What Content Means

What content means is that advertising has been hijacked by people who are slick with their Macs and their iPhones and their iPads, and great at bullshitting you — but who know precious little about advertising.

What content means is that these geeks in weird clothes who like to be called “digital natives” have many fans and followers, both fake and real. Often more than your clueless company will ever get round to amassing.

What content means is that they tell you and your company that the medium is the message. But “being on Twitter” is neither a strategy, nor a message. McLuhan perhaps would have loved this, but it’s completely wrong.

What content means is that by now even the bean counters have figured out that writing rubbish themselves for their own companies or for their clients costs less than buying ad space on the rubbish other people write.

What content means is that advertisers think that those people, the consumers, would gobble up anything as long as it’s pushed down their throats hard. But then “organic reach” on Facebook slips into the single digits…

What content means is that there is no idea. Not just not a big one: no idea at all.

Don’t be content.