Digestion

Since this weeks industry has proven to be a bit dry, I'm going to take a moment to reflect.

I read the Ad Contrarian eBook today, and Mr. Hoffman said something that has been making the rounds in my head. Ok, to be honest, most of it has been making rounds in my head. But this particular thing might blossom into a point.

Hoffman said:

"The creative community is trying to convince you that in an era of rapidly expanding media options you need to 'reward' viewers in order to get their attention. This is code. What they're really trying to say is that you need to entertain viewers. This is what they always say. Unfortunately, this is because most them would rather be in the entertainment business (frankly, so would I)."

He goes on to say that consumers have more than enough entertainment options, and your ads need to make differentiating point about your product.

First thought - i'm not alone. There are more of us that want to be in entertainment.

Second thought - There is no better place to see the proof of this then online.

Sure, there are plenty of spots that work really hard to entertain rather than sell. But I offer the Product Micro-site as the crown jewel.

In the early years of business online there weren't that many mass channels. Enter the Product Micro-site, the refuge for the ad creatives who want to entertain, and the playground of a whole new subset of skills, the interactive creative.

Now, 2.0 rational and mass channels like YouTube have made it difficult to justify the "experience" of a Micro-site. Advertising online has started to move back towards it's traditional counterpart's more symbiotic role with entertainment (and for sake of argument, let's just call Facebook "entertainment".)

But is the Micro-Site dead? Hell no. Just a quick look on theFWA will show differently.

So this leads me to my third thought.

What if, Mr. Hoffman, The internet could actually be our Holy Grail. What if our constant experimentation with the tools at hand, along with the refusal to believe that advertising online is a TV spot with a button, actually evolves Advertising to live both with entertainment, and as entertainment. What if the answer is undiscovered territory between Gaming and Film, slowly being mapped out site by site. And we're vigilant explorers with our Products in our backpacks.

What if we can provide the differentiating points of our Products, but also entertain. Why can't we have both?

/.sirens call me by name.\