Authentic engagement or autocratic entrapment?

Pam Brill responded to my post on Tom Peters’ authenticity in which I said that neither I, nor anyone else really knows where marketing is going as the mass media model crumbles.

Pam said:

I do believe that it will be authentic engagement that drives people to do business with others. That, in my mind, is what drives people to Tom's messages - whether delivered in person or by blog - to begin with. He is authentic and self-revealing. His most recent revelations re "black dogs" and other black clouds is, to me, just a different format of his true self that he has put out there for decades. After all, we all have black dogs of some sort. And even when we don't name them openly, most people around us can observe or surmise their existence. So here is to marketing with honesty- black dogs and all.

Pam, this is where I’d like marketing to go. And some marketing will go that way—it already has. Transparent, conversational marketing projects are certainly what interest me.

But I’m not nearly so optimistic that marketing is headed that way overall. And, right on cue (from TPWire) comes a laughable CNN interview from Saatchi & Saatchi UK chairman and CEO Lee Daley on the future of advertising.

The interview is so full of buzzwords and bull**** that it reads like a parody. Buckle in. Here’s one snippet, a four-paragraph soliloquy which innovatively leverages a vast universe of leading-edge marketingspeak:

I think the advertising industry as a whole will change very dramatically because of the change in the media universe. The advertising industry has grown up, essentially on the back on analogue technologies, and it's grown up around multi-domesticity.

We're going to be in a global media environment where basically we've got common platforms, we're going to have convergence of media platforms, content migration from pier (sic) to pier (sic) and across markets and I think that's going to change fundamentally the way global and local advertisers invest in content and communication.

That will mean a shift in the fundamental dynamics of the agency relationship, I think it is going to present great challenges to the economics of our industry, but potentially it will liberate our creative potential and agencies may well end up having assets under management creatively that they own and create and distribute themselves as well as having serviced based relationships. So, I think there are great challenges, but also massive opportunities for our industry to reinvent itself off the back of these technologies.

I think the potential is there for the advertising agencies and their clients to prosper exponentially if we embrace these technologies and liberate our thinking from the cataract of the analogue media world, which was a push world, and truly embrace interactivity. To truly embrace the capability of these technologies to build fundamentally different communication and marketing models and understand that these are truly global technologies that will integrate audiences around the world with common behavioral characteristics and aspirations -- that is astonishingly exciting in terms of the future of our industry.

What the hell is he talking about? If you strip out the stunning amount of marektingspeak, I think you get this:

“The Internet will allow us to stuff more scripted, empty marketing messages down the consumer’s throat (though we might let them opt-in sometimes)!”

That’s the grand vision from the old guard, and powerful evidence as to why I’m not optimistic. Some of the heaviest hitters in marketing and advertising don’t really see a connection between authentic, engaging conversation and business growth. Daley says nothing about how technology can empower companies to listen to consumers. He says nothing about real people talking to real people.

Just look at how he speaks, for heaven’s sakes. Pure, empty, giant-company marketingbabble. More of the same.

Pam, you and I share the same thoughts on what we want marketing to be. Unfortunately, what I expect is that it will be a mix of the authentic communication we both like, and the lousy marketingspeak many leading agencies can't wait to dynamically deliver by leveraging bleeding-edge technologies delivered to global audiences participating in interactive one-to-one experiences.