Simone Maurice

There's a kind of datedness about metaphors that are bandied about haphazardly in marketing. The round holes. And square pegs. This is the theory of conformity in single, sharp difference. The one about lemons and the bitterness of fate. Or how boxes contain our thinking. The most ambitious, if indulgent, is the gesture that art is life is art. Indeed, art is supposedly a mirror that reflects, if mimics, society. It's a medium that both celebrates life and bastardizes it. But why imitate?

We're often told in advertising to listen to our consumers. And while that's allowed us to sit in endless M&M-fueled focus groups and forced us to plow through piles of data over the years, there's something we're missing. What our consumers say is one thing, how they behave another, but the way our bodies assimilate and metabolize products is a really interesting metaphor for how we assimilate brands.

I never thought I would find myself embracing programmatic advertising. I equated it with those annoying banner ads that followed me around, junking up my internet experience. After a bit of forced education, I now believe programmatic will help usher in the next frontier of creative opportunity and will greatly contribute to the reemergence of the TV spot as one of the most powerful ways to connect with and reach an audience.