Mariachi Feedback.

Mariachi Feedback.  That's what happens when you're listening to your fourth favorite sports talk radio show on the commute home from work, and the distinct sound of acoustic guitars and wailing Hispanic vocals interrupts the host.  Feedback.  Crossed wires, mixed signals.  Unintended pick-up.  Feedback.  But not just any feedback.  That's Mariachi Feedback.  And it's intrusive enough to make you want to change the channel.

Now, maybe that's not the best metaphor for this post, but I'm sure we can find a place for it somewhere herein.  Maybe it just made a good opening.  But in a way, it's kind of the perfect metaphor.  You see, I was willfully listening to content (sports talk radio) when, without invitation, my content was interrupted by a unknown group of Mexican musicians.  I didn't want to listen to that.  I wanted to listen to sports.  But what I wanted wasn't considered as the airwaves crossed, and I was left with a medley of Craig Way and El Hotel de California.  Not good.  I quickly inserted a CD (Compact Disc). 

Now, that's about where we are in the world of media.  We've got a bunch of consumers whose ability to find the content they most desire is exceeded only by the haste with which they'll abandon the content that gets them there.  They're powerful, these new consumers, and they won't tolerate "kind-of" entertaining.  "Kind-of" entertaining doesn't get RT'd and it's not remembered in a era with the memory span of a drunk insomniac with amnesia.

So what are we to do, we creatives?  In the past, the challenge was only to think "outside of the box."  Fill a print space.  Tell a story in 30 seconds.  Make someone smile on the inside.  Be fresh.  Be new.  That's not enough now.  Now, the box has been burned, and its ashes spread across the bosom of the Pacific.  Now, we're charged with using spaces that accommodate no headlines, reward no copy, and seldom utilize art, at least in a commercial capacity.  The best ideas must literally reinvent the wheel every time, and then invent something else that's equally useful.  The game has changed that much.

Ideas have to get bigger.  Huge.  They have to transcend media.  Ideas must inspire action, interaction, reaction.  At this party that is social media—a party I believe brands weren't really invited to—our ideas have to work that much harder to command attention.  Because if they don't, there's always the next internet meme ready to help them change the channel, err, open a new browser window.

As creative advertising agents, our relationship with social media is infantile.  Our goal is no longer to be remembered.  It's to be re-tweeted, statused, checked in, and re-tweeted again.  Ideas have to inspire followers and likes.  We're Mariachi Feedback right now.  We need to shoot for sports radio.