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Sunday N.Y.Times Magazine Story on Bud.TV Misses the Story

Lorne Manley’s story in the magazine today [“Brew Tube”] should have focused on the implications of the interactive ad industry’s role in creating/distributing digital content. What A-B and others are doing taking control over editorial content has critical implications for journalism, at the very least. It also says a great deal of what will be happening to our broadband system. The piece should have also given more attention to critics who are concerned about the negative consequences of alcohol consumption for youth. But the Times Co. and its editors and writers would also have to address the paper’s own embrace of digital marketing–where it’s been an industry leader. For a post written a while ago about Bud.TV, see here.

With the Whole World Warming, Will the Advertising Industry Act Responsibly?

The direction advertising is taking us in the digital era, by fostering a digitally-driven, personalized and ubiquitous marketing system, should be of profound worry to all (that means you environmentalists, inc. Greenpeace, Sierra Club, NRDC, and responsible investors). The global goal of the ad industry is to perfect a system where we are constantly surrounded and targeted with brand messages. “Buy this,” “desire that,” and “consume, dear, consume” interactive marketing communications which have the power to be displayed everywhere—our PC’s, mobile devices and digital TV’s. The ad industry’s current effort to better harness neuroscience to direct our unconscious emotions on behalf of brands will ultimately be used to strengthen a global consumerist society. But as the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change global warming report warns us, our planet has taken a dangerous turn. That’s why leaders from the ad and marketing industry need to address their role in all this.

We know that the advertising industry is working to get people engaged to be ever-better consumers. For example, they wish to drive tens of millions of Chinese to buy cars, among many other products. Here’s a quote via Brandweek from a middle-class Chinese mother, who could be living anywhere: “The more products, the more stuff I have, the more happiness I feel,” says the young female head of the house. “I have very realistic thinking: Economics is the foundation of happiness. I want to have more money and enjoy a better life. This is a warm, happy family … but it is based on what kind of things you have in the family.” We don’t want to single out China, whose people deserve the best that life can offer. But we know that marketing efforts to promote consumption are aimed at China now, with businesses salivating about its market. The same story in Brandweek notes that “China’s car culture is taking off: It’s expected that 4.1 million passenger cars will have been sold in China in 2006, a 25 percent jump over 2005, with more than 10 million private cars in China now, or about one car for every 120 people… The government can’t build roads fast enough to keep up with the growing numbers of vehicles. In Beijing, a city of nearly 15 million people, 1,000 new cars hit the road every day, causing round-the-clock traffic jams and pollution.”

The digital ad “brandwashing” machine will be working everywhere. Sophisticated technologies are being deployed to expand the power and reach of a global culture shaped by greater consumerism. It’s time we embraced a system that help put our lives—and planet—back into a better balance. Madison Avenue today is part of a global marketing machine, fueled by digital steroids. But the clock is near midnight. Will marketing’s leaders demonstrate any responsibility, beyond meaningless PSA campaigns?

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Time

It’s not just that the public is super-sensitive about the potential of terrorist attacks that the incident in Boston has raised. It’s that the advertising and marketing industry’s zeal to create a 360 degree world of ubiquitious uber-marketing has been revealed for the excess it is. Advertising wants to surround us with 24/7 brand promotions, including viral, product placement, blog sponsorship, buzzmeisters, and pre-roll broadband ads. It’s an “ad, ad, ad, ad, world” we are creating, all so we can be sold to at every location and time. We hope that the Boston flap serves to also encourage Congress and the FTC to begin investigating how the marketing industry is using its power over old and new media to create a irresponsible environment where our privacy and the public interest is sacrificed for a lesser god (that being cash from brands such as Time Warner). Our real national security depends on marketers actually helping create a digital era society where there are ethical limits to what advertising is permitted to do.

