I advise every adult webmaster out there to watch the AMC series "Mad Men" - not because the show is well written or because Joan Holloway has an incredible body. I want you to watch it because every once in a while, you’re allowed insight into the logistics of modern advertising. As I’ve stated in the past, underneath the veneer of Internet pornographer, we’re all really just ad men, and women.
| "Look around, adult webmasters. Free porn is everywhere. The golden age of Internet smut is dead and buried. Anybody who wants to find images and video of people fucking can find it and never have to pay for it." |
A few years ago I wrote a piece praising Thomas Edison. I’ll admit, I glossed over the man’s more unpleasant characteristics in order to highlight the meat of his message:
"Anything that won't sell, I don't want to invent."
I still ascribe to that philosophy but to praise Edison’s utilitarian view of invention without recognizing his ruthless business practices is foolish. This was a man who had no qualms about stealing from and destroying his competitors while simultaneously innovating protections and licensing for his own works. In many respects, Thomas Edison was as brilliant a marketer as he was an inventor. Mind you, convincing people to want what they already know they need (electric light) isn’t that difficult a trick. The cleverness comes in getting people to need what they never knew they wanted.
This is the underlying narrative of "Mad Men": Creating Need.
Edison had a certain historical advantage when he set about changing the world. In his day people were quite aware of just how limited they were by the setting of the sun. Gas lighting was swell but once the masses experienced the relative safety of electricity, there was no going back. The inventors of the industrial age literally brought humanity to the limits of imagination. Add on the innovations stemming from the defense industries and two World Wars and we get to a period in history where the average person owned just about every convenience item and material possession they would ever need.
"Mad Men" encompasses that 1950s-60s era that gave rise to the 'psychology' of marketing. Our manufacturing industries were able to expand during those years because the men of Madison Avenue conspired to hoodwink the public into believing that their lives were never good enough and that the solutions to their desires were waiting for them in the next commercial break. The "Mad Men" were experts in manufacturing need.
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Look around, adult webmasters. Free porn is everywhere. The golden age of Internet smut is dead and buried. Anybody who wants to find images and video of people fucking can find it and never have to pay for it. Our challenge isn’t about innovation or invention. It’s about learning how to manufacture need. We must convince our surfers that they can’t live without us. We have to show them that our products aren’t just better but that they are positively vital.
At this point, it’s time to stop selling porn and start selling ideas.
Take the idea of fear. There’s a lot of it going around. Fear of weather. Fear of war. Fear of indefinable dangers lurking around every corner. In relation to the Internet and/or mobile there’s the fear of viruses and the loss of privacy. Instead of simply extolling your site’s thousands of images and clips, regular updates and eye-popping models, why not throw a little fear into the marketing mix? Gently warn your potential customers about the hidden risks they take when they get their porn from untrusted sources. Point out that your site is impeccably safe and that with membership, they never have to worry about spyware, malware or identity theft. Post a few quotes from news articles that report on nasty viruses, harmful scripts and the hidden files downloaded via torrent or from P2P networks. Explain to your audience that a few dollars a month will give them all the porn they ever wanted, completely private and danger free.
There’s a definite similarity between the invention age of Edison and the early dawn of the adult Internet. The possibilities were endless and something new and awesome was happening, literally, every day. But time passed and innovation slowed. Like the consumers of post WWII, smut surfers are savvy, free-porn wealthy and not at all intimidated by the darker corners of cyberspace. They’re fairly contented and it’s up to us, the Mad Men of our industry, to show them that they what they’ve got never going to be good enough.