Context abuse for advertising purposes – from president Obama to you and me
During Obama’s visit to China, his photo at the Great Wall was published. It was cold and he was wearing a Weatherproof coat. The Australian garment company bought the right to use the picture from AP, turned it into an ad featuring president Obama wearing the coat, called it “A leader in style”, and put it up as a billboard in Times Square. After being requested by the White house to remove it, they said they would do so in 2 weeks, the time it will take them to put together an alternative ad campaign.
Let lawyers deal with the legalistics. Weatherproof has already reached its goals. As a result of this ad, the enormous attention (even if a bad one) that Weatherproof got, is a PR dream come true – I don’t care what they write about me as long as they spell my name right.
Obama is not a prepaid brand endorser, he is s public figure. Unwillingly, and definitely unconsentually, the President of the United States was displayed on a billboard like a celeb for hire. Weatherproof has distorted the context – From Obama in a coat at the great wall – to The coat worn by Obama on his visit to the great wall.
A blunt publicity stunt pulled in broad daylight, through the front door, for commercial purposes, abusing President Obama.
Same is true for you and me. Different perspective – same goal.
It was not president Obama that Weatherproof was really after. It was us. This is who advertisers are after – with means justifying ends, imposing on our privacy and rights.
Every day we are being abused for advertising purposes. Not in broad daylight, we are not endorsing celebs. Through the back door, mostly without our knowledge or consent, we are being tracked, monitored, million$ companies are trying to capture all knowledge about us and our social spheres – so they can best target us and our friends with their offerings.
From an Icentered point of view, both president Obama and we are parts of food chains created around us, that should be made with our consent, with us partners to the profits made from it.
President Obama’s context as a public figure was distorted for commercial ends.
Our contexts, as private people, are being invaded and abused for commercial ends.
The current paradigm stems from the providers’ need to know what to expose or offer to us, to grab our attention. For that they need over time observation of our interests and choices, even if it implies abusing our private information so that their ROI (return on investment) profits from our attention economy. Marketers pay 3rd party companies for reaching us – advertising agencies, platforms, data companies, behavioral targeting. We are excluded from the economics of these food chains, yet it is all about and around you and me.
Contextonomics, the economics of context the Icentered way, challenges existing orders. It is based on the following principles:
- My context is my capital. Owned by me.
- It should reside at my end, and not dispersed all across in various walled gardens or monitored by search engines and tracking companies. It is mine, with the key in my hand, used only with my consent.
- Relevant offers are welcome. Context based relevance is a blessing for decluttering, sorting out the noise in the information and offerings glut.
- The push model of targeted ads should be reversed, empowering us to PULL advertising content where we are best served if the advertisements we interact with are indeed relevant and maximize our ROA (Return on Attention).
- My context is a currency. I should be part of that food chain – sharing and gaining for all parties involved.
- Any use of my context should be transparent, with my consent and through the front door.
- It can be used as an alternative currency for direct trading.
- My context’s usage direction is reversed – It is me, the user, negotiating with a cloud of potential vendors over the usage of my context rather than an advertiser abusing a cloud of potential users I order to reach them.
We should be able to handle attention transactions with the same simplicity and exactness that we do with money. Today, the technologies and platforms for enabling direct revenue streams and food chains for both users and developers of relevance based services are not yet in place. But there is no doubt that principles and blueprints for their materialization should stem from a participatory paradigm that rightfully treats both president Obama, you and me.
