I’ve been terribly negligent on blog posts lately.
I have a number of excuses, but the main one is that sometime last year, I thought it might be a good idea to write a book. I’m not sure what the hell possessed me, but it’s been something that’s been planted in my brain for a long time. Moreover, I didn’t want to write a book about how to do search marketing, or even how we interact with search engines. No, I wanted to write a “big idea” book.
For most of last year, I toyed with the idea but did little else. Earlier this year, I began doing some research and roughed out the concept of the book, but still had little to show for my efforts. Then, this June, I realized that unless I actually started working on it, the book would never “write itself”. So I made myself a promise to spend 10 hours a week working on it. This promise went off the rails in July and August, but I’m slowly making up the lost time and hope to get in all the promised hours by the end of the year.
So, you ask, “what is this book about?” I’ve come to suspect my talent is to see the threads of big ideas and tie them together. I have a voracious appetite for understanding what makes people tick and then trying to apply that to what makes some advertising work and some bomb.
Having been in advertising for a quarter century (aaargghh!) I’ve always been looking from the inside out. In the past few months, I’ve stepped outside the industry to look from the outside in. And I have to tell you, I’m not liking what I see. In fact, the more research I do (that’s what I’ve been doing) the more pissed off I’m getting. Advertisers are an arrogant bunch of soulless bastards. And unfortunately, for the past 25 years, I’ve been one of them.
Of course, as with any sweeping statement, there are exceptions. But I challenge anyone to look at the history of advertising over the past 50 years and find many instances of selfless altruism in it. Advertisers worship at the altar of persuasion. They have an unshakable belief in their ability to bamboozle us and have us turn into mindless consumption machines. It’s all about control, and the advertisers believe they have sole possession of it. Or, at least, they did, until the mid 90’s. Then the game changed.
Now, the whole concept of consumer control is hardly new. It’s been dealt with in a number of books. But again, I’m not sure the threads have been brought together in quite the way I’m envisioning. I’m looking at a number of areas, including social networking, cognitive psychology (in my next life I want to be a cognitive psychologist) and neuro-marketing. I’m also looking at what sets certain companies apart in their ability to connect their brands with communities of customers. Again, nothing earthshakingly new here, but there’s some themes that I think bear further exploration.
So, that’s a pretty vague description. To be honest, the concept is still refining itself in the research process, so I’ll leave it there for now. You’ll find some of my research starting to creep into my recent columns. And soon, probably in the new year, I want to start exposing some of the concepts to the fresh air of internet dialogue, hopefully to have the rough edges smoothed out by vigorous debate in the blogosphere. For today, I just wanted to give you an excuse for my lack of blogging. I’m going to try to get back to it on a more regular basis, to keep myself in practice.