The word you has always been one of the magic words in advertising and marketing and it’s one of the ten magic words in direct marketing. As long as it’s not demanding or confrontational (“Uncle Sam wants YOU!”), the use of the second person is inviting and friendly. Conversational, or better yet, engaging.

The new interactive media have taken that you imperative to a new level, kicking classic marketing engagement into a higher gear. With interactive marketing, we not only have to say we want you, we have to prove it. Thinking of how you might search for our product. Thinking of what information you need to know on a web page. Providing the information you need to make intelligent decisions, including direct product-to-product comparisons. Making offers that are relevant and meaningful.

That means nurturing you. Enticing you. Winning you over. Or you simply don’t take the actions we want. It’s really that simple.

Unfortunately, that’s still a difficult concept for some marketers to accept. Emerging from the age of mass communications, some are still hooked on the broadcasting model, where controlling the media allows them to control the message. They still have agendas to meet, things to say, or even propaganda they want to disseminate. It’s very difficult for them to accept that it is not about them.

Perhaps one of the most unforeseen consequences of the new media is the impact on what will work in traditional media. Audiences who are accustomed to being engaged with or even participating in the new media are not about to be lectured to, preached at, shouted at, or otherwise treated in a condescending way. It’s over, and the sooner marketers recognize that fact, the better.

What does that mean? It means putting the prospect or customer first. Thinking of them with every line of copy, every piece of art, every tactic, every purchase of media. Asking what they want or need. Trying to learn more about them and what motivates them. Reasoning with them, giving them the hard data they need. Talking with them, not at them. Engaging them with every word, with every medium, with every contact.

If you're a fan of "Mad Men," you know that this insight was just as true back in advertising's so-called Golden Age as it is now. The customer or prospect always should have been at the center of a good marketing program. But that didn’t always happen: some marketers were carried away with the brute force of mass media.

But there’s no excuse for that now. Engagement is king. And an interactive, media-proliferated, brand-fragmenting, hyperintegrated world is demanding it.