There has been a lot of talk this week about Mobilegeddon and the disastrous life–altering consequences for you and your business if you don’t ensure your website is fully responsive. As you may know from the digital industry Twitter frenzy, not only will Google start to look at you with increasing disregard, your own life and that of your immediate family is in perilous danger, with the sacrifice of your first born the only way you can be saved from ensuing torture and eternal damnation.
Not known for missing out on a good scaremonger, here at Fathom Towers we want to warn you of the peril around every digital marketing corner, with a few other “sci–fi meets digital marketing” warning shots which you will do well to heed. Here are the top ten post–apocolaptic digital zombie nightmare scenarios you will need to avoid:
1. Mobilegeddon (Michael Bay, 1998) – the harrowing story of an entire generation of search marketers, willingly enslaved by a global search monopoly, doing everything that it says, when it says it, in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation, petrified that not following the master will have disastrous consequences for humankind
2. The Day the Animated Logo Stood Still (Scott Derrickson, 2008) – he was a designer, and good at his job. But he committed the ultimate sin, and testified against other designers gone bad. Designers that tried to kill his websites with complicated menus and too much imagery, but got the woman he loved instead. Framed for murder, now he prowls the badlands … an outlaw hunting outlaws … a bounty hunter … a RENEGADE
3. Alien versus Predator versus Panda versus Pigeon versus Pirate (Paul W.S. Anderson, 2004) – this game show pits contestants against each other in a race to screw up customers search strategies the quickest
4. I Married a Monster from Outer Tinder (Gene Fowler Junior, 1958) – fun 20–something Daisy was just going through life having lots of fun swiping left when one day she swiped right; as soon as Dave’s restraining order expired they met and it was love at first sight. Surprisingly though, things didn’t turn out as happily ever after as she had hoped
5. Mozilla (Gareth Edwards, 2014) – the film is set mostly in the late 1990s and early 2000s, profiling a discovery that leads to the awakening of a giant radiation–eating browser, which in turn awakens a much larger and more destructive, ancient prehistoric browser known as “Mozilla”, whose existence has been kept secret by the U.S. government since 1992
6. Edge Network of Tomorrow (Doug Liman, 2014) – 4G and 3G networks are down across the world and the only mobile Internet access available is through the E network; apps fail, mobile–first planning looks a bit short sighted and humankind globally is faced with the stark realisation that they need to speak to each other verbally and face to face
7. 3012 (Roland Emmerich, 2009) – explores a post–Internet apocalypse where digital zombies whose devices have divorced them from the real world roam the planet; big reveal in final scene pans out to Statue of Liberty, turns out they were on earth all along
8. War of the World Wide Webs (Steven Spielberg, 2005) – documentary profiling the latest plans from Compuserve and AOL who are poised to make a consumer closed network play next year to challenge the actual world wide web
9. The Day after Twittermorrow (Roland Emmerich, 2004) – Dave Jeffries was just an ordinary digital account manager, servicing a range of customers, when one day he forgot to include a Periscope strategy and a Vine strategy in a customer pitch; he lost the client account, but found himself, and got the girl. This is the sequel to The Day the Twitterfeed Stood Still (Scott Derrickson, 2008) – in real–time like the show 24, the film focuses on a business which can’t think of anything to put on its Twitterfeed for a full day; exhausted from the preparation of press releases and sales promotion for earlier tweets, the junior marketers simply panic and post nothing (*spoiler alert – no–one in the world notices*)
10. Knowing … what the hell is going on (Alex Proyas, 2009) – a middle–aged 40–something Internet professional desperately trying to avoid a mid–life crisis and clinging on to the wreckage of relevancy continues to grift some kind of living with opinionated blogging claiming to get it when all around are floundering
Marketing generally and digital marketing specifically is changing all time. We need to adopt and adapt to keep relevant, avoid the pitfalls and use our marketing to contribute to the bottom line, and ensuring we’re up to speed with the latest Google changes is an entirely appropriate part of that. But surely we can do it more calmly than this?
So let’s stay classy. Let’s stay focused. And let’s stay strategic.
Keep calm and carry on.
