Lately I’ve been wrestling with the issues going on in the marketing and media arena. Marketers tend to be full of hot air, buzzwords and a whole lot of candy coated crap.

In the past, marketing and media buying was primarily a budget driven endeavor, with campaigns and ads driven by the insight of focus groups and the brainstorms of high level executives. As of late there is a HUGE opportunity to cut through the bullshit, define the audience, ACTUALLY REACH the right people and STOP the WASTE.

Gone are the days of throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. We no longer need to spend billions of dollars to spray and pray to hit the desired demographic, with a campaign they may or may not like, because we’ve got technology and data, it’s truly magical!

Cue the unicorns, fairies and harps….but wait, there’s a problem, and it’s A REALLY BIG ONE….it’s not the tools that aren’t working, it’s not that there isn’t enough data available….It’s that people don’t understand how to use the tools, they don’t understand what to do with the data and they don’t want to learn new systems.

Hey, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it, right? Media buyers and companies continue to sell and buy TV space because it works right? The prices go up because of the value and the tune-in numbers right? That’s why a media shop would reccomend you buy MORE TV at a higher cost, right? WRONG! They sell what they know, people buy what they, know. They can measure it, they can understand it.

So, let’s back up a minute, Facebook ads don’t work, because I put my TV commercial there and it didn’t garner the same response it does on TV, right? What’s the response I get on TV again? Oh, someone; a nameless, faceless ageless individual changes the channel and fast fowards a 30-second spot that I have no ability to see the recall or understand their interaction?

Well, guess what? On Facebook, that’s not the ad you should have run anyway, you should have run a 6-second visually captivating video that would engage the audience without sound tailored to the interests of your target. Because guess what else, if you spent 1/100 the amount you spent on that TV commercial, I now have more insight about the user than you could ever gain through any other kind of advertising. I know their interests, their favorite news outlets, brands, websites, income, if they are male or female, if they have children and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The user has also personally endorsed my brand, interacted with it, created a higher recall and given it a longer life throughout their network.

Now imagine, if I piggybacked my TV spend with a complimentary campaign, that built off of the impact and conversation it started expanding the ripple into the social universe. Working together, social could actually give us real insight into our traditional audiences, imagine that?

So, why in the world are people still putting their TV commercials and magazine ads on social networks? Why do people think TV is still more powerful than social, that’s not even close to apples to apples. We haven’t even begun to see the power of social because media is still stuck in the old models and mediums.

Maybe it’s not the tools that are broken, maybe it’s the people using the tools, maybe it’s you, maybe it’s me! So how do we solve this problem? How do we make sure we don’t break and waste the chance to see marketing magic? The secret is… education, understanding and willingness to learn and change.

Does a magazine ad work on the radio? Would a radio commercial work on TV? Then why would you put a TV commercial on a social network?

Adapt the message to the medium, but first understand how people use, the medium, educate to understand and then adapt. We need to make the change now and learning is the key, because these smoke and mirror shows will only last so long, education is required to do things the right way.