Power to the people

October 11th, 2004

Having just posted some thinking outloud on broadcast media and blogs.

Wired has published an article entitled Power to the People

Trippi says

The 2008 presidential campaign will be waged and won online. Oh, and guess what: You’ll be in charge

Trippi then explains:

Television took 13 years to get into 50 million homes. The Web reached that number in only five years. September 11, 2001, was the key moment. The Pew Internet & American Life Project found that in the days immediately after 9/11, just 3 percent of Americans who were on the Internet used it as their primary source of information. Less than two years later, as the US was preparing for war with Iraq, that number had risen to 26 percent. Now, 77 percent say they have used the Internet to interact with news about the war. They’re not just reading the Web; they’re emailing one another, posting messages, writing blogs.
Television had the Kennedy-Nixon debates; the Net has begun to have watershed moments of its own. In Iraq, the US media is facing the same military censorship as they did during World War II. But skeptical Americans, hungry for real debate, can now go online and read foreign newspapers, listen to the BBC, and read blogs from people in other countries. The more homogenous journalism becomes, the more it drives people to the Web. No newsroom, not at The New York Times or ABC or Wired, can scoop 100 million reporters.

From the perspective of companies and their brands, it is this significant change in attitude by customers, who will actively seek out the truth, which will force companies to rexamine how they market themselves. Wally Olins described it as an “attainable reality.”

And although slightly tangental, when shock Jock Howard Stern decides to turn his back on the traditional media networks, to become the voice of satellite radio ( Sirius ), you know something is happening. FT October 9/10 2004.

Trippi says:

Listen, most Americans are unhappy with both political parties; they assume that every candidate is lying to them. Young people say they’re powerless to change anything except the channel. Our founders feared this would happen, so they placed the power to elect a new government – the power of revolution – in the hands of the people. We’ve had the right to fix the system since 1789. Now we have the tools, and the will to use them.

Marketing to these people by interrupting them with image advertising will not work on the future generations.

Recently someone from a big media agency described conventional image advertising as the silent movies of our age, and why would you want to go the black and white silents when you can multi-colour talkies instead.

SMLXL find these opportunities very exciting, so many different ways to communicate and engage, to grow and build customer advocacy. When the US politicians understand they have to change to survive, I think that is a very big clue for other businesses and their brands.

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