A Marketer's Greatest Tool

Despite All This Data, Empathy Is Still the Greatest Tool in a Marketer's Toolbox:

Imagine having to watch an hour's worth of commercials before a two-hour movie. Or being tapped on the shoulder before each page of a novel with an "exclusive offer." It sounds ludicrous, but this is essentially the way we experience ad-supported content today. It's no wonder ad blockers are proliferating.

This is because something strange happens to ad execs when we walk through the doors of our corporate offices:  We somehow forget that, just before stepping over that threshold, we were a part of the population we're trying to reach with ads. With this perspective mysteriously erased from our minds, we begin describing people as "users" that "consume" content in a "cross-screen" environment. When was the last time you thought to yourself, "I'm done watching short-form, snackable content on my mobile screen and now I'm going to watch long-form, premium content on my OTT device?"

This collective amnesia can be cured by simply reminding ourselves that we, too, are the viewers. People don't think in silos. They just want to watch their stuff where and when they want -- and so do we. This is indicative of what I see as the major problem in our industry: We need to balance our top-down approach with consumer-centric, bottom-up thinking.

As we have talked about previously, lazy digital marketing is giving our industry a bad name. Akin to the 1990's radio commercials (remember them being 2x louder than the music they interrupted), our industry is not leveraging the technology to its fullest and proper potential. That is a challenge the Delegator team gladly accepts. As much as we want to deliver value to our clients, we also want to be a good citizen of the digital economy - not jeopardizing reputations (our clients or our own) for the sake of a few extra clicks. It's not a strategy that works well now and it will predictably worsen in the future, as it turns away more visitors than it is bringing in.