PREFACE
THE OBESITY EPIDEMIC

More than one-third of U.S. adults (35.7 percent) are obese. By 2030, this number will have risen to 51 percent of the adult population.¹ Childhood obesity is even more alarming; the incidence has doubled in children and tripled in adolescents in the past 30 years, increasing to 18 percent for both groups.²

Many studies attempt to shed light on what causes obesity—or certainly what exacerbates or accelerates the propensity to put on enough weight over enough time to qualify as being obese. One of these causes is most certainly one's gene pool. As an overweight person my whole life, I can testify to my lifelong battle with the bulge from my childhood years through adulthood. In 2012, I shed 40 pounds in an attempt to (for the final time . . . yeah, that's what I said the previous ten times) take back my life. Weight gain is like a ninja. It quietly stalks you, studies up on you, waits patiently for the right time to strike, and then sneaks up on you until—pop—that pants' button is liberated from its safe house at the expense of your dignity.

Weight gain is almost certainly a cultural phenomenon as well.

In a country and culture where more is more—where supersizing and Big Gulps are as American as apple pie and chants of U-S-A, U-S-A—it is hip (literally) to go big or go home. Entire television shows, such as Man v. Food, were created to embrace gluttony.

And today it is an epidemic. It is estimated that the cost of treating those additional obese people for diabetes, heart disease, and other medical conditions will add up to nearly $550 billion over the next two decades.

Not to make light of the seriousness of this disease, but it is apropos to highlight another epidemic and battle of the bulge, this time one that focuses on our media market: the sloppy legacy world of advertising and its cohort of “paid media” forms of attention-sucking parasites. Like weight gain, it is similarly suffering from collapsing underneath its own obtuse girth. Like weight gain, it is threatened by harmful additives, preservatives, and artificial stimulants that maintain a false sense of security. Like weight gain, it is similarly conned by the deadly cocktail of inertia, tenure, and incumbency.

But things are changing. Supersizing is history, relegated to the annals of Wikipedia, thanks to one “Steak in the ground” movie by filmmaker Morgan Spurlock by the name of Super Size Me. Big Gulps are an endangered species, thanks to the efforts of New York and Chicago mayors Michael Bloomberg and Rahm Emanuel, respectively.

The same cannot be said in the media world, with yet another year of prematurely sold out (there are medical remedies for this condition) Super Bowl inventory at a paltry $4 million for a 30-second pop and a 2013 upfront TV sales season with predicted price increases of 7 percent and more.

Cultural acceptance and corporate lethargy are equally culpable as they relate to a media world that continues to operate blissfully unaware of a tidal wave of change that threatens to destabilize the very foundations of the model as we knew it.

As former agency and brand marketers, we've lived through a series of media tremors, each one getting exponentially larger and more disruptive than its predecessor: the Internet, social media, the rise of mobile, and a bevvy of other platforms, unified by an unholy trinity of technology, consumer, and market forces that are both irreversible and devastatingly permanent.

We believe that a storm is coming—a perfect storm that may very well result in the bottom falling out of an entire industry that not only supports and perpetuates an inconvenient truth but underpins pretty much the entire economic engine of growth that comes from people buying stuff from other people.

The impact could be cataclysmic. Ultimately that depends on whether you work in the magazine business, sell artery-blocking products called Twinkies, peddle Kodachrome, or fly the friendly skies with union-loving tenured flight attendants who are more likely to belong to AARP than AAPL (Apple's Stock Ticker).

You may feel this doomsday scenario is a tad overly dramatic, but as you'll read in this book, it isn't as far-fetched as you might think. Hopefully, you won't be a casualty of the media apocalypse, and to ensure your survival, we've provided an extensive road map for the post-marketing journey ahead. Call it your zombie survival kit, but more important, think about this as a way to survive and thrive regardless of the outcome.

Welcome to the world of Z.E.R.O., where the only constant is change.