Why this moment is like the Golden Gate Bridge and how to get across it.

We get asked all the time to come into our clients’ organizations and explain to their senior execs/board members what is actually going on in our industry.

I sat down with a very connected and senior friend in the business before all of the madness that is Cannes who said “I don’t know anyone who is happy right now.”

We talked about the general sense of insecurity marketers and their agencies have in trying to figure out where we are now and how it relates to anything we have ever known before. Are there only two channels that matter anymore (Google and Facebook?). Or is it FANG…and why would we choose such an unsettling acronym anyway?!

And, is it just our general sense of insecurity as marketing execs, or is there a broader explanation for this general sense of unease. Couple what we don’t know about our industry with what we don’t know period, and we came up with the simple truth that we don’t know whether it is AI or North Korea that is going to kill us, but assuredly, something will…

So yeah, weird times, maybe the weirdest since the industrial revolution, but, like all things, we just have to look back into history for a little guidance.

This is kind of like broadcast leading to the very long tail of cable, only in reverse.

Time was, when we only had a few broadcast channels and a relatively simple marketing mix model. Sure we, like Wannamaker, didn’t really know what parts of our comms plans worked best, but man it was uncomplicated. Then came ESPN, HBO, MTV and the like, and the inarguables about advertising became more arguable.

Eventually we got so very far down the long tail that there was not only justification for our soaring cable bill, but an ability to target the most specific of audiences and (sort of) measure what happened when we did.

Soon after (relatively speaking), there was this new frontier happening on the other end of the marketing spectrum which was the Youtube creator and their very niche audience, and with that a real ability to target and measure what happened with our messages.

Here’s where the Golden Gate comes in.

On the Marin side, we had the big tower that was broadcast, and a long tail heading into Sausalito that represented all of those super niche players.

On the San Francisco side, we started with those very long tails on the digital platforms that were headed to the big tower to the north.

Both of those long tails are now shortening up. Everything is going toward those two big central towers. Mass. Predictable. Safe. Foundational.

Like it should be.

Linda Yaccarino got a bit of guff for suggesting that niche digital was a whole lot of whooey, but if you didn’t think so, they had that too…

Not fair.

We are all moving toward the center. Everyone in the media space has to be accountable, and prove that their messaging moves the marketing needle, and that it does it at scale.

FANG isn’t a scary thing. It is a new order in which audiences are congregating around the stories that resonate best, and those who provide them.

The average person today watches 11 channels in a household of 17. Not much has changed there, except that those 11 are moving away from traditional TV providers to an array of channels that will likely include: FB, Google, Instagram, Snapchat, Hulu, Amazon, Netflix, OATH, Apple, AT&T, Comcast and a couple of others.

The challenge for us all is to recognize that times have changed. That we shouldn’t be setting budgets based on antiquated notions like “TV”, “Cable”, “Digital”, “Social” or “Mobile”, but rather stories well told, by the people who matter most, for the people who matter most.

And when travelling across a bridge…one needn’t think about who built them (though we should) but instead will it take us from where we are to where we want to be…