As per POST, you can put People first (but there’s nothing stopping you making an arse (or ass) of yourself once you come to deliver).

Or you can skip all the other stages and come up with a blinding brilliant programme of content that you realise will inspire the people you need to speak to, practically builds a strategy by itself and is intrinsically linked to the kind of technologies needed to get it out to the audience (or help them find it).

My favourite analogy of the moment is social media as a party – it’s time for big companies to stop trying to host parties (which is pretty expensive, especially if you have to pay guests to come and pretend to be your friend) and start being the memorable, intelligent guest at the parties that are already going on. The guest with the most, best content wins.

As marketer, the goal is obviously to be the one shred of truth in the sea of irrelevance.

People have always interacted “conversed” with their small circle, and may do that online, but how many will want to take the stage? I wonder if many do not comment on blogs because that’s the equivalent of taking the stage and exposing your thoughts for reaction or ridicule.

This human dynamic may not change online- so we’ll still need speakers and facilitators and provocateurs online- all the listeners and watchers will not suddenly become speakers, will they?

This is something I should have written. Question is, why the hell didn’t I?

Seriously though, I feel somewhat vindicated, since I’ve been largely opposed to the idea of social media as a legitimate marketing method in its own right, which hasn’t exactly helped me win friends and influence people in the social media marketing realm, largely because I keep poking holes in their big talk.

What of social media as part of a holistic strategy? Absolutely. But on its own, it’s a short-term thing that simply isn’t sustainable…

Excellent article! Spot on in your analysis as well. So many marketers are enamored with the technology, but forget the people.

Great observations, and above all, thank you for invoking the name of Neil Postman, who is prophetically more relevant in the Internet Age than he was twenty years ago.

With TV/Radio/Print mega brands those who succeeded are those who could make the most of using that thing that they had control of: 30 seconds packets of semi-aware, general publics’ attention. (demographically segmented etc., but that so blunt it’s a detail)
Since TV/Radio/Print as a whole had (and still has) a lot of available ‘attention’ those brands, companies & products that could utilise this resource thrive.

In contrast, smaller sources of ‘attention’ developed different (ecosystems?). Door-to-door was the staple of products, companies, brands etc. that could take advantage of fewer richer packets of attention. A requirement for door-to-door is excitement, immediate actionability etc. You can’t sell coca cola door to door either. You can (could) sell encyclopaedias vacuums.

PPC (Google mostly) already has a young ecosystem around it. But it still doesn’t work for launching a new flavour of Coke.

Many of the newer sources of attention are well, new. They have immediate value to those companies that live on different sources only inasmuch as they can serve the existing companies, as they are. It’s likely that full advantage of these new sources, can only be be taken by companies that do not yet exist. Maybe the old companies will adapt. Probably a bit of both.

Bingo.