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The Brandwashing of America: Micropersuasion in the Digital Era. Adapted from my new book, Digital Destiny

(The following commentary was published by Advertising Age online, Jan. 9, 2007)

‘Digital Destiny’ Author Jeff Chester on How New Media Is Causing the Brandwashing of America

By Jeff Chester

Published: January 09, 2007

We are witnessing the creation of the most powerful media and communications system ever developed. A flood of compelling video images propelled by the interactivity of the internet will be delivered though digital TVs, PCs, cellphones, digital video recorders, iPods, and countless mobile devices. These technologies will surround us, immerse us, always be on, wherever we are — at home, work or play.

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Jeff Chester is the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, Washington a nonprofit policy group focusing on digital communications. | ALSO: Comment on this issue in the ‘Your Opinion’ box below.

Related Story:

America Is Being ‘Brandwashed’ Claims Author
Jeff Chester Says Ad Industry Secretly Tracks Consumers

Following our travels
Much of the programming will be personalized, selected by us with the help of increasingly sophisticated, but largely invisible, technologies that will “sense” or “know” our interests, dislikes, and habits. Information about our travels — in cyber and real space — will be collected and stored, most often without our awareness. Our personal data will be the basis of computerized profiles that quickly generate commercial pitches honed to precisely fit our psychology and behavior.

A ubiquitous system of micropersusaion is emerging, where the potent forces of new media are being unleashed to influence our individual behavior. From the ad industry’s initiatives to better perfect measures such as “engagement,” to the MI4 research effort (Measurement Initiative for Advertising, Agencies, Media and Researchers) to harness the power of the unconscious mind, to the rapid evolution of “rich media” virtual applications, a marketing technological “arms race” is underway that will further permeate advertising and marketing in our daily lives.

Wherever we are — online or in the street connected by mobile devices — Americans (and much of the world) will be increasingly influenced by the technologies of digital marketing. Such a system will be greatly aided by the scores of supplemental “real world” marketing efforts, including teams of viral street marketers and brand evangelists (many of whom are not yet old enough to vote!).

Increasing power
The ad industry likes to claim that the public has more control over what advertising they see or whether they like it at all. Many Ad Age readers point to the increasing expansion of the media and argue that advertising is now less powerful. But such assertions are disingenuous. Fueled by global media consolidation, advertisers are now working even more closely with content companies. Product placement has morphed into “program” placement and beyond. Like radio and the early days of broadcast TV, marketing, distribution and content are increasingly seamless. The broadband internet, digital TV and new forms of mobile communications are all being shaped by the forces of marketing. As I argue in my new book, “Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy,” advertising is becoming more powerful, not less.

In the book, I chronicle the ad industry’s role in helping shape the early development of the internet, including how groups and companies such as the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), Procter & Gamble Co., and The New York Times promoted what was once called the “Internet Advertising Ecosystem.” It covers the evolution of the “one-to-one,” “new media” marketing paradigm that still serves as the industry’s basic digital blueprint (further fueled today by sophisticated off- and online data collection, web analytics, interactivity and the branding power of video). The ad industry’s substantial research and political infrastructure — including ARF, Association of National Advertisers, American Association of Advertising Agencies, Interactive Advertising Bureau, its many councils and committees and global groups such as Esomar — are also explained.

From online “behavioral targeting” to interactive ad networks to “virtual hosts” and other “socially intelligent interfaces,” the book attempts to lay bare what marketers plan for the country’s “digital destiny.” Although readers of Ad Age know well what is now underway and its likely impact, the public is largely uninformed. One of my goals is to encourage a meaningful national debate about the current direction of the ad and marketing industry and its impact on society.

Let consumers decide
One of the most serious concerns is about privacy. Most marketers and advertisers are opposed to permitting consumers/users to have real control over their data. They want the default to be the collection of information so we can be precisely targeted. That’s why privacy groups, including my own Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), want Congress to pass legislation requiring a full disclosure of what information is being collected, via what method, and how it is to be used. After examining such details, each consumer would decide on a periodic basis whether to agree to permit the collection of their data (known as “opt-in”).

