Time for a change.

<grumpy>

In Common Sense, Thomas Paine noted "The more men have to lose, the less willing they are to venture." 

Our industry has a lot to gain by the shifts in the communications landscape.  But if we aren't careful, we have a lot to lose, too.

Our communications institutions, by and large, weren't built to leverage the full-contact engagement enabled by emergent technology platforms - nor the very real socio-economic systems those virtual tools are creating.  And at the same time, the financial infrastructure that supports our industry, and the brands it services, is still playing catch-up to the on-the ground realities we face - as any interactive shop not getting to staff an account person because the traditional agency already has one on the roster has run into this challenge.  And others.

Our ideas must be aided and abetted by multi-channel transmedia storytellers.  The skill sets necessary for brand engagement in an always-on world are different.  A provocative relationship requires truths, deep human insights, engaging narrative and emotive power.  But the very notion of what constitutes a relationship is in flux as we are assimilated by the borg.

That's why it irked me recently at the DLX Summit to hear interactive media agencies and publishers focused on teasing efficiencies out of their systems - "oh, we need a streamlined IO process", "oh, we need a streamlined RFP process", "oh, we need a GRP equivalent".

Bullpuckey. 

That's navelgazing incrementalism.

It's frantically slapping a fresh coat of paint on the gazebo before the hurricane hits. 

If you thought getting your IO's in order was the solution to the challenges our industry faces, seriously, go home. 

But it's hard for media and creative agencies to imagine a landscape that doesn't look like the one they just spent all this time and money building.   Frankly, they aren't incented to.  They've invested as heavily in the communication delivery systems and techniques as brands are in the pseudo-science of "brand management" percehed precariously atop reams of best guesstimates about media effectiveness.

While everyone tries to batten down the hatches (typically checking off the "innovation" item in their annual reviews with a single, crappy, non-scaleable CYA "mobile" campaign), real innovation is happening.  Smaller nimble shops good and pure evil are wrapping their heads around the space.  And redefining it.  And while our business - influence - will not change, I believe the fundamental tools, techniques and metrics of our business will be radically reconsidered from the edge in.  Agencies bound to the quarterly targets of Wall Street are at a disadvantage to the nimble crazy mofos unafraid to screw with their models, break/shake 'em up regularly, because that's what's happening in the marketplace of ideas, isn't it?

Look at music.  Yep, Music.   Music labels, too, sit on significant infrastructural investments in manufacturing and distribution suddenly obviated and torched by digital distribution.  So they've spent the last few years trying to litigate their way out of a forest fire.

But from the conflagration has emerged a whole flock of promising phoenixs (or is that phoenii?)  And I believe we marketers have a lot to learn from the music business and the new models emerging there.

Here was Trent Reznor's "Common Sense". 

How crazy has it gotten?  Plenty crazy. 

• Acts as diverse as Radiohead, Trent Reznor and Jill Sobule have successfully explored fan-financed albums and direct sales to fans. 
• Reznor's 'Ghosts' moved 2500 ultra-deluxe limited edition sets @ $300 a pop - netting a cool direct $750K before the general album even got out. 
• TechCrunch recently popped Tapulous's iPhone "NIN's Tap Tap Revenge" - a band-branded iPhone app.

• AC/DC, a long standing iTunes holdout, just announced their Rock Band Track Pack Videogame, to be sold exclusively @ Walmart along with their new album.
  

And remember Radiohead's Google data visualization tool video?   

While the labels continue to innovate ways to shoot themselves in the foot, artists are fighting it out bareknuckled, looking for a buck, building relationships and reinventing both music and "marketing". 

Pretty cool, right?

Now it's our turn to reinvent brand communications.  Right freaking now. 

And have a blast doing it.

</grumpy>

[another fun read, noted by Justin Kistner: Ethan Bauley's 'Industrial' vs 'Social' media riff]

Comments

[renny gleeson]

Haven't finalized, but short answer? Invest in Social media and mobility biz dev/strategists, hire community manager and IA resources, allocate a portion of annual marketing budget to sustained community engagements as platforms from which to "pulse" [but broadly free of individual campaign requirements]. And maybe free up the traditional site maintenance/overhaul budget for distribution-based rather than destination-based marketing.

[gaeyia]

It's one thing to note the direction of the tide and another to navigate the
waters... What do you recommend these communication engines do to develop
infrastructure that supports "Borg" assimilation?