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In the last few days I’ve read a lot of articles that have been popping up on Twitter talking about how much is too much information to share in the new social media tubes. While some of them are just common sense, a lot of them take on the voice I can only describe as the “brand consultant.” Now, I have no problem with brand consulting (I do a little myself from time to time) and the concept of the “personal brand”. However, as with most things that come from the mouths of consultants and “gurus” in their blogs, most of what I’ve read is over generalized assumptions disguised as “rules.” We don’t need so many rules. (If you just thought “Badges?!?! We don need no stinkin badges.” when you read that last sentence, you are officially on my brain wavelength :p)

Are there limits that you should have when posting to services like Twitter and the new and improved more internet exposed Facebook? Absolutely. But they depend on who you are, what you’re there for, and who your audience is. Honestly, they’re pretty much like the rules that you’d follow if you were talking to people anywhere in public. When you break it down, the internet is a public place, common sense and good manners prevail, but not to the extent that you become a sales pitch and nothing more. I can’t buy into the idea of essentially sterilizing your social media personality in the name of personal branding. That’s just not good marketing in general. Why? Because no one wants to buy boring stuff, and if you’re boring no one will want to buy you. And the fear of “alienating” your fellows by exposing some of who you really are is a sure fire way to becoming boring, predicable and just like all the other people afraid of the same thing.

Do I need to know when you’re eating Cheerios? Maybe, if you’re a food critic, or you’re really trying to get in with Cheerio lovers. What about when you get a flat tire? Sure, because maybe someone can help, or if nothing else you have an interesting conversation starter about changing a tire where ever you happen to be. (Don’t believe me, tweet about something mundanely bad happening to you and see how many tweets of concern you get. Unless you’ve already alienated your subscribers by being totally boring you’ll get at least a few.) To put it simply, these stupid little details that aren’t “necessary” according to the gurus are actually very important. They act as conversation starters, insights into who you are so you become more than a square picture firing links to your blog and your website every few minutes.

This fear of over sharing isn’t unjustified, but it’s very similar to a fear a lot of marketing directors have, and that’s the fear of failing. It’s the reason 80% of advertising and entertainment is derivative and it’s the reason that a lot of these so called social media experts are also derivative. (Don’t believe me? Find 5 and see if they don’t follow the: link to their own blog + link to other SM blogs + link to mashable + promote upcoming talks, books, podcasts, etc formula.) Copying something you know will work is the safe bet, and brands becoming more humanized, more conversational is new, uncharted territory. Ultimately some major player will take the risk, and we’ll see everyone else jump on board, to try and reap the same benefits. And the benefits of moving away from being a faceless entity and becoming a group of interesting people will be huge for companies of all sizes. At least until the robots take over the Earth, maybe that’s what all the gurus are planning for.

This morning I went to a marketing breakfast, I know exciting right? Hey, for the record any time you can get free bacon, it’s totally worth whatever else is happening around the bacon. Now normally a marketing event, even one with bacon, wouldn’t be blog worthy. Twitter worthy, yes, but how am I planing on wringing a whole blog post out of it? Especially considering how wordy most of my posts are? Well, it turns out this particular even revealed an important insight (and no, it’ wasn’t that video email, the topic of the event, is awesome.)

What I learned this morning was this: In a room of 25 marketing professionals, I was the only one who wasn’t thinking of the internet as a broadcast medium.

It’s also important to note (trust me, it’ll be important later) that I was, as far as I could tell, the youngest person in the room full of heads of marketing, marketing managers, brand managers and even a couple CEOs.

Even email, something that everyone who works in an office uses a million times a week, was nothing more than a broadcast medium to these people. Now, they had just been told how they could attach their fifteen second spot to that email, but my guess was this was the popular thought even before the video email pitch. The problem is, email is inherently interactive. I can hit reply and talk back, even if I just get a form message as a response, I have options other than “watch this” or “don’t watch this.” This missed opportunity to interact got me thinking.

Earlier this week I was introduced multiple times by a friend of mine as an “ad man”. Ok, you’re no doubt thinking, that makes sense, you do advertising. But it didn’t sit right with me. It just didn’t sound right. When I think of an “ad man” I think of Bill Bernbach, Leo Burnett or even Don Draper. All of these men are my heros, but I have a feeling most of them would be hard pressed to be as successful in the internet era.

The “ad man”, as he has been classically described, is a dying breed. Focused on telling a great story, capturing and holding an audience’s attention, and getting them to remember a product. All sounds great right? While the guiding principle of “it’s all about the idea” may continue to drive creative departments, thinking about your idea as anything other than a foundation for customer interaction is quickly becoming a waste of time. It’s great to have an idea, but if you try to control the way it looks, feels, smells and tastes everywhere it’s seen, it’s not nearly as effective. Consumers don’t just want to interact with a brand, they demand it. The price of brand loyalty in the age of the internet is a piece of your brand. That’s the cost of entry. The “toll” if you will. You have to give it over to them, and when you do they don’t just buy your brand, they live it.

But most companies aren’t thinking about their brands this way. They’re not trying to figure out how to make their internet marketing a foundation their customers can build a personalized brand experience on. Their trying to figure out how to make it more like their print and TV ads from 15 years ago. They want to “capture eyeballs”, measure time spent viewing content. They want a passive audience that simply doesn’t exist on the net (and is increasingly becoming harder to find on TV.) Their more concerned in measuring success in CTRs and CPMs than they are measuring it in comments, facebook fans, response videos or mentions in tweets.

This is important to know, because it means our job as advertisers isn’t just to sell our client’s product to the customers (it’s really never been that easy, at least not in the last 25 years from what I’ve heard) but now it’s all about convincing the client that they need to stop trying to control their audience and start playing with them.

The “ad man” is passing into history, this is the era of the “customer experience dude.”