The current “opt-out” system, where consumers have to proactively seek to place their personal information off-limits, is designed to ensure that most consumers consent by default to data collection. New threats to our privacy from marketers and advertisers have emerged, including behavioral targeting, online retargeting (where consumers are digitally shadowed over ad networks), and the emergence of “intelligent ad engines” placed in cellphones and other mobile devices.

Recently, CDD and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group jointly filed a petition with the Federal Trade Commission asking the agency to declare many of today’s interactive advertising industry practices, including behavioral targeting and virtual advertising, unfair and deceptive. It appears that the FTC is now slowly lifting its head out of the digital sand to seriously investigate the industry based on our complaint. But it will take prodding from the new Congress to get the FTC to act.

Safeguards for new technology
Beyond privacy, interactive-marketing technologies also raise unique concerns about “vulnerable” populations. Unleashing personalized and cyber-virtual marketing to children, teens, prescription-drug users, and the elderly raise important questions related to public health. These groups will need to be protected with new safeguards. But even more is at stake. The entire system of interactive advertising must become more transparent and requires intense public scrutiny, debate, and — where needed — effective public policies.

For example, advertisers are now working to harness the power of our emotions through research on “neuroscience” and “psychophysiology.” As the ARF and AAAA explained in 2005 during Advertising Week, the industry wants to “capture unconscious thought, recognition of symbols and metaphors.”

“Emotional responses can be created even if we have no awareness of the stimuli that caused them,” the ARF and AAAA noted. Such potential manipulation of a consumer’s unconscious will be even more powerful when delivered by virtual agents (such as avatars) that have been fashioned (via data profiling) to dovetail with our desires and interests.

What’s the long-term impact?
I fear that such a powerful psychosocial stealth-marketing machine, backed by the yearly expenditure of many billions of marketing dollars, will drive personal consumption to greater excess. What will be the impact on our environment, such as global warming, as a steady stream of interactive marketing messages are planted deep into our brains wherever we go? Will the digital push to buy and positively associate with brands promote an even more narcissistic human culture? What will be the impact of our personalized communications marketing system on the healthy development of children, families and communities?

The ad and marketing industries have an important role to play in our society, especially helping financially support news, information, and entertainment services. I recognize that advertising will continue to be a very powerful force in our lives. But marketers need to demonstrate greater social responsibility. They must ensure that consumers fully understand and consent to digital techniques; make certain that approaches to target our emotions and other brain behaviors are truly safe (including the impact of virtual reality); and, most importantly, help our media system evolve in a way that strengthens civil society.

Such a goal is not for the U.S. alone, but also involves how the marketing industry serves the public in the developing world. For example, what will be the impact on the world environment as China’s emerging digital infrastructure is bombarded with one-to-one commercial messages promoting automobiles?

The creation of a broadband media system will be viewed by future generations as one of our society’s most significant accomplishments. Will it be seen as one of the highest achievements for a democracy, a place in cyberspace that helped enrich the lives of many and offered new opportunities for an outpouring of cultural and civic expression? Or will it been seen years hence as a new version of what the late scholar Neil Postman aptly described as a medium even more capable of “amusing ourselves to death”? The readers of Ad Age will help determine that answer.

~ ~ ~
This column was adapted from Mr. Chester’s new book “Digital Destiny” (The New Press, 2007).

A Proposal for a Progressive Media Reform Agenda: Shape the Digital Marketplace

Here’s a link to my new piece timed for the Free Press media reform conference. It lays out what I believe should be done to ensure a more democratic press and civic-minded political future for the U.S.

