Many believe that a paradigm shift has taken place and we now inhabit a new digital media universe. They are mistaken and not just about media, but about paradigms as well.
Today, digital accounts for roughly 15% of global media expenditure. A little bit of grade school arithmetic will reveal that leaves 85% of budgets still dedicated to traditional media. Moreover, even if present trends continue, digital won’t reach the level of TV for at least a decade or two.
However, the real failure of digital media is how little it has affected how we use traditional media. For a true paradigm shift to take place, that’s what really has to change.
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Do you need a digital strategy or digital skills?
Every business today is essentially a digital business. It’s hard to think of anything you can do without being affected by digital technology. This is especially true in the realm of media and marketing.
However, in seeking to compete in the digital arena, many companies make the mistake of focusing their efforts on strategy and neglect skills. The result is usually not only failure, but expensive failure.
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Everybody wants to be smart. Intelligent people are admired by others for their ability to retain facts, complete crossword puzzles and maintain scintillating conversations at cocktail parties. Nobody wants to look dumb.
That’s unfortunate. There are a lot of benefits to being the dumbest guy in the room. You get to encounter ideas that you never heard of before. People can explain things to you that you don’t understand. Dumb people can always be surprised and thereby discover new things.
It isn’t easy, though. Being truly daft takes a whole lot of effort and courage. However, it can be accomplished. Read on and I’ll show you how.
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There is no question more central to the practice of marketing than what makes people buy things. We have plenty of metrics and models, but confusion still prevails.
Most probably, a lot of the befuddlement is due to the fact that there is really no one true path to purchase. Different people at different times will interact with different brands and categories in a variety of ways. We might agonize over the choice of a candy bar and rush through the purchase of health insurance. There is no law that prevents us from doing whatever we want.
However, just because consumer decision making behavior is often complex and capricious is no reason to just throw up our hands in despair. There are effective and systematic ways of thinking about how people interact with brands and and metrics to help guide us.
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When you drive past a car wreck, it’s human nature to stop, or at least slow down, and look.
That’s pretty much how I feel about the debate that’s broken out concerning Malcolm Gladwell’s piece in The New Yorker about how “The revolution will not be tweeted” and Twitter founder Biz Stone’s response in The Atlantic, lauding social media as a powerful force for good.
I’m very far away from the cocktail party chatter among the digerati of Manhattan and Berkeley, but I have experienced a revolution, up close and personal. Clearly, both men’s views miss fundamental realities about both revolutions and the part social media has to play in world events.
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Last week, Benoit Mandelbrot died peacefully of pancreatic cancer at a hospice in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was 85 years old.
While it is not unusual or surprising for men of his advanced age to succumb to that kind of grave illness, his loss is nevertheless a profound one that is heartfelt by all who were familiar with his work and his special talent for delivering apparent heresies with a kind face, a soft voice and a childlike glint in his eye.
Yet he was much more than just a genial maverick, he fundamentally changed how we see the world (or at least how we should see the world). To remember him is not to dwell in the past, but to blaze boldly into the future that he helped build.
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New ages require new rules. It should be obvious to even casual observers that there is a tectonic shift in marketing taking place and we all have to adapt to a rapidly changing context. What’s not so obvious is what that means. What do we actually have to do to bridge the divide?
Many say that adapting means that we have to abandon old rules and the substrates out of which they grew. In this view, we need to embrace Google, Twitter and Facebook and abandon the old ways of broadcast and print.
However, a more serious approach is to endeavor to understand the forces underlying the change. New paradigms arise when old frameworks prove inadequate to solve modern problems. Yet, for new paradigms to be successful, they need to apply to old ones as well.
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Most people think that the Web is a pretty big deal. It created a universal platform for communication and content that unleashed an astounding amount of creativity.
However, there is a second Web brewing that could be even more powerful. We won’t see much of it, because it won’t be a platform for us, but for machines and it will unleash the power of information by linking data that we have long sequestered in disparate places.
The consequences for marketers will be profound. New terms such as metatags, API’s and the web of things are already entering the media lexicon. The next Web will fundamentally change not only the way we interact with consumers, but how we work with each other. Here’s a summary of what’s going on and what to expect.
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I started Digital Tonto a little over a year ago to get my views out about media and advertising. I’ve always tried to say not only what I think, but why I think it and substantiate my views with facts. For the most part, my efforts have been well received.
Lately though, I begun to feel like I’ve been cheating a bit. In my quest to put my ideas on solid ground, I’ve dealt largely with issues that lend themselves to an evidenced based approach. However, core beliefs can not be demonstrated in the same way that technical issues can. Sometimes you just have to say what you think.
Therefore, here are four things that I think are truly important if you are going to succeed at anything. I can’t prove them, but believe them to be true.
I don’t normally like to make predictions, but here’s one: In ten years, social networks will become the new econometrics.
As social networking technology becomes more advanced and increased online activity makes more robust data sets available, social networks are beginning to be utilized in an amazing variety of ways. Some of this is exciting, other facets are a bit scary.
However, one thing is clear: Social networks (although not necessarily social media) will revolutionize how marketing is done. Here’s a short overview of what’s going on.
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