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MARKETING'S STUPIDEST RELIGION
Among all the dumb things that marketers believe, my favorite is the voodoo of generational uniqueness -- like Millennials, or Gen Z, or Baby Boomers. These groups are often treated as new species of humans who are profoundly individual and have to be explained to us by our industry's high priests of sociological claptrap.
This idiocy exists because every 20 years or so the research industry has to come up with new fresh and mysterious "generational" horseshit to sell to marketing dimwits. And, of course, we eat this shit up.
As I've been writing for years, there is just as much variation within generations as there is between generations. But marketers, too lazy or too stupid to figure this out, accept the existence of these imaginary consumer segments in order to avoid the difficult and esoteric task of thinking.
Recently, BBH Labs in the UK released a study that wonderfully undermines the silliness. It's called "Puncturing the Paradox: Group Cohesion and the Generational Myth." Read it here. As part of their study, they created something called a "Group Cohesion Score." The Group Cohesion Score calculates the single-mindedness of a group of people. Presumably people whose beliefs and behaviors are similar will have higher Group Cohesion Scores.
And, to the surprise of absolutely no one with their head screwed on straight, the high Group Cohesion Scores among "generational" segments are nowhere to be found. In fact, people who eat nuts every day have a higher Group Cohesion Score than Millennials. Crossword puzzle doers, and Orangina drinkers have higher group cohesion than Baby Boomers.
As the study concludes, "The truth is that these ‘generations’ are simply random collections of people who share no special connection beyond being born within two decades of each other."
We Are All Delusional
According to a report released by KPMG last week, 91% of Americans believe that "privacy is a human right." The same number agree that "the right to delete personal data and the right to know how their data is being used should be extended to all US citizens."
And yet, here is a chart and some thoughts from the great Dr. Augustin Fou...
"Assuming you’re comfortable with Amazon, Google, and Apple listening to you in your home all the time, let’s take a look at other devices you may have brought into your home -- connected security cameras, speakers, light bulbs, refrigerators, televisions, photo frames, microwave ovens, bathroom scales, toothbrushes (yeah, there are connected toothbrushes) -- collectively known as the Internet of Things (IoT). Are they all honoring your privacy? Or are they collecting and sending data about you to the cloud, or worse, to servers in foreign countries? How would you even know?"
One of Dr. Fou's points is that the tech industry likes to pretend that when a security breach occurs it is rare and accidental. It is not. Surveillance is built-in to much of the hardware and software we use on a daily basis. We say we want and expect privacy. But we are more than willing to accept all kinds of intrusions into our lives by technology -- primarily for the benefit of the advertising industry.
You Can Thank Me Later
I'm going to save you a lot of time and brain-taxing effort by summarizing in a couple of sentences a paper released by Oxford University last week. The paper is one of those impossibly daunting academic things that precipitate narcolepsy in dumbass bloggers
It deals with the contribution our glorious programmatic advertising apparatus has made to filling the world full of bullshit and misinformation about COVID-19. The paper is entitled "How the Online Advertising Ecosystem Funds COVID-19 Junk News and Disinformation." Here's the bottom line:
"The ecosystem of junk news & disinformation around COVID-19 is enabled by search engines and advertising platforms that contribute to their visibility and financial revenue....Sites that consistently publish junk news, including harmful stories relating to COVID-19, show professional SEO strategies.... their content will rank high in search results for popular keywords... Advertising revenue is a major source of income for... junk news & disinformation domains."
Conspiracy for Sanitized Surveillance
Last week, I wrote about the pathetic "Partnership for Responsible Addressable Media" (which I renamed the "Conspiracy for Sanitized Surveillance.")
It's a cabal of many of the world's major advertisers and digital media (excluding Apple and Google) whose objective is to keep the glories of tracking and spying active and healthy. For more on this I recommend this piece by the great Doc Searls.
Fear of Commitment
In the interest of full disclosure, I just want you to know that my commitment to producing a semi-intelligent newsletter every week is on the wane. If I miss some weeks here and there, please don't take it personally. It just means I have other immensely important things to do.
