This past week, my son returned to school from summer vacation. As the old adage goes, I told him, “Tim, you never have a second chance to make a good first impression.” We can apply this to media planning and buying. As an industry, we have spent much time on how we measure impressions. Between the early days of the iABC auditing to the standard IAB definitions we all seem to live with today, we have become very good at purchasing impressions. Then, determining between DART or Atlas or BridgeTrack how many impressions we “got” for our marketing spend. We have built databases of response rates, agency rate structures, traffic groups to send html code, report generators all around how we purchase impressions. I think we have taken our eye off the ball somewhat. Has technology taken some of the creativity from media?

One could define mass media as targeting a group larger that can sit in one place at one time. Being that I am from Michigan my reference point for this is always the Big House, the University of Michigan’s football stadium. However, by just purchasing impressions online, we have fell into the trap of fooling ourselves about mass customization. We believe via behavioral targeting, demo targeting or other means that we are creating a true targeted experience for consumers when in fact we are simply practicing mass customization. To make a true impression online, we need to focus on the consumer and what they want – how do we create a good first impression and start a relationship?

The second thing I talk to my son about on his first day was the Golden Rule, “Treat others as you would like to be treated.” We all know that personal true two-way communication with consumers is expensive. Typically, this type of selling is set aside for high value items like homes, yachts, jewelry, luxury cars and such. However, can we create an environment by which we can bridge the gap between mass customization of content and having a one to one relationship with the consumer? We believe this is possible if your focus is on how to really make an impression.

As an industry, I think we need to think about how do we fit the content and channel to the message and device. Do we make it easy for consumers to interact by placing short codes in all of our print ads? This seems to be one of the most logical things in the World to do especially in publications like USA Today where I would be willing to bet the ownership of cell phones and the readership of that newspaper is almost 100%. Or, making sure the message and content fits the occasion or venue. As one of my old clients once told me, “Any CMO that has his face to the CEO by default has his rear to the consumer.” A few simple steps can make sure you don’t’ just purchase impressions but help make them.