I’ve been catching up on my technology readings lately, having been given the excellent Joel on Software book for Chanukkah this year as well as getting a few late tech subscriptions all at once. It’s fun. But the enterprise technology ads, I’ve noticed, have taken a more luxriously minimal design take and a more frightening content look. The designs are all very refined, lots of minimal space and clear, scary text that are geared to make heavy-duty information technology folks frightened about their data, their email, their systems, their networks, their hardware, software, or connectivity.
I looked for a few online examples of these fear-mongering ads but, interesting, corporate websites don’t look anywhere near as compelling or frightening as the print ads. It’s as if the print marketers figured out that magazines catering to tech freaks best serve their clients by taking a page from Homeland Security. it makes me wonder whether the actual threats to the U.S. national infrastructure and the private technology companies are similarly overvalued. There’s no doubt that viruses, adware, malware, spam, breaching, etc. are huge headaches and major financial drains on companies which then need to pass their security costs on to consumers. Similarly, the federal government needs to assess real potential threats from national and non-state groups and individuals which then passes on its costs to taxpayers (or, more accurately, these taxpayers’ children). But in both cases, the costs are pretty severe and one can see the logic of fear and fear-mongering in those print ads more clearly than one can via the newspaper.