Fear is The Mind Killer

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. –Frank Herbert, Dune, Page 19

The phrase that graces the title of this article was first mentioned in Aldous Huxley’s novel, Island. Three years later, Frank Herbert used those same words in Dune for the Bene Gesserit members as a litany that could help calm themselves in perilous times.

Do we live in perilous times?

The quick answer is of course, “yes”. But what makes it perilous has less to do with what is going on around us and more what is going on inside us. When you look around and speak with people, you can hear and then feel the fear folks have. Uncertain economic times create insecurities, the cousins of fear.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Fear defeats more people than any other thing in the world.” I belong to a few online advertising discussion groups and fear is palpable. Very few on these lists seem to be confronting this powerful, hard-wired emotion.

Maybe that is not exactly correct. Many seem to “confront” the fear by succumbing to it. Instead of performing to our hopes and dreams, the online industry is in full surrender to our fears. Under the rubric of practicality, online advertising has crushed the spirit out of the profession.

Fear has led many to rush for the comfort of the herd. Online was once a place where lions roared and innovation flowered. Innovation springs from hopes and dreams, not from fear. With a few notable exceptions, what presently passes as innovation is a new mathematical algorithm touting behavioral targeting.

Fear obscures vision otherwise it would be a simple matter for everyone to recognize that “innovative” mathematical models are not leading to better response rates at all. I was recently contacted by a major online publication trying to sell me advertising. They said that they offered the most targeted audience for our message.

They said we could expect a .35% click through rate.

The real tragedy is not the low CTR, it is that the sales rep, and apparently our entire industry is so afraid that they have not been able to see where this all leads. About 100 years ago, there was a French Prime Minister Leon Blum who once said, “The free man is he who does not fear to go to the end of his thought.”

When we cannot admit that .35% response rate to a highly targeted audience means there is a problem then the lack of admission is more important than the factoid. You have to acknowledge a problem before you can solve it.

Ray, the little kid in Jerry Maguire said, “D’you know that bees and dogs can smell fear?” Let’s look at the online media landscape:

Brand managers:

This group have become afraid of the MBAs with spreadsheets and must show an ROI within a time horizon that reduces the online advertising to the transaction.

Agencies:

These folks are reduced to doing whatever the client wants. They are afraid to really tell clients what they need to hear. Instead, agencies rework their mission statements to fit the language of the brand managers who craft their language to fit the MBAs with the spreadsheets.

Publishers:

Faced with ever declining CPMs, these media owners court the agencies. They rework their mission statements to appeal to the agencies who are trying to appeal to the brand managers who are crafting their language to fit the MBAs with the spreadsheets.

The above landscape sounds more like an advertising version of There Was An Old Woman. You know the song about the old woman who swallowed a fly and the last line of every stanza was “Perhaps She’ll die”.

I want to help an industry that has fed my family for so many years. The old lady doesn’t have to die. This industry is filled with so many brilliant people who have ceased innovating and the real culprit is fear. A quote Eleanor Roosevelt might help right now:

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.”

I am writing for my friends in the industry and my two boys studying media at Bradley University. There is a way out. If we face our fears, it will pass more quickly and make room for what we hope and dream. It is never practical to be cynical and communicate with the lowest common denominator. Cynicism is actually disengagement. That will not lead to innovation.

We can triumph over all that comes our way. I will leave you with yet one more thought. This reaches beyond religiosity and you can replace “faith” with “dreams” if you wish.

Fear imprisons, faith liberates; fear paralyzes, faith empowers; fear disheartens, faith encourages; fear sickens, faith heals; fear makes useless, faith makes serviceable. –Harry Emerson Fosdick