"Media plan? Where we're going we don't need media plans."*

(Note, before someone gets their feelings hurt: I'm totally aware of how important a well designed and implemented media plan is, and how the whole organic reach is becoming more an urban legend on the Internet of -almost- the year 2020. The title is just trying to work as a nice attention-grabber) - *And yes, I'm referring to 'that' quote.

As a starting point, let's travel in time for a bit: Buckle up, Marty, we are heading to the year 2010. New York City, the Google offices in Chelsea Market. We were judging the Interactive category of the One Show Awards. Intensive sessions, hours and hours watching video cases, debating and trying to choose what at that moment represented the state-of-the-art of the advertising industry.

Back in those days ‘going viral’ used to be a thing, you know. Therefore, many video cases ended by measuring in many ways the results of putting those ideas into practice (although, to be clear, in the context of the One Show the ideas were judged by their originality, impact, innovation, creativity and execution, not by their results).

Many case studies finished by making special emphasis on huge conversations and reactions that had been generated with “zero media spent”. Throughout the first 2 days of the judgement of entries, that imprint was so strong that it became a meme, at least for the members of that jury. We even launched “zeromediaspent.com” and tried a slight effort to make viral said URL for a laugh.

OK, that's the anecdote so far. The important thing is that in those days, beyond believing or not the affirmation of not having spent anything on media efforts, we had the honour and pleasure to see campaigns and ideas where it was clear -most of the times, fortunately- that the power of the ideas would compensate for the lack of money to pay for a media plan.

Let me please propose an imaginary exercise: what would happen if before the next campaign in which you have to focus and work, for some reason (some magic trick, a scam, a thief, a hacker, whatever) you discover that the budget set aside for the purchase of media (whatever that is, from an OOH billboard to a sponsored Social Media post, from the honoraries of a bunch of influencers to 20 seconds in prime time TV) has completely disappeared? Yes, exactly, vanished for good. There’s now ZERO where it used to be before.

So… who are you gonna call? What are you going to do to reach any audience without buying spaces or moments to interrupt their experiences? What will happen now that there is no money to invest in the spaces, platforms and endorsements of others?

Welcome to the Internet age and the culture that it shaped, buddy. Let’s travel again in time. It is 1995 now. This is no man’s land. No one is sponsoring posts in Social Media because it has not yet been invented, and the concept of a banner is something that remains to be seen. On the streets there are no digital displays, "on demand TV" means by zapping with your remote control and the only way to share an online video is attaching a heavy and quite low-res .MOV file to an email.

Come on, jump in my imaginary DeLorean: let's stop every now and then, visiting some popular culture milestones that have happened in the last few years thanks and through digital platforms:

◢ First stop: the year 2005. A 21 years old student from Wiltshire, England, conceived The Million Dollar Homepage. The idea was simple, never seen before and almost hard to believe: to sell 1 million pixels, one dollar each. The site was initially marketed only through word of mouth, then, after the site had made $1,000, a press release was sent out that was picked up by the BBC. From there, it became a global success. Zero media spent.

◢ Next stop: 2009. Before crowdfunding was “a thing”, a $35 project was fully backed, the first successful Kickstarter ever. The platform has led the charge in changing the way we invest in and support projects. The success rate of fully funding a project on the crowdfunding website is 36.40 per cent. And all of that, once again, with zero media money behind. Just with the genuine interest and attention generated from the projects thousands of creators have been sharing with audiences from all over the world.

◢ In 2012, South Korean musician Psy released his 18th K-pop single called “Gangnam Style”. Thanks to word-of-mouth and memes from all over the world, the song and its music video went viral in August 2012 and had influenced popular culture worldwide. His video became the first YouTube video to reach one billion views.

◢ Coming back to these days, on 4 January 2019, the @world_record_egg Instagram account was created, and posted an image of a bird egg with the caption, "Let’s set a world record together and get the most liked post on Instagram. Beating the current world record held by Kylie Jenner (18 million)! We got this”. As of June 2019, the post has accumulated over 53 million likes.

What do they have in common? None of these global events needed or used media budgets. For whatever reason (cause the proposal was so original, cause of the relevance, cause being bold or really innovative, cause embracing the nonsense of the Internet itself, or because it offers a point of view or a particular attitude instead of wanting be appealing to all) they have positively impacted huge amounts of people with their proposal, becoming irresistible magnets of attention.

Without repeating the message over and over again, without interrupting users, without mistreating their intelligence and respecting their time and attention, understanding the particularities of the place and the moment where the message or experience is being shown.

These days it's quite common to hear that people do not pay attention, that the span of attention is very small or almost nil, that users are multitasking, and many other excuses to justify how poor the ideas that we usually put in front of audiences are, and the large amount of money in media that must be invested (or spent?) to be able to expose these messages to critical volumes of people, who usually did not choose by their own will to be exposed to these messages.

Imho, after almost 25 years of the massive adoption and use of the Internet and the different platforms that have emerged, as users of many of those platforms we clearly know what is good and what is bad, what really interests us and where and how to find it, regardless the media budget any given brand is keen on using just to annoy and interrupt us.

What if we make a real effort and try to figure out how to respect ourselves -and others- as users, to surprise people instead of boring them to death, and to make something we can be really happy with and proud of? (Pretty much like when Doc Emmet Brown figured out how to travel in time).

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