Today I was sitting in the Chicago O’Hare Airport grabbing a quick bite in between connections when the news broke across the many TV screens in the terminal that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC had an incident, a man with a gun, a shooting, and possibly someone or many were killed. At that time, we didn’t know much. The frequent challenge of news organizations to be first conflicted with the ability to accurately report on what has actually happened. At this moment leaving, in my immediate midst, hundreds of connecting, arriving, and departing travelers with little more than fright and speculation as to what might have just occurred.
As a concerned citizen with wifi access, I whipped out my laptop and decided to see if there was more online. I admit my first stop was the same news outlet fumbling on TV, CNN.
Although I think I had prepared myself for no additional information or some scattered citizen journalism at best, what I didn’t expect was this: advertising with messages like “Don’t wait until it’s too late.” Or images with coffins or crying children at graves. Really? This can’t be the fruits of great ad technology promising to deliver customers at the right place at the right time, can it?
Before I go any further, here are the ads from AccuQuote on CNN. By the way, I refreshed this page and continuously saw additional adaptations of these ads. Obviously targeted and reprehensible.
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I have worked most of my adult life in the ad business in one form or another. This is not the first misplaced advertisement you or I have probably seen, but it is an issue that must be addressed now, especially since similar problems were happening twelve years ago.
In 1997, when Princess Diana was killed in a car accident, I was on vacation. I first saw the news in a restaurant. It was devastating to many and a news story that most of the world watched for weeks—even months—to come. A few days later when I returned to work and sat down at
