Intimacy In The Age Of Everything All At Once

On the Super Bowl last Sunday, Budweiser’s support of immigration and Audi’s props for pay equality were indeed brave. But what I think really makes them work is their interesting intimacy. Intimacy is shocking. It is honest. It brings up awkward things. It speaks to you knowingly about the undergarments of your life, the things you do when no one else is around. Is anyone looking? Did you really say that? How did you know that about me?

What if advertising said something so surprisingly intimate that it made you feel vulnerable? Intimacy tells us: They know what I am thinking. It creates an indelible bond between a company and the individual. Intimacy makes us remember. Big Data and research are vital in the creation of this kind of relationship, but they are just the beginning. With enough money, every advertiser can buy the same data. It is not intimate to say things everyone already knows.

Instead, we must go beyond common knowledge to find the things in-between the well-trodden paths, the things that signal that a company understands and is one of us. These things are the essence of a big idea. Success in this search will determine who wins the Big Data battles. The people who can help you do this are the most valuable people in commerce.

Today, in an age of always-connected social media and customizable television, there is perhaps something to strive for that is even more powerful than mere intimacy. Inside creative ad agencies, we call it mass intimacy. Mass intimacy is the replication of this kind of feeling over a wide, even global audience, yes. But it’s also a snowballing kind of momentum created when we experience an intimate message and realize that it’s going to millions of people around us at that same moment. It is the very best, pure uncut drug form of this effect.

We once called it fame. But it is more than that. It speaks stunningly to us alone. Yet we can’t wait to share it because we know others just saw it too. Mass intimacy is not something that comes merely from a creative idea. It takes strategic brilliance and unheard-of media thinking. But the result can be historically affecting. We can have people sharing the most intimate, emotional message—think about it—in seconds.