Twitter

Key Points:
• Featured on Jay Leno and David Letterman
• Celebrity followers, cult following
• Started August 3, 2009
• 1,134,762 followers in less than a year
• Only 98 tweets to date

Why do I like it?
• It’s open, honest and feels real
• Simple and funny
• I can share it with my friends.
• There’s no corporation tied to this campaign – it’s just a regular guy who became popular by simple fate, luck, and the power of a good idea
• Gives me inspiration that anyone can be successful if they just try out their ideas

Maybe these approaches to social media aren’t right for all brands, but there’s much to be said for watching the pros in action.