This is actually a response to an article I recently read on media agnosticism, maybe more so a rant. If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry. I’ll get to defining that here in a bit. It’s a buzzword and an ambiguous one at that. I just wanted to write this because I was frustrated that the article was so brazenly misleading. I’d post a link to it, but the downside that could ensue outweighs any benefit almost exponentially. I have little interest [read as: none whatsoever] in a full-blown argument on the Internet. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a bigger time suck.

Back in February, I wrote an article on cross-channel marketing (CCM) and then, a little later, another on actionable metrics but failed to connect the dots between the two. The take away is that marketing is hard. No, that’s not it although it is. The point I should have emphasized is that different jobs require different tools just like a DIY project at home would. Functionality aside, you probably wouldn’t use a chainsaw to fix the piping under your kitchen sink or a garden trowel to dig up a tree if you had better tools available because of the differences in scale. What this comes down to is evaluating your goals and objectives as well as figuring out which touch points are most effective for reaching out to potential consumers because the mediums you use to reach your end consumer are separate and NOT equal. Cold calling is different than commercials on TV, which are different than spots on the radio, which are different than social media, which is different than an interactive event and so on.

This should all be fairly obvious, and that’s not to say that you can’t use them together for an integrated campaign. You can, and you should. What I mean is that each has its unique set of attributes as well as its own limitations that differ from one channel to the next. That’s where the term media agnosticism comes in, also referred to as being media or channel neutral. It’s planning that’s impartial and avoids bias towards a particular platform or strategy – until due diligence helps determine the best way(s) to engage the right consumer given the goals and objectives of the media campaign. The point being that whatever process is used to produce the solution should not be biased or predisposed towards any particular outcome.

While this all might seem pretty intuitive, the concept gets lost amongst all the noise put out by the snake oil salesmen and pseudo experts of the Internet. “SEO will put you at the forefront.” “Facebook will catalyze engagement.” “PPC will affect your bottom line.” Yeah, maybe.  Each of those services could definitely make your business more visible, but that doesn’t automatically translate towards sustainable success. Why is that though? Because search engine optimization won’t save your business if you have huge, fundamental problems in your marketing and advertising strategy. A “like” you receive on your social media network of choice is different than one that Starbucks or Coke receives on theirs. Why? Because for a major brand, that additional impression has a dollar value attached to it. For someone with little to no brand recognition, it’s inconsequential. And the claim that PPC would save a business with the aforementioned problems is laughable. The article I mentioned in the opening of this entry wrote that media agnosticism was “bullsh*t” on the basis that it takes a single piece of collateral, say a TV spot, and tries to apply that voice to the rest of a campaign. That’s not media agnosticism. That’s bad advertising. From there, the writer extrapolates that those foolish enough to believe messaging can make that jump are only willing to chase down big ideas and creates deficiencies in the creative process. One, seriously? And two, that’s just silly. We’re not looking for the golden gun here. Progress is made one step at a time.

To clarify, I’m no Pelé of marketing, advertising or anything else really, and I do make mistakes. Well, I’m pretty good at Halo 3 and being snide, but I haven’t found a way to monetize either. That being said, my advice isn’t infallible. No one’s is. The thing is that I read. A lot. If you’re running a business or are in the process of starting one, you should too. Why? Because your business, or the company you work for, is probably different than most and positioned to serve some segments of the market better than others. And on the receiving end, faced with a seemingly endless number of ways to consume media, your prospective customers are receiving information through a slew of different channels. Some potential clients will seek out recommendations. Some will do research online to seek out reviews. Some might just find you by taking the path of the least resistance. That being said, how you leverage your knowledge and experience will probably be different if you sell shrunken heads versus if you have a lemonade stand. If I were doing the former, I’d probably have to find a niche market on some underground forum to advertise my product because it’s probably illegal. And if I was doing the latter, I might just make signage on poster board to target passing traffic as opposed to posting 324 tweets a day.

How you go about your business, down to how you gloss over seemingly inane details, is working against your best intentions. You might get your marketing and advertising right on the first try, or the process could be one that iterates itself over and over like it is for the rest of us. Ultimately, media neutral panning might mean more than putting habits and assumptions aside. It might require stepping back altogether and thinking outside of the box. Don’t play favorites just use what works best.