Poker is a game of incomplete information. Most people think that this and its random nature make it at its core a game of luck. But in actuality poker is a game not just of luck, but of psychology and statistics, because if you know the odds of hitting your next card, and you understand the body language and psychology of your opponent, then over the course of time, you should win more pots than you lose.

I think that advertising is more akin to poker than we might care to admit. We play for the many pots which represent all the wallets of our customers, against our competition, and we make big and creative bets to win them. We believe that if we craft the right message, deliver it at the right place, and at the right time, our prospects and customers will buy from us. To be clear, I am referring here not only about traditional advertising, but newer more direct, conversational and social CRM forms as well.

In practice we go to work every day and as sophisticated as we believe ourselves to be, at a fundamental level we are engaged in playing basically just another game of incomplete information, albeit within a much larger and much more luck based construct. There is far more complexity in the mass human psyche than what can happen within a relatively simple game of poker, I should think.

Take just one person randomly out of your target audience. Despite all the research that’s been done on this target, truth be told, do we really have a clue what is happening with this one person on a real fundamental level in terms of behavior, motivations, drivers, life history, or any other of the multitude of random things that might be running through their brain at different moments in different situations? The persona we built about their “active lifestyle” just doesn’t cut it IRL, and although a bit more sophisticated, nor do some of the fancy predictive models we’ve built, either. There is still just too much unknown for him or her, much less anyone else. So we take our best guess based on some assumptions.

Now imagine for a moment that magically all the cards at the table are turned over, and we were suddenly granted a perfect, Godlike perspective into who this person is, what this person does all day, what they think, and what they want. Then according to our original maxim we would be able to craft and deliver up a perfect message for this person, served on a platter to them at the perfect place, at just the perfect time, every time. And them we must win their business from our competition every time, which is basically why we are playing in the first place, and thus we would be the greatest advertisers in the history of the world, and be famous, and of course rich.

The whole prospect of win-fame-fortune in my life thus leads me to propose a new unifying fundamental theory of advertising to help guide me the way there, which based heavily on Sklansky’s fundamental theory of poker, and rooted in the idea of advertising = luck, and information = victory:

The Getner fundamental theory of advertising: Every time we take action differently than if we had complete information about our target we lose, and every time we respond the same as if we had complete information about our target we win. Conversely, every time our competition takes action differently towards our target audience than if they had complete information about our target we win, and every time our competition takes action the same as if they had complete information about our target we lose.

What this means is that advertising is at its core must become a target uncertainty reduction exercise, information gathering competition on an individual and collective level which must of course then be properly executed off of. Everything we do that doesn’t recognize these tenets of the fundamental theorem is essentially just wasted effort.

Fortunately we live in an age where advertising is poised to take the next great leap in effectiveness and power due to the rise of data mining and advanced analytics, enabled by the seismic media consumption shifts that we are currently participating in the midst of.

I think this fundamental advertising theorem has tremendous implications for what we need to do as advertisers and can act as a true north for all of our efforts especially as we head into the new decade.

The fundamental task for anyone who wants to win for their clients or their business will lie in an increasingly mathematical, data oriented, technology based approach because this I think has been proven over the past few years to be the best way to understand our target audience. As technology and data acquisition continues to advance more and more rapidly, those with the ability to be flexible, gather more, and make more sense of the data will win. That is why I know companies with creative data acquisition and utilization at their core like Google will continue to dominate in the future (buy more stock!). And why I am also very bullish on data based retail e-stores like Amazon, and geo-mobile and location based, behavioral tracking services in the next few years as well.

So channels that do not have creative data acquisition at their core will continue to remain relatively cost inefficient and increasingly archaic by comparison with the ones that do, in particular, digital and direct dialogue, for they will continue to improve results at the same ratio as practical implementation of new technology and data processing and mining and insight gathering occurs. I believe the information insight gap between the haves and the have nots that occurs will continue to grow in the coming years, and the power and results will be concentrated to the hands of a few. Essentially whether we know it or not yet, we are all engaged in the great data land grab in the coming decade as we all file into the position that we either land in or determine for ourselves. There is still time to catch up if we’re behind but it will require some nimbleness, a fundamental philosophical reorientation towards the fundamental theory, and the proper resources and structural investment put against them

The hyperacceleration of technology and media consumption shifts is ushering in a new age right before our eyes where the ratio of unknown to known information will be reduced even more drastically at a more rapid rate for many. And whatever privacy implications that might have, the agencies of the future that are able to creatively acquire, harness, and drive insight from the data better than the competition, by virtue of my fundamental theory, will have to win. And those that don’t, or do it poorly, will be increasingly relegated to bluffing, winning occasional big pots, but over time, must then necessarily become quite poorer, losing players by comparison.