The Relationship Economy……

As an Engineer, my respect for the Advertising/Marketing/PR, as an industry, is diminishing daily.  I see what is gorged behind the curtain and I see what is barfed in front to the curtain.  The degree of hypocrisy defies social responsibility.

While many Marketing and PR professionals have a deep commitment to social values and the empowerment of people and their communities, many also see society as a big fat consumption machines whose collective minds can be mapped and channeled into “basic-needs” reactions designed to ultimately meet Wall Street priorities over social priorities.

Meet your maker

It is also not surprising that the advertising industry is also on the front line of social media where savvy gamers call themselves strategists, gurus, and experts over the very game that they cannot control.  They are quick to define “Social Media Innovation” as new ways to penetrate the hearts, minds, and eyeballs of people and their paychecks.

Social Media Innovation

The REAL “Social Media Innovation” is actually a means for communities to better discern the crappy products from the great products.  The so-called Guru’s make a living pitching manure because those are the products that need the most expensive social media strategy.

As such, advertising – as an industry – has devolved further in its dependence upon the existence of overpriced substandard products, idle and complacent audience, and insecure people living in divided communities.  Almost every square inch of available land, air, and mind space in America is polluted with advertising. It’s everywhere.  Guess what, nobody – absolutely nobody, wants to see it.  Innovate that.

Innovation is Disruption

What most social media Ad-strategists fail to see, despite their formidable ability to create disruptions, is that their very existence is about to be disrupted beyond recognition, if not eliminated entirely.  This tsunami on the horizon is a financial instrument that manifest in the integration and capitalization of human knowledge.  They don’t have a clue what we’re talking about, they don’t have a clue what’s about to hit them in a few short years – a virus beyond description whose hypocrisy defies social irresponsibility.

By the time you see it, it’s too late.

Clayton Christensen, author of the book, Innovator’s Dilemma, identifies this condition in great detail:  Disruptions, by definition, are rarely seen by the victim until it’s too late to respond.  The disruption that is currently rising up against the advertising industry is apocalyptic in it’s simplicity.  A few will survive – those who see it coming.  Here it is:

The last Mile of Social Media

Good companies with good products will put their advertising budget into an “affinity pool”.  The money will be distributed directly to the top social media mavens that dominate the affinity space thereby rewarding them for doing exactly what they would do anyway – they will talk about their life experiences, and the products that enhance it, to their galaxy of family, friends, and followers.

Game Over

Pay the mommy bloggers, auto enthusiasts, Pet lovers, sports clubbers, and local fashionistas directly from a pool of money insulated from ‘payola’.  Let people earn a living doing what they do best – building community.   The result will be an astonishing increase in social innovation, entrepreneurship, community development and economic growth – not to mention infinite R&D, business intelligence, and the decimation of low quality competition. No ad agency or PR firm in the world could match the empowerment value of such a simple financial instrument.

If you can’t see this, your days are numbered.