Digital Destiny published

Tomorrow is the official publication date of my book, “Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy” (The New Press). It’s designed to serve as a warning to those who believe that the “new media” will automatically provide the basis for a more democratic communications system in the U.S. At its core is an expose of the stealth mechanism promoting personal consumption that is at the foundation of our digital system. For the majority of us, wherever we go—online, in the street via mobile devices, and while viewing digital TV, we will be digitally tracked, profiled and targeted. Our privacy will be further eroded in the process. Unless we create safeguards and other measures, the most powerful media system ever created will primarily be a force for self-gratification and acquiring products (along with the selling of politicians and a spate of ideologies, no doubt). More on this point to follow.

Digital Destiny also chronicles the paid-for by industry nonprofit groups that help support an agenda designed to weaken the public interest. It covers the endless chain of academics, universities, revolving door officials, and think tanks that help prop up media industry power. In that sense, it “names name’s.”

It also covers the battles over media ownership, broadband access (network neutrality), and offers a modest agenda for the U.S. media future.

Time Magazine: You’ve Got Hypocrisy

Time’s person of the year issue named You– and everyone else—as its annual award recipient. Hailing what it called “Citizens of the New Digital Democracy,” the Time Warner flagship publication breathlessly published a series of exuberant articles about how the new media is dramatically changing our country and the world. “You control the Information age” claimed the magazine headline, complete with a mirror-like cover device so you could admire yourself. But the failure of Time to seriously address the key issues raised by Web 2.0 and broadband illustrates the many hurdles to overcome if we are to have any semblance of a digital democracy.

Perhaps the best example of Time’s failure to truly be honest with readers/users was its failure to address the elimination of network neutrality. Time magazine’s parent company is one of the corporate leaders opposed to an open and non-discriminatory Internet. Time Warner is part of the cable industry lobbying apparatus that has eliminated broadband non-discrimination in the U.S. If Time Warner–and its allies Comcast, Verizon and AT&T–have their way, a handful of cable and phone conglomerates will actually determine much of our digital destiny. These old media giants want to extend their monopolies into the digital era, ensuring that their content receives preferential treatment; that broadband becomes a pay as your surf and post toll-road; and that they become powerful barons of the digital domain.

Time magazine should have acknowledged that its parent company is opposed to limits on media consolidation. It wishes to own as much of cable as it can (so it could continue to swallow up cable systems, such as what it and Comcast recently did when they carved up giant Adelphia cable). The magazine should have acknowledged that its parent once before had predicted great things for the U.S. public with new media—when AOL and Time Warner merged in what was then the largest media merger in U.S. history. It should have acknowledged the numerous lies given by Time Warner executives to shareholders, consumers, and policymakers when it claimed to be a sound and public-minded deal.

The cover story should have acknowledged how the new media poses great threats to our privacy, as data is collected about our every move by AOL and many others. It should have discussed how Time Warner’s AOL made public our personal search data, and also turned over records about our searches to the Bush Administration. Instead of mindlessly claiming that to see the future of our media we should look at raw videos on YouTube, it should have said that the public should learn about how Time Warner’s interactive ad subsidiary—Advertising.com—targets us with personalized digital marketing.

As we discuss in our new book—out tomorrow—much of today’s new media “vision” is driven by a desire to create a stronger mechanism for personalized and targeted interactive marketing. Companies such as Time Warner, Google, and Yahoo want to combine the branding power of video with the data collecting and interactive capabilities of the Internet. It will be a digital democracy shaped by Madison Avenue. That was the vision originally developed for our new media future by AOL and Time Warner’s leaders Steve Case and Richard Parsons. Much of Web 2.0 is based on that vision: a system designed to promote the “brandwashing” of America.

Yes, we have endless possibilities with new media, including the Web 2.0 paradigm. But powerful political and economic forces will shape what ultimately develops. If Time Warner has its way, they will hold a key copyright over our digital democracy.

