It’s a mad, mad world, run by mad, Mad Men

May 18, 2012

Last weekend I was hanging out with my friends watching the Red Sox. After a group picture was snapped, the conversation turned to Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram. My group of friends is comprised of an accountant, a salesman, a job recruiter, a nurse, and a baker. Other than all having once shared a life raft with a priest in an old-timey joke, the only other thing they have in common is no professional reason to have an opinion on Instagram’s true financial value.

“Facebook bought $1 billion worth of location data. They don’t know how to use it now, but they will figure out a way to make it valuable,” said the accountant.

“Facebook has enough data, and I still don’t pay attention to their ‘personlized’ ads,” said the salesmen.

“Yeah but have you noticed that they now try to rope you in by showing you which of your friends ‘like’ which brands?” said the recruiter.

“The only brand I like on Facebook is American Express, because I get deals. Everything else is useless,” said the nurse.

“Anyone else want a sandwich?” said the baker.

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Gen Y has become a generation of advertis-ers and advertis-ees. We have developed an Internet savvy and inherent suspicion to both wonder at, and remain skeptical of, the power of advertising. We are fully aware that advertising is what makes our online social lives possible. We also know from personal experience how ineffective it currently is, and have ideas as to how it could be better. This is why Facebook faces an uphill battle in the wake of today’s historic IPO. The company needs to prove to brands that it can be an effective advertising tool, even when its most ardent audiences are intelligent advertisers themselves.

Advertising has become ubiquitous. There is not a space in the sky or street on the ground where you can’t find a logo. In fact, additional advertising space has become so hard to find in the real world, that brands are now turning to the virtual one via augmented reality applications. If Google’s Project Glass becomes popular, consumers will find a brand new world, already rich with advertising, when they first put on the shades.

Advertising powers the Internet. Facebook, Google, Twitter, Zynga, all make their money from advertisers. Apple, Google and Microsoft have all allegedly collected location data without notifying their customers, presumably because it can be used for marketing. These companies are all known as the most innovative, technologically advanced companies in the country. They are seen as a beacon in our still struggling economy, and they all (some more than others) owe their livelihood to advertising.

Facebook acts like a course in advertising 101 for those who use it, whether they recognize this or not. We choose a personal brand image, a more perfect version of ourselves, and then we work daily to broadcast it via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, a blog, etc. Living in a constantly semi-public universe means that inevitably you become a semi-public brand. Every time you are in conversation that involves the words “de-tagged immediately” or “deleting that post”, you are listening to a case study in brand management and crisis control.

Advertising has always been an incredibly powerful force. It’s what also powers broadcast television and provides a significant source of revenue for print magazines and newspapers. Yet the difference here is that our lives have become intrinsically woven into the Internet to the point that we become powered by advertising as well. Nowhere is this more apparent than the biggest business story of the year, today’s Facebook IPO. A significant part of our digital social life has been put on the table, and will succeed based on its value to advertisers.

It’s a mad, mad world, run by mad, Mad Men.

Image courtesy of Untitled Records