My, My, My

by Jim Hanas

NOTE: This essay originally appeared on a website called ADAD in 1998. Here's why I'm reprinting it now.

If the Seventies are to be remembered as the "Me Decade," it's a good bet that twenty years from now the Nineties will be remembered as the "My Generation." My Yahoo, My AOL, My McDonald's, not to mention the oddly bland Windows 95 "My Computer" icon. Never before have so many products been hawked on the basis of being "mine."

Of course, "My" marketing isn't entirely new. It's long been standard for moving cutesy toys and porcelain collectibles—a usage that has found its ultimate expression in the name of the Denver-based My Twinn Doll Company, which, for a chunk of change, will create a deeply sinister miniature-replica of your child based on a photograph.

More recently, however, the marketing "My" has spread all over the web, where it has become a prominent part of the new jargon of interactivity. While it might seem puzzling how such a low copy-cliché could find a privileged position in the marketing of "new media," of all things, it's function is clear. Caught between the mass marketing of the old media and the niche marketing of the new, the "My" sidesteps the decision by being both.

On the one hand, it speaks to everyone because everyone can say it. On the other, it speaks to each as a niche of one, because everyone's "My" applies only to themselves. It's target marketing made perfect by being made obsolete. No more polling. No more demographics. There's no need, since—whether it's selling user preferences, push systems, or cheeseburgers—"My" tailors itself to whomever might come across it. It is the dreamed-of self-customizing pitch.

The recent emergence of its use in media marketing, then, was inevitable. The media substance—the mass of new and old media that exists primarily to runs ads for itself—has long demonstrated its ability to take on various forms in order to more effectively ingratiate itself to consumers. It can be young, it can be jaded, it can be edgy. It can be pragmatic and even comfortable. But only with this new wrinkle has it become what it has always wanted and needed to be:

You. Whoever you are.

Rather than speaking to you, "My" marketing allows products to speak as you. Like "AMBULANCE" written in reverse so it will appear as a word in your rearview mirror, "My" turns an advertising message around so that it can effortlessly appear, to the consumer, as a thought.

No doubt recognizing this subtle solution to the ancient problem of the "one and the many" (after all, how could they not?), ad agency Leo Burnett brought the strategy off-line last year for its "My McDonald's" campaign, complete with an iconic logo that looked fresh off the internet. It didn't work, and it helped Burnett lose its role as McD's lead agency—after over 15 years—to DDB.

While Burnett's misfire might suggest that the strategy was best left to products targeting the procurers of Princess Diana postage stamps, the real lesson is more complicated. It's a matter of continuity.

A McDonald's is a thing. A building. You can go there. It isn't yours and you know it. The idea lends itself to derision, as when The Onion ran the headline, "Gunman kills twenty in own McDonald's," along with Burnett's cyber-logo.

But a website isn't a place, and it's not even a thing in any ordinary sense. It's material basis is obscured, so it is experienced only as meaning. Distinguishing it from a McDonald's, in other words, is easier than distinguishing it from a thought.

And it will become increasingly so. As McCluhan famously claimed and all faithfully repeat, the human nervous system is being expelled into the world as electronic technology. Involving choice, memory and experience, My Yahoo! will become increasingly difficult to discern from my consciousness, and not buying a product advertised on its banners will be like going against a deeply-held belief.

There is still a gap, however, that needs to be sparked, like the mind-body problem, but easier to solve since it involves two sorts of meanings rather than two sorts of things. And rather than resorting to some mysterious properties of the pineal gland, marketers can solve the problem with a single word, reflected back and forth, existing in two places at once.

We haven't seen the alice greenfingers 2 free last of most popular free hidden object computer games the aveyond lord marketing "My," Burnett's experience notwithstanding. If anything, the some download turbo subs allure of pet supplement market its indexical properties is picking up speed. After years of drawing consumers to Nike with an order, "Just Do It," Wieden & Kennedy has recognized the virtues of mimicking, rather than commanding, thought. "I Can" is, in fact, a groundbreaking hybrid. On the one hand, it's a testimonial, silently spoken by the anonymous athletes in the spots. On the other hand, it provides consumers with a thought readymade for the thinking. It's a brilliant piece of borrowed interest. The self, after all, is still the best-selling product of all time.