The late Frank Stanton and the Blacklist

The passing of former CBS head Frank Stanton has generated eulogies, especially for his work protecting the interests of television journalists. For that, Mr. Stanton was roundly hailed as a champion of the First Amendment. But Mr. Stanton’s role in promoting the Blacklisting of writers and artists during the McCarthy era is a less known part of his legacy. We don’t have time to go into here, so this excerpt from a fine 1999 article by Jeff Kisseloff will have to do.

“In 1950, Mr. Stanton approved a companywide loyalty oath to reassure advertisers and self-proclaimed patriots of the political correctness of CBS employees. The next year, with Paley’s approval, Mr. Stanton took the network beyond Red Channels with the creation of a security office staffed by former F.B.I. agents to investigate the political leanings of its employees…In a recent interview, Mr. Stanton, 91, said blacklisting had been necessary to stave off pressure from advertisers and affiliates who were threatening to abandon CBS and possibly shut it down. He conceded, however, that the network’s response to the pressure may not have been the best one.”

Our point here. Media executives, with rare execptions such as Norman Lear, have always placed the interests of their company and the industry ahead of the public interest. Instead of standing up for more robust journalism and quality, they too often trod the path of what is safe. Although media execs like to generously praise each other as valiant protectors of the public, what often lies beneath is just another corporate lobbyist.
Source: “Another Award, Other Memories of McCarthyism.” Jeff Kisseloff. New York Times. May 30, 1999

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FCC Chief Kevin Martin: Ignorant of Media History. Lesson # 1–Cable is a Community Communications System

Kevin Martin is the chair of one of the most powerful federal agencies–the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Martin’s first allegiance–as with most of the FCC’s chairs–is with the corporate media and telecommunications industries. Martin should be serving the public, working to ensure that the country’s electronic media system blossoms into a dynamic and diverse system of communications. But Martin’s worldview is shaped by the requirements of companies who will likely employ him in the future–and will need to be tapped for campaign contributions (like his predecessor Michael Powell, Martin is interested in elected office in the future).

Anyway, to the point. If Martin was aware of communications history in the U.S., he would have acknowledged that cable television is supposed to be a “community communications system.” That’s what cable’s promise was back in the 1960’s and 1970’s–and how cable policies evolved. (I won’t go into the details here, but do cover them in my book, out early Jan.). Martin helped further wreck cable’s potential to serve as a system designed to truly serve communities. He and his two GOP colleagues voted the other day to weaken the process protecting communities when they negotiate with electronic media giants. Now, phone companies–and soon cable–will be free to run its operations in communities without regard to the public interest.

Shame on Kevin Martin for helping AT&T, Verizon and others further dominate what should be regulated as a public trust–the nation’s broadband media system. But let this sad epsiode serve as a lesson. Next time the Senate considers a nominee to the FCC, let’s fight anyone who will place private corporate interests ahead of citizens, communities and the nation as a whole.

AT&T/BellSouth & Cisco: Business Partners in the Marketplace and at the FCC

The FCC’s General Counsel has quoted from a letter Cisco sent urging the FCC to swifly act on the AT&T-BellSouth mega broadband merger. The Counsel just gave FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell permission to participate in the proceeding (to his credit, McDowell recognizes there is a conflict of interest). But Cisco’s plea is mere special interest lobbying for its “strategic” business partner-AT&T. Also see these links. FCC Counsel Feder should have acknowledged such ties when he quoted from the Cisco letter (as well as with the BellSouth/Cisco connection). It’s another illustration why the FCC needs a thorough ethical house cleaning. The agency requires an in-house watchdog whose duty is to the public–and not the corporate interests the FCC is intended to oversee. The public deserves to be protected by the appointment of an independent ombudsperson whose duties would be to represent the interest of the average consumer. One of the first reports that should be made is a list of the “revolving door” personnel between the media and telecom industry and FCC. It is shameful that so many FCC chairs, commissioners and senior staff seek employment from the very interests they govern. Role models are Gloria Tristani and Nick Johnson, who pursued non-profit and education work after their terms of office. The golden revolving door list should be made very public.