I read some  deceptively warm and fuzzy advertising riding on the subway this morning courtesy of our nation's top soft drink manufacturers. Together they have reduced calories of drinks in US schools by 88% by offering more low- and no-calorie options. "Gee," I thought, "I'd like to learn more." So as I exited the subway, I took out my phone and searched "no calorie soft drinks." The top link broke the spell; an article on msn exposing the same risks that no calorie drinks have of their sugary cousins.  My first thought was, "Well that isn't any better for our nation's children." My second was, "What the #$&?! Do these companies take me for a complete fool? Don't they know that I have the world's knowledge at my fingertips??" Apparently not.

Many of my teammates are in London for our Interactive Marketing Summit, which takes place tomorrow. Two of them, Melissa Parrish and Anthony Mullen, will be sharing insights regarding people like you and me — "always addressable" customers who access information through many types of devices all day long. The information is pretty harrowing for most marketers. Us always addressable folk make up the majority of the under 40 crowd on both sides of the Atlantic and we expect more from brands. It's just tedious to receive such silly messages from marketers when it's so easy to debunk them within seconds.  As a result, we no longer pay attention to those brands when they yammer at us.  Melissa and Anthony make the case for moving away from push-based campaign messages and toward a more value-based interaction with customers to mend the bridge (where in some cases, you'll actually have to change what you sell, not just what you say.) Melissa will talk about the expectations of today's always addressable customer and how marketers must meet their needs ASAP. Anthony is looking into the future, sharing technology innovations and a tidal wave of mobile data — contextual information like emotions, weather, etc. that marketers are utterly unprepared to deal with, but customers are already quickly adopting. Before your next campaign planning session, ask yourself if you're adding value to your always addressable customers or if your dooming yourself to irrelevance.