Chances are, even the faithful five readers of this column have set their inboxes to Out of Office Assistant. The office parties have wound down and people are evacuating the buildings as though on a fire drill, except here, they won’t be coming back after a few minutes outside. Then again, we’re in the internet advertising business. We make money by others being connected and by being connected ourselves. All of the wonderful communication improvements brought about by the web will only mean that many of you who think you’re taking vacations probably are not. Instead, you’re probably in the car, or the terminal, or waiting for a line to move, reading this article and not having the fun you swore to others you’d be having by now. For those who haven’t left and are considering it, think again.
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Have
you ever gone a day without turning instant messenger on? It’s hard. And those
poor souls with Trillian and multiple IM accounts, the itch they must have to
fire up the program and see who is online I can’t imagine. Not using the
programs must feel like giving up smoking cold turkey. And while it is a
communication tool, instant messaging also serves as means for comparing oneself
to others. You have 80 on your buddy list. Not bad, but I have 120. Oh, just
120, well I have so many that I can’t add any more. When you are that connected,
be it with friends or clients, saying no to instant messenger is like not
drinking at an open bar. IM has such appeal. It makes getting things done so
easy in a variety of circumstances, just like an open bar makes getting drunk
easy. But, just like saying no at an open bar, saying no to IM can save you pain
during the work day. Yet were I forced to choose between having it and not, I’m
still too hooked to say no. Simply putting on the away message, even while being
at the desk, feels almost wrong yet so relieving.
Before we had
instant messaging to make our lives easier and more direct, we had email. Thanks
to email, I’ve almost forgotten how to write. Such a paradigm shift email is,
that when candidates interview for positions, rather than sending an actual note
post-interview, you’ll find an email in your inbox by day’s end. In shock I was
when I met another person from the same building and she mentioned that they
don’t have email in their offices. Unlike instant messaging which feels like a
luxury, email qualifies as a necessity. It is so important that when going out
of town for any reason, people almost always try to check their email. I imagine
that the vast majority of hot spot users care more about their email than other
web activities. As freeing as it is to go some place and not access email, most
people that I talk to feel naked without it. It’s that feeling you get when
your girlfriend moves out or the television is in for repairs. Life goes on but
something feels missing. You keep reaching and thinking you have to do something
when you don’t have anything to do.
As if people’s
reliance on email wasn’t bad enough, countless people in our business have gone
and made things worse. They went and purchased a Sidekick or Blackberry. For
those with these devices, you might as well have gone and put a leash around
your neck and asked every other person you pass to pull on it. Talk about
subjugating control over your life to the movements of others. I can’t think of
anything less freeing than those devices. You might be able to stay in touch
from just about anywhere, but they have not made a person more mobile. These
devices are great, but they are also like crack, making it that much harder to
break away. That these devices integrate with and are generally combined with IM
and cell phones make it even less likely for a person to leave them behind even
when supposedly leaving work behind.
That’s why this
holiday season you might say you are leaving work, but it remains to be seen if
you are really leaving. Unless you will be riding a non-stop rollercoaster, it’s
almost guaranteed that even when unwrapping presents you’ll be thinking about
the campaigns that need adjusting, not to mention that media buy that might not
be performing as well with people away and those that are on not converting as
well. You’ll be hoping you remembered to stop promoting those two campaigns
expiring a day after you’ve left the office. You will have doubts that the
instructions you left were clear enough. In other words, you’ll be tempted to
stay connected just to make sure those extra few percentage points are realized.
That’s why in our business vacation is tough. You want to get away, but it will
cost you. It’s not just the money for the trip but the decrease in efficiency
and mental bandwidth still allocated to thinking about work. The question this
holiday season isn’t where are you going, but how much you are willing to pay to get
away. You can leave the office, but that certainly doesn’t mean you are actually
taking a vacation.
Jay Weintraub
