For me, as a marketer, the words “Chaotic” and “Marketing” must not be juxtaposed. I like to quote Drew Neisser of Renegade Marketing’s mantra, which is “know thy target audience”. Therefore, the logical conclusion is that spreading your message in a chaotic manner can not be good marketing practice.

However, an article I read today in the NY Times, “Hottest Ad Space in Times Square May Be on Tourists’ Cameras“, suggests the opposite - that we are at the dawn of a Chaotic Marketing era. Let me quickly recap the essence of the article:

The sequence goes like this:1. Times square has become hot property for event marketing (A.K.A - offline marketing)

2. The zillions of tourists that roam Times Square take pictures and videos

3. Vids, pics and ‘experiences’ get blogged, posted on the “Flickrs” and “YouTubes” Etc.

4. Off line Ad/Event exposure is magnified exponentially to the online audience.

As a general “awareness trick”, this sounds like a brilliant way to get the biggest “bang for your buck” for your advertising dollars. You can also acquire “cool” status for doing unconventional stuff…but is it?? Would an advertiser dare insert a TV ad without selecting the placement? Would an advertiser let a random computer program decide that a beer commercial is to be aired in the morning, in between “Days of our Life” and “Seaseme Street”?? Or in short, can marketing be Chaotic and still be successful?. Why do brands accept chaotic placement when it comes to the Internet when this rule does not apply to other mediums? Are the basic physics of marketing being bent by the new reality of social media?

I don’t believe there is a clear answer yet. We are witnessing many marketing experiments with unclear results. So what if a 14 year old person in the UK saw a clip on YouTube of the MasterCard event - is it relevant?. Will the brand be planted in his subconscious only to come of age later? Was this the audience the marketers were expecting? The audience they pitched for during budget time? Does anybody know the identity of the the online video audience in the first place? The answer is NO - NO and NO.

So why do it…is it really that pointless? The answer is NO!

What we are witnessing is the evolution of social media. The brave few ‘freaks of nature’ that defy conventional marketing and do these “senseless act of marketing” are the ones that are helping shape our future. No less. By spending a few random dollars they are participating in the biggest human social experiment called ’social media’, where the audience is not measured by a ‘people meter’, Nielsen or any other skewed system and where the media belong to the individual. After all, how can you explain the fact they are encouraging people to take pictures of their brand despite the risk of having them posted who knows where?

They are not risking but joining. The social media revolution is happening with or without brands. These brave experiments are just attempts to join the ride. In the long run - these will not be the rules… remember…evolution…this is just a phase. Future marketers in the same space, doing similar things will know much better about the effect of their campaigns. They will know exactly who did what, when and how. A whole eco-system of technology comps and services will catch up and be ready to service them.

A case in point is a very interesting start-up called Collactive that is spear-heading the space of social media marketing. If you are a marketer you should check them out. Like them, many other companies will follow and with the help of technology order will be restored to the marketing space.

‘Cause if you ain’t superman, you ain’t breaking no laws of physics!