"ALEXA, WHY IS NOBODY VOICE SHOPPING?"

Despite all the baloney you read from marketers, you may have noticed that we are not all wearing Google Glasses, sporting virtual reality headsets, or using 3-D printers. We also do less than 10% of our retail shopping online, make less than 2% of our purchases on our mobile phones, and buy fewer than 3% of our cars with hybrid engines.

And you may have also noticed that the twin miracles of "user generated content" and "crowdsourcing" have had about zero impact on the ad agency business. Of course, if you go back and read the nonsense that was written about all this stuff you'd think you were on the wrong planet.

And now we have Amazon and Google mesmerizing the marketing industry with the miracle of voice shopping. Forbes asks, "...given the large number of pundits, publications and consultancies reveling in the future thrill of a world dominated by voice-driven shopping, should we believe the hype?"  The answer is no.

According to a report in The Information, there are about 50 million "smart speakers" laying around peoples' homes. Only 2% of people who own a "smart speaker" have ever used it to buy anything. And of the tiny  number who did, 90% never used it again.

As always, astoundingly unreliable online "research" has fed the frenzy and "retail is dead" flimflam artists shooting their mouths off at every marketing conference have fanned the flames.

My guess? People use smart speakers for music, weather, news, asking "who sang Who Let The Dogs Out?" and allowing enormous quantities of personal private information to be collected and abused by Amazon.

Victors & Spoils was going to change advertising by using crowdsourcing to bring all kinds of brilliant creative talent to bear for every client. Listen to this high school nonsense about crowdsourcing that appeared in Adweek at the time, along with a comment from yours truly...

 ADWEEK: One rough scenario: Instead of working for one digital agency, a person would work for the cloud. During their tenure individuals would take on assignments from different agencies, in the process capturing a collective intelligence about best practices from each of the shops and sharing that intelligence with the network.

ME: Cool. I just hope the cloud has a fucking checkbook.

OK, back to Victors, et al... This week they closed their doors. Here's a statement from Havas, the suckers who bought V&S, as reported by Adweek...

“As the needs of CMOs change quickly, we are increasing our investment in innovation rapidly to be the core of our offering in North America and globally.”  Then in a torrent of new age cutting edge doubletalk added...“AI, conversational commerce and customer journey mapping through our owned platform Arcadia, our AI centers in Montreal and New York and global advancements in Blockchain and AI... As part of our focus on the most strategic innovation for the Modern CMO, we are constantly assessing how best to serve our clients through our network and shifting our focus towards the most modern and relevant areas. We are reducing the V&S footprint and reallocating any continuing clients to our Havas Chicago office.”

Translation: "Can't make no money on clownsourcing, shuttin' it down."

According to an article in Marketing Week, "Virgin Holidays’ new marketing boss wants the company to be a 'force for good' ...as it prepares to launch a new marketing campaign, its first in partnership with sister brand Virgin Atlantic."

According to the new marketing boss...“People really do invest what might be life savings on a honeymoon, a once-in-a-lifetime trip, and you really want to make sure it’s in good hands...We should be inspiring... whether you are a single parent, someone with a disability who needs a little bit of extra help...We can be a force for good as a company..."

Yeah, well, you better get busy on that. This week, the Daily Mail reported on a Virgin Atlantic flight ..."The yelling, the screaming, the fainting: Britons tell of hysteria after being trapped in hot Virgin plane on U.S. tarmac for hours...Passengers described hearing yells and screams on the plane, with three people fainting in the heat and being rushed away by ambulance...there were babies on the plane...people were yelling and screaming..."

"A once-in-a-lifetime trip, and you really want to make sure it’s in good hands...we should be inspiring." Is that what she said? 

I have to give credit to The Content Council (yes, there is such a thing) for publishing the semi-coherent ramblings of a non-believer. They've got a lot more integrity and balls than the skanky self-promoters in the digital/adtech industry who hold "summits" every half-hour and only bring in stooges, suck-ups, and pay-to-play weasels to speak.

Dr Maria Konnikova is a Columbia University trained experimental psychologist. For research on a book she is writing on decision making Dr Konnikova has taken a leave of absence from her regular job as a science writer for The New York Times to become a professional poker player. In her first year she has won $200,000 in poker tournaments.

Dr Konnikova has some insights about fraud that might explain why otherwise intelligent people in our business are being so massively fleeced by fraudsters.

"Fraud really thrives in moments of great social change and transition. We’re in the midst of a technological revolution. That gives con artists huge opportunities. People lose their frame of reference for what can and can’t be real."

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