Why It’s Time for A New Code

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.

“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

-The Sun Also Rises

The shift toward digital marketing has played out the way large-scale, fundamental change always seems to do: slowly at first, and then all at once.

It’s been almost twenty years exactly since the first banner ad.

In the two decades that followed, there were all sorts of fits and starts: fleeting trends and false predictions, hipsters and hucksters slinging jargon, and a burst bubble that drove a lot of talented people out of the industry before the industry ever hit its stride.

Sometimes it seemed that the digital future would always be just that — a future.

But, here we are.

It’s now safe to say that the digital marketing era is fully upon us.

In 2013 the amount of time people spent with digital media surpassed that of traditional channels for the first time, and the corresponding shift in advertising budgets is well underway.

A recent Accenture survey found that 78% of Chief Marketing Officers expect marketing to “undergo radical changes in the next five years,” with digital marketing growing to account for 75% of total marketing investment.

People have gone digital. The money is going digital. And really, what else is there?

“Gradually” has become “suddenly.”

Which brings us to a critical moment.

Digital is about to get much bigger, really quickly. It’s going to become the primary way that people experience brands.

But it hasn’t happened yet.

We can still shape it.

As marketers try to adjust to this new landscape our focus is instinctively placed on consumers, seeking to understand how people will behave in digital environments, and what this will mean for our ability to persuade.

But the time has come for marketers to focus instead on ourselves, and how we behave in digital environments.

Because the wholesale shift from traditional to digital marketing isn’t as simple as the same set of activities moving from one environment to another. In fact, the direction digital marketing is taking represents a massive, structural change in the scope of commercial messaging and its ability to influence people’s lives, for better or for worse.

Whether loved or hated, seen or ignored, marketing in the past was always conducted in well-understood, “neutral” arenas: 30 second television spots, print pieces clearly delineated from editorial content, billboards on the side of the road, and so on.

Even in the first twenty years of digital, advertising had clear borders, adjacent to content consumers chose to spend time with.

Today the marketing arena has shifted. Its borders are fuzzy, and it’s no longer being conducted on neutral ground, but in the population’s most personal environments.

This transition began with the rise of social media, which now accounts for the majority of time spent online; for the first time, advertising was embedded into personal, not entertainment, content. On the social web brands now conduct business alongside the posts that shape people’s sense of self, intertwined with their identity-shaping activities. It feels like that ought to mean something for the way brands behave — that it calls for some level of responsibility and restraint that wasn’t necessary in the past. No?

The transition from neutral to personal arenas will only magnify in the coming years, as the Internet of Things takes shape: wearable devices, home automation, connected products, and connected cars will become ubiquitous. We’ll come to understand the Internet not as a place you go, but as an ever-present layer that influences every aspect of daily life.

The new Internet is always on. Always with us. Which means that brands, too, will always be with us. The coming era of advertising will be personal, persistent, and increasingly difficult to identify.

And so I think the time has come for those of us in marketing to adopt a new code. An updated Cluetrain Manifesto, if you will.

A set of principles that guide our behavior, and that take seriously the responsibility that comes with the shift from neutral to personal marketing arenas.

Principles that help us respect people’s time. Their attention. Their data. Their privacy.

And above all, their humanity.

I’m not going to be the guy that comes up with the next Cluetrain.

But over the next few weeks I’m going to share my thoughts about why I think these topics are so important to think about right now, at this inflection point, while it’s still possible to shape this next phase of communications.

The posts I have in mind are all fundamentally about those of us in marketing can do our jobs in a way that makes the Internet – and the experience people have of brands on it – better.

As I’ve chatted with people about some of the ideas over the past couple of months, it feels like I’m not the only person thinking along these lines. So, who knows? Maybe something useful will come of this.

Hope so.