Did I blow it? Is it ever OK to analogize autism?

7 September 2007 | Culture, Internet, Marketing, Media, Online Writing, Personal | Comments

I’m hoping for reader feedback on this one.

Today’s iMedia Connection cover story is an interview that I conducted with Sean Finnegan, newly-minted CEO of OmniCom’s OMG worldwide digital unit and a brilliant guy.

During that conversation, Sean said this:

The art of a brand relationship is much like the one you and I could have as friends: it is the same dynamic that should be translated by brands. And, right now it has to be. You, as a brand, cannot get away with a one-way dialogue.

Not only that, but when you do engage with someone, you cannot continue to speak to them in a manner that says the same thing at an eight times rate.

As technology allows us to get down to the household level and creatively and dynamically deliver ad assets based on the behaviors exhibited by different people within a household, marketers must possess the assets to have that conversation. Logistically and structurally, with an agency’s help, they must be able to deliver on the content.

Something in what he said sparked my imagination, and so I replied in this way:

There is a term for somebody who every time they see you says exactly the same thing to you that they said the first time. And, the term is autism. This is what you were just describing: the banner ad, or the email that says the same thing each time is like autism.

If you, like me, have had experience working with people who suffer from autism spectrum disorder, one key element is an inability to change the message based on nuance, based on the situation, based on context. And so, what you are describing as the thing that you are working to conquer we might call “brand autism.”

This morning, an iMedia reader wrote to me to convey her disappointment with the analogy. She is a mom, an internet marketing professional and has a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Now, I’ve been involved with the kids-with-special-needs, autism spectrum disorder community for more than 30 years.  I’ve spent time with families facing the challenges of autism and with autistic sufferers themselves, and I don’t simply mean the occasional drive by meeting.  I’ve dealt with trying to stop self-stimulation in youngsters, wiping a struggling tushy after an in-school accident, et cetera. And I know the difference between Asperger’s, full-blown autism.  More recently, I’ve been advising an author of a forthcoming book about families struggling with autism on how to use the internet to spread the word about her book.

All of this is why I was very careful in my statement to talk about the spectrum and about one element within that spectrum.

I was, in that moment, working both to be accurate and to make a metaphorical point about marketing departments.  At first, I was surprised to see the email because I thought that I’d done a good job of being careful and not offensive.  Clearly, though, I was wrong.

I suspect that there is no metaphorical use of ASD that would ever pass muster with the parent of a child struggling with that challenge.

Years ago, Michael Andre Bernstein, a professor in my old department at Berkeley, wrote a brilliant book called “Foregone Conclusions: Against Apocalyptic History” in which he argued that it was wrong to have any narratives about the Shoah (a.k.a. the Holocaust) because to do so was to render it entertainment. This is a gross oversimplificaiton, but in essence it’s the same point that the iMedia reader made to me this morning. Who am I to use her pain, her child’s challenges, as a metaphor for something happening in marketing?

If I’d been thinking with my father hat on rather than my editor hat, I might not have made the comparison.

On the other hand, it was both an accurate and powerful analogy.  The way that many marketing departments talk without listening, say the same thing over and over and over and over… well, if you’ve ever hung out with somebody who has Asperger’s then it’s very familiar behavior.  Marketers SHOULD beware of their tendency to talk without listening… and if the analogy helps them to do that, then it’s a good thing.

So, I’m on the fence with this.

What do YOU think?