Chaos theory

April 13th, 2005

In an epic 5,500-word front-page article in the April 4 print edition of Advertising Age , columnist Bob Garfield laid out a sweeping vision of an advertising industry caroming toward chaos and disruption wrought by the digital media revolution.
Boiled down, his theory goes something like this: The marketing industry is currently whistling past the graveyard and largely ignoring signs of massive, fundamental changes in how the business of mass marketing will be conducted in the near future.
The broadcast TV model is working less well each year and will eventually cave in on itself as it reaches ever-fewer viewers with a fare of low-quality programming and mind-numbing clutter. Marketers will increasingly abandon it. But despite their glitzy promise, the aggregate of new digital technologies — from Web sites and e-mail to cell phone content and video on demand –
lack the infrastructure or scale to support the minimum amount of mainstream marketing required to smoothly sustain the U.S. economy. The result, as the old systems are abandoned and the insufficient new systems struggle to carry an impossible advertising load, is what Garfield calls "The Chaos Scenario" — a period of serious disruption moving like a tsunami through the marketing business as well as the economy and the broader society itself.

An interesting theory. Not sure myself if the doomsday scenario will manifest itself. Perhaps the reality is that each marketing communications strategy will create its own unique media ecology. Its just a different way of looking at the world.
Also we know the larger communication groups are on the hunt for mobile companies to swallow up into their empire – the big issue here is internal culture and the difficulties that these large organisations have in working in a cross-platform environment. The last comment is not directly related to the main thrust of this piece, however, it is significant.

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