People are not marketing buckets

My oldest brother Mike said something a few months ago that really surprised me:


It wasn't the idea that surprised me.  A lot of people are probably tired of the way marketers treat them.  I was surprised that a high school teacher and Zen Buddhist community leader with no professional media background would use those terms in that way.  He may actually have been reflecting the views of his teenage students.

I was reminded of Mike's comments after reading Scott Karp's reflections that audiences are not equal:


Scott then carries this line of thinking further:


Part of the difficulty in crossing from Old Media to New Media is language itself.  Calling your readers "audiences" creates a distance that really should be reduced instead.  "Targeting" advertising is going to make people feel like they're being hunted.  And assuming that you can identify and rank the intelligence and talents of your readers is a dangerous, tenuous and potentially offensive position to take. (Doc Searls has some interesting ideas on language in new media.)

Old Media is freaking out because marketers have learned how to mix search advertising into the media buy.  Why?  Because marketers can offer the right product to the right person at the right time through search.  And the performance metrics, ROI and margins look pretty tasty next to a $15k full page ad in a magazine that may or may not hit much less get noticed by that "audience" they were targeting.

Digg is a community of people, not a marketing bucket.  The people in the community are valuable.  The participants are both intelligent and talented.  Whether or not the Digg environment is efficient for both the buyer and seller to negotiate attention is the issue.  The value of the people in the community is undeniable.

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