Signals in the Noise
I’ve worked in the advertising industry my entire career, since 2001. Which meant I had a unique perspective into the evolution of the advertising industry. For instance, I was talking to sales reps from Google when there were close to a half dozen other search engines, versus the monopoly they have now. At the time, Facebook was the laggard behind Friendster and MySpace. A takeover of the Yahoo homepage had trumped the cache of owning the coveted back cover of the Vogue Fashion Issue.
I held clients’ hands through the transformation away from 30 second tv spots and into a more digital-centric advertising approach. We preached the gospel that was steeped in moving away from making gut decisions and now relying on data. It was an overall mindset change that created a tectonic shift in philosophy where we now coveted every granular data point about a consumer.
Why the change? In theory, by understanding the consumer’s path to purchase and the reasons why they chose that path, advertisers could strategically insert their product message within each key moment of the path. The result? Done properly, a customer deciding to purchase their product versus their competitor. The original promise of advertising had come true. Spend a dollar, make three.
Although logical and possible, putting this approach into practice proved to be an incredibly complex proposition. As more media channels were introduced, more content, more devices, customers became increasingly more difficult to track. A consumer’s data footprint had increased from hundreds of daily data points to millions and billions, and it was close to impossible to pick out the handful of important data points that would prove to be valuable to advertisers. This meant, the ability to confidently predict a consumers purchase behavior became the key challenge for all large advertising holding companies. Eventually, a new pitch found it’s way into advertising boardrooms around the world. It was called “finding the signals through the noise.”*
But the idea of identifying key signals wasn’t only isolated to advertisers, because at the core of this approach was the power of persuasion. To use a real life example, the claim that the Russian government set up fake Facebook accounts, spreading billions of targeted messages to increase the likelihood of Donald Trump winning 2016 presidential election, is only possible with the help of a consumer data company like Cambridge Analytica. This strategy is predicated on being able to discern the right consumer signals, immediately mark those signals as important, and then push out a persuasive message to a voter who is on the fence between voting for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. On top of that, by pinpointing a vocal and loyal base and creating what are called look-alike models off of the key characteristics of this segment, these messages can serve as a flashpoint to stoke the original message and organically flood the entire Facebook ecosystem, causing massive amplification towards the original sentiment.
This political example illustrates that the concept is purely a psychological exercise that capitalizes on a fundamental element of human nature, our perceived freedom of choice. The inevitable question then becomes - is life ever purely our own choice or are there always other forces at work? I’ll stop short of discussing predestination, but there is no arguing that throughout life we will be exposed to a handful of important signals and countless other insignificant ones. Depending upon our ability to sift through the important versus the insignificant, will determine an eventual path that creates an outcome.
My own personal journey began with the death of my grandmother and the discovery of a trunk that contained a puzzle about a mysterious plane crash. The recognition that the captain of the plane (Pan American flight 202 known as Clipper Good Hope) was my grandfather set into motion a series of life ripples that would guide me through the next year of my life.
The contents of the trunk served as a road map to discovery – a trip to Rio de Janeiro to retrace my family’s footsteps, a glimpse into the brutal Amazon conditions as the men searched for the plane wreckage. Eventually, my focus would shift as I learned more about the men in power – Juan Trippe, Adhemar de Barros and Getulio Vergas – as well as rampant conspiracies about the reason for the crash.
The puzzle pieces steadily increased, and everyday I made a decision to soldier forward, because subconsciously the signals were pointing me to an eventual outcome. I never asked what that outcome would look like, but I felt like I was dedicating my life to the search for truth.
A year had passed since my grandmother died when I decided to stop. Exhausted and deterred by my lack of progress, the search had nearly ruined me. I had alienated myself from my friends and family in a treasure hunt with an end prize that remained unknown. At that point I made a deal with myself to let the past remain in the past. I returned to my life, sitting behind a desk, monitoring the signals of strangers. That was five years ago.
I tried to put the search behind me. I promise you I did, but as much as I tried to put on my blinders and focus on the future, I became conscious of the subtle signals that slowly emerged. The first was when the mystery surrounding the crash of Malaysian Airlines flight 370 reminded me of the families of the 50 crew and passengers of the Clipper Good Hope who were left with more questions than answers. Then I found a fellow searcher, and our serendipitous meet would uncover an unsolved murder that had significant importance. Finally, a couple of months ago, footage from a drone spotted an unknown Brazilian Indian tribe, which conjured up images of the reported cannibal Indian tribes that the search party had to contend with as they journeyed deep into the Amazon jungle.
One by one, more signals flashed in front of me, becoming significant, and I started to feel the urge again. The one that combines excitement and nervousness with a sense of purpose and anticipation. As I teetered back and forth, I experienced the birth of my son, and he was the final push I needed.
So I quit my job of 17 years, doing the only thing I ever knew how to do, during a time when I needed stability more than ever, both mentally and financially. Stability would now lie in my ability to wake up every morning and believe in what I was doing. I knew that I couldn’t raise a child in this world without knowing where I came from and the truth about an event which helped shape me.
As we go forward together, if you decide to follow, I want you to be clear about something. I’m not technically qualified for this adventure - not a journalist, reporter, writer or conspiracy theorist. I didn’t set out to make this my lot in life, but I do feel that what I lack in expertise I make for in one unwavering quality - drive. I wake up every morning and move forward because I made the conscious choice to push out the noise and acknowledge the unavoidable signals in my life, no matter the cost. Sometimes we must risk everything to avoid living for nothing.
If you feel like you may be seeing the signals as well, take a moment to go here. There are no qualifications to search, only a willingness to see it through to the end. I’d be humbled to know that I’ve played a part in the beginning of someone else’s journey. As for this proverbial treasure hunt, I won’t know until the end, but maybe encouraging your search is the eventual outcome that I was destined to find.
*The term The Signal and The Noise was originally noted and explained in Nate Silver’s 2012 book of the